Women's Rights during the Victorian Era

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:

Over the years people have been worried about their young children working in factories or many other dangerous circumstances. With in these years people have also been concerned with their equal rights. Women tend to be treated or paid unfairly when compared to their men colleagues. Before 1938 factories would hire children to do the same dangerous and high- risk jobs that fully grown men were doing. If there were fully grown adults getting injured on the job, one can only imagine what would happen to a kid. In 1923, women and some men tried to make everything equal for women. They worked towards something called equal rights. This movement was thought up by people who supported women's rights, to make things more equal. Women wanted fair

Women in the mid-1800s had nearly any rights they could not vote or hold office. If women were to get married their husband got all of the property he owned all her wages if she worked the husband could hit his wife long as it did not injure her. Women held many rallies and other events to try and get equal right. The Women's Rights Movement allowed women a chance to go to college and other schooling opportunities. Finally women got the same jobs as men they got paid the same they owned all of their property and wages.

Did women always have the same rights and roles as men? Were they always able to live a free life? Well not really, but the women were willing to fight for it.

The late 1800’s in America life for woman was not as easy or fulfilling as it is for woman in America today. Women were looked at differently than man, and were treated as such. There have been many women in our past that have helped shape who we are as women today. Many groups have contributed to women’s rights as well. Women were not allowed to do a lot of things we as women are allowed to do today. Women in the late 1800’s in America were treated indifferently because: they were refused the right to vote, they were treated differently than men, and in marriage they had separate spheres than the men.

In the late nineteenth century, women were beginning to take a stand for their equal rights in society. The term “new woman” was used to describe these women, openly proclaiming their independence from men. It was a woman’s way to threaten the conventional ideas of society, and to bring about their own changes (Buzwell). Following their well-known suffrage movement, women claimed their freedom sexually, physically, and in the workplace. For many years’ prior, women were expected to be the typical housewife, watching over the house, cooking, and cleaning. They were property of their husbands. During their equal rights revolution, women pursued careers like doctors or lawyers and fulfilling their sexual desires for purposes other than bearing children. As today’s society may never know the struggles and misfortunes during the Victorian era, Dracula leaves a time capsule behind to elaborate on the realities during such a prominent generation (Podonsky). Considering this given criteria, a new woman comes in a variety of forms; some women represent a stronger sexual desire while others demonstrate character traits on equality in work and education. In the case of Dracula, the two main female characters take two different forms; one blatantly sexual and one chaste (Humphrey). Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula portrays the ideas of a “new woman” in a modern society, utilizing Mina’s and Lucy’s characters to display opposite characteristics of the feminist movement which draw attention to

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This sentence from the Deceleration of Independence is one of the most well known of American documents. However, consequently we have all become comfortably numb to this statement and don’t take into consideration the struggles, fights, and deaths from our history that made this statement true. Due to the unceasing fight of men and women of three different groups, America was altered for the better. The late 1800 to early 1900 was an essential time for three key groups women, African Americans, and Indians to fight for their constitutional rights.

The day-to-day lives of men and women were quite clearly divided during the 1800s. Women were much more restricted in their movements. Most of their work was done in and around the home. Tasks like sewing, spinning, cooking, cleaning, and gardening were all familiar to most working-class women. Marriage and children were also inevitable for most women, as they provided a certain degree of security and social status. In the late 1800s women were treated poorly because they were treated as secondary citizen, woman suffrage and lack of woman voting right with many people opposing any movement about women should have equal right.

In the time era of 1800s, women were inferior to males. They were not taken seriously and not allowed by society to do male jobs. Many women decided to change this through events like the Seneca Falls Convention. The growth of the women’s right movement included the progress of education, marriage laws, and professions for women. Through movements, women were given opportunities that they weren’t originally able to get.

Rights for women has become a norm in today's society that often goes unnoticed by people who life has changed. They often take it for granted the hardship that woman had to endured. For example, during the 1800s African American women were more than likely to be destined to be slaves or indentured servants. In comparison, the first white women settlers were treated as an object of reproduction, as well as servants. In today’s culture women’s treatment has improved over the last decades. The way culture has changed, allowing women to have more power to voice their opinion. From the hardship that woman had to endure, women’s right in the American Culture has evolved, which has led for women to thrive for success.

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.

During the Victorian Era in 1837 the period that was ruled by Queen Victoria I, women endured many social disadvantages by living in a world entirely dominated by men. Around that time most women had to be innocent, virtuous, dutiful and be ignorant of intellectual opinion. It was also a time associated with prudishness and repression. Their sole window on the world would, of course, be her husband. During this important era, the idea of the “Angel in the House” was developed by Coventry Patmore and used to describe the ideal women who men longed. Throughout this period, women were treated inferior to men and were destined to be the husbands “Angel in the House”.

Victorian women had several hardships to overcome. Education, marriage, leisure, and travel amongst other things were limited and controlled. A woman was never to travel if not in the company of her parents or husband. Leisure, for example, was limited and a woman always had to look busy and find something to do. They did not have the right to vote, sue or own any property. Their bodies

In the Victorian era, the status of women in society was extremely oppressive and, by modern standards, atrocious. Women had few rights, in or outside of the home. Married women in this period relied on men almost completely as they had few rights or independence. With this mindset in focus,

Despite being under the rule of a female monarch, women faced many inequalities and suffering during the Victorian age. Examples of these inequalities include not having the right to vote, unequal educational and employment opportunities. Women were even denied the legal right to divorce in most cases. As the Norton Anthology states, these debates over women’s rights and their roles came to be known as the “woman question” by the Victorians. This lead to many conflicting struggles, such as the desire by all for women to be educated, yet they are denied the same opportunities afforded to men. While these women faced these difficulties, there was also the notion that women should be domestic and feminine. There was an ideal that women should be submissive and pure because they are naturally different. The industrial revolution introduced women into the labor workforce, but there was still a conflict between the two identities; one of an employed woman, and one of a domestic housewife.