Women's Professions In Victorian England

In the late nineteenth century women were beginning to find a place in the more public spheres of life. Larger numbers of women than ever were in paid employment; by 1874 twenty percent of females over fifteen were employed. Many

Their jobs could include being a washer women, working for a wealthy resident, seamstress and a gardener. Women in the lower-working class were also expected to be mothers, housekeepers and workers resulting in them becoming very stressed. Women in this class often married for security and social status.

Before 1840 women were viewed as something that needed to be taken care of. They could not own property, fathers would not mention their daughters in their wills, women could not be treasurer of their own companies, it was the husband’s responsibility. Only seven vocations were available to them outside of the home in the late 1840’s; widows would receive no share of her husband’s property or his families, and if one did not marry or remarry she had to enter one of the few employments for her or be a charity case for her relatives. When factory jobs became available to women they were quickly taken because it gave women a way to be independent and not a burden to their loved ones, but earn and spend their own money however the wished. For once

The Victorian Era women was vastly different than the female we think of nowadays. Women during that time were expected to fulfill more of a domestic and motherly role, one that stayed at home and took care of the house. They were confined within the private sphere of the world while the men toiled away in the public sphere. The ideal Victorian women was described as:

Women working men’s jobs were not as welcomed in society as they were in factories. People held on to the belief that women should be house wives and not have to do much in the way of work. The man should provide for the family, and the women should take care of the family. Many of the women who worked were lower class and had to help provide for their families, or were the only providers for their families. Women who worked men’s jobs were looked down upon and thought to be no better than dirt. Although women working in factories were still women, men did not show them the same respect as they did a woman working as a secretary or teacher.

if a woman did have a job it was not considered skilled in the 1700s-1800s

In the Victorian era, the people have to uphold their reputations to be accepted by society. Women, especially have harder expectations to live up to. Women are told to stay home and take care of the family. Women are meant to be at home in the kitchen, waiting to serve their husbands. Society also expects women to follow the

If a woman during the Victorian Era was rich (married a rich man or gained wealth through her family) she is different compared to a middle class woman and is

During the mid-nineteenth century, entrepreneurial textile company owners wanted to find a way to maximize profit while minimizing costs, and due to the Rhode Island system, and having to pay every working man a living wage, too much money was being wasted in paying the workers and it drove the cost of their products to go up. However, there was no law in place that said the owners of the factories must pay women a living wage, so textile companies started to recruit women farmworkers to leave the farm and come work in their factories. attempted to regulate the lives of their female workers by making them live by strict rule sets that dictated what they could or could not do throughout their day to day lives while working at the factories.

In the Victorian Age, the man had his place in the family and the women had theirs. Women were expected to stay home and manage the household, take care of the children, and manage the money. Men were expected to be the wage earners in factories and offices, not the women. Women only had jobs outside the house if they were extremely poor. And women who did have jobs like this, were paid significantly less than men who held the same job position. Nowadays, it is very common practice for women to have jobs outside the household. It is also illegal to pay employees more or less because of gender or racial reasons nowadays.

During the Victorian era, gender roles became separated and entered into different spheres that only interacted at specific moments. Women were considered physically weaker yet morally superior to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere. Not only

During the early 1800s, In a Victorian Christian rooted society the ideal women was virtuous, modest in appearance and played a homemaker role in society. Confined to cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children, they had no place in society outside of home. Their purpose in life was to get married and reproduce, then train the children in the same way of life. If

Social standing, and moral values were vital elements in Victorian society, and the fundamental doctrine of establishing this ideology, began at home. The home provided a refuge from the rigour, uncertainty, anxiety, and potential violence of the outside world. (P, 341) A woman’s role was to provide a safe, stable, and well-organised environment for their husbands and families. However, change was on the horizon with an underlying movement of business and domestic changes both home and abroad, with industrialization, and the suffragist movement. Women were beginning to gain autonomy and began to grasp their opportunities, thus significantly curtailing male supremacy and the definable acceptable ‘role’ of the woman.

Wealthy and poor women in Victorian England ate lunch only, since the men were out at work. While the men were out, the women drank “unladylike” things such as beer, ale, and cider with their food at bars. After more industries were introduced to England, the working class men got jobs at factories. These factories were further from home, so the men worked longer, stayed up later, and ate dinner later. The wealthy men and women also got home late to eat dinner, but it was not because they were out working, but because they were out partying. Gas lamps soon came out, and this helped the wealthy to stay up even later than they already did. Others followed their examples, so dinner was pushed back again to eight or nine at

During the Industrial Revolution, women were, in general, considered socially inferior. A “good woman” was expected to stay at home, raise