The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal

This book gave me a lot of information about what the ideal Victorian woman looks like in her youth as well as into adulthood. It provided insight into what their roles were in the home as well as what their relationships should look like. The main aspects of an ideal woman were that she was domestic, feminine, and an example of morality. Wives and mothers were to make their home a place of rest for their husbands after a long day in the public sphere. This involved taking care of housework, cooking, cleaning, and the children. Daughters were to assist in this housework as well. Their tasks might involve sewing, cooking, cleaning, helping with younger siblings as well as practicing things like needlework, piano, and painting. Daughters were to be a picture of innocence and femininity.

"A middle-class woman acquired her status by connection with a man. Indeed no middle-class girl or woman could raise her own status through effort in the world of work, because earning money, for a girl or woman, meant loss of caste. But middle-class females none the less had a role to play in determining social differences. Women, not men, managed the outward forms that both manifested and determined social status. Through the creation of an appropriate domestic environment, and through the management of social life, women at all levels of the middle class were responsible for assuring that the private sphere acted as an effective indicator of status in the public sphere. Through the family, then, middle-class females played a central role in determining the social status of the males with whom they were connected, just as they played a central role in functioning of the cult of domesticity. Whereas all females, so the theory went, even those who were not middle class, could be perfect wives of perfect daughters, only some could achieve gentility. While all could aspire to 'noble womanhood', only some could be ladies. Those who attempted to be ladies when they could not, according to the arbiters of gentility, truly aspire to the title, came to represent all that was considered objectionable about upward social mobility."

Women in the home were also to be feminine. While this concept is a psychological construction, mothers and daughters were to be a representation of womanhood in their personalities, emotions, and outward appearance. The fact that they were mothers and daughters in the first place made them feminine because those are the predominant roles for females to hold.

Mothers had a special role in regards to the rest of the family. They were to provide a moral education for their children and be an example of that to them. This would teach their children what it looked like to be spiritual and how their actions were to reflect that. This would also be even more successful if it provided a sense of peace in their home for their husbands to enjoy. They were seen as the spiritual leaders of the home rather than the men because they provided guidance for the rest of the family.

Ideal daughters had specific expectations for their relationships with the other members of their family. With their dads and brothers, girls were to serve them happily and adore them. However, since we're talking about mothers and daughters, we will look at their relationship. Mothers were to be an example for her daughter. They taught their daughters their functions as a woman in regards to maternity and marriage. They had a unique and special relationship that differed from those that they have with other women or men. In Victorian literature, girls were often depicted as fulfillin their household jobs because they owed their mom something. They would then be rewarded with her love and gratitude. The daughter would confide in her mother about problems or when she was in need of guidance. Ultimately, mothers and daughters had an intimate companionship that went beyond friendship.

For girls without mothers, they would have a mother figure to fulfill this role: an aunt, an older sister, a grandmother, or close friend. For girls who had mothers who did not fit into this idealized role, they would often be depicted as havng to fight for their virtue and womanhood because they did not have a good example from their mothers.

IMPORTANT QUOTES

"Of first importance was a belief in the positie valye of social mobility. that a man could rise in the world through effort, telent, and inititative, and that such a rise in social status was to be commended was the fundamental principle of victorian middle-class society" (Gorham 3)

"The cult of domesticity helped to relieve the tnesions that existed between the moral values or Christianity, with its emphasis on love and charity, and the values of capitalism, which asserted that the world of commerce should be pervaded by a spirit of competition and a recognition that only the fittest should survive" (4)

"The home became a shelter for religious values, in their widest context, including the values associated with personal relationships; the world of commerce could thereby be absolved from the necessity of acting on Christian principles. Moreover, its moral barrenness became bearable, because the idealisation of the home meant that, at least in theory, some refuge from the harsh public world was possible." (4)

"The public sphere was the male's exclusive domain, whereas the private sphere was seen as presided over by females for the express purpose of providing a place of renewal for men, after their rigorous activities in the harsh, competitive public sphere." (4)

"The cult of domesticity assigned to women both a separate spehere and a distinct set of roles. Victorian conceptions of the idealised roles of women are epitomised by Coventry Patmore's poem The Angel of the House, the title which captures its essence. The ideal woman was willing to be dependent on men and submissive to them, an she would have preference for a life restricted to the confines of home. She would be innocent, pure, gentle, and self-sacrificing. Posessing no ambitious strivings, she would be free of any trace of anger or hostility. More emotional than man, she was also more capable of self-renunciation. The characteristics of the ideal victorian woman can be summed up in one word: she was feminine. femininity is a psychological concept, in that it implies a distinctive model for female personality. it is a modern idea and represents a major ideological shift in the justification for the secondary position of females...the concept of femininity, which is based on a conception of human psychology that assumes that feminine qualities are 'natural', has been the major ideologcial agent in enforcing the subordination of women." (4-5)

"much victorian idealisation of femininity was concerned with its manifestation by adult women in their roles as wives and mothers. the idealised victorian home, however, did not consist of husband and wife alone, but of husband, wife, and children."

Gorham, Deborah. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1982. Print.

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