Victorian Women During the Victorian

Victorian Women

Women during the Victorian age had little choice over their fate once they became marrying age. In most cases, men married these women because of the property they owned and to have and raise children. Once wed, the women lost all ownership of their goods as well as any legal rights. On the other hand, if a woman did not get married, she had few choices other than becoming a governess, domestic helper or, in the worst case, a prostitute. Even when men kept mistresses, they still expected their wives to be faithful. If a woman took a lover, and it was discovered, she would lose any standing in society. If a man divorced his wife, she no longer had any right to her property or children. Women also did not have the freedom to act as they wished socially. Well-to-do wives were required to spend their time welcoming guests, reading, sending correspondence, having dinner parties, watching over the care of the home and seeing to the servants' responsibilities. Poor women worked in homes, factories or as prostitutes. They had very little to eat, and most often lived in the worst of conditions with their families. Regardless of the women's condition, however, authors were remarkably able to use literature as a means of describing these societal restraints and the burden placed on Victorian women and wives. Much of the Victorian poetry, shorts stories and novels provide an intimate look into the role and treatment of women in their marriages.

For example, through their short stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin clearly demonstrated the psychological burdens women had due to their situation. Because of the constraints placed upon them, the women protagonists not only lost their property and personal identity but their mental well being and sanity as well. In both the "Yellow Wallpaper" and "Story of an Hour," the wives broke the bonds that held them in unhappy lives to reach even more unfortunate conclusions.

In these two stories, the women are considered very fragile characters, as all Victorian women were at the time. The narrator in "Yellow Wallpaper," who appropriately goes nameless because of her lack of standing, is said by a physician of high standing to have a "temporary nervous depression." Mrs. Mallard, in "Story of an Hour" is afflicted with a heart condition. Actually, however, the woman in "Yellow Wallpaper" is suffering from post-partum depression, and Mrs. Mallard is a victim of the personal pain from her husband's controlling personality and their stifling life together. In both cases, the women would have felt much better physically and psychologically if having the ability to express themselves openly and honestly. At the end, these women perish, one into insanity and the other into death, due to pain of not being free to enjoy the outdoors, which symbolized their escape from being smothered from being kept inside all day. As she states in "Yellow Wallpaper": "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it."

In both stories the setting was the same -- a room in a house, surrounded by four walls closing closer and closer inward and windows that offered freedom. The narrator in "Yellow Paper" was stranded in her bedroom. Despite the house's beauty, she believes that it holds something menacing, which does not bode well for her future. Yet her life outside of this room only goes as far as the windows where "I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house." In "Story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard could also see the beauty outside. When she hears of her husband's death, she truly believes that soon it will be possible to actually escape through that window and "see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air." Personal independence is the ultimate for both these women. As Mrs. Mallard concludes: "And yet she had loved him -- sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!" Yet, neither woman can gain independence by escaping into the real world outside her window. She can only be free by escaping from life itself.

Although not a well-known author, Margaret Oliphant's writings exemplified the condition of women in marriages. Most of her later work is concerned with the injustices women faced and her disdain of the social morality of the 1800s. She scorned the traditional ending to many of the Victorian novels, where the lovers would be united and live happily ever after. Instead, she appreciated the benefits of a free and independent life. In the Marriage of Elinor, she comments on the bias against women who do not marry:

It is curious how determined the mind of the English public at least is on this http://galenet.galegroup.com.libdb.fairfield.edu/images/chr/mdash.gif that the man or woman who does not marry (especially the woman, by-the-bye) has an unhappy life, and that a story which does not end in a wedding is no story at all, or at least ends badly, as people say. It happened to myself on one occasion to put together in a book the story of some friends of mine, in which this was the case. They were young, they were hopeful, they had all life before them, but they did not marry. And when the last chapter came to the consciousness of the publisher he... refused to pay. He said it was no story at all. (Rubick, 1994, p.169).

Oliphant shows that Victorian women, as those in "Yellow Wallpaper" and "Story of an Hour," are not allowed to be open and creative and voice who they really are. In another of her novels, the Perpetual Curate, she writes about the sense of frustration and disillusionment that women felt. They had a feeling of abandonment to their problems. Yet, like Mrs. Morgan below, they cannot make their sentiments known to their insensitive husbands.

Her compunctions, her longings after the lost life which they might have lived together, her wistful womanish sense of the impoverished existence, deprived of so many experiences, on which they had entered in the dry maturity of their middle age, remained for ever a mystery to her faithful husband. (Rubik, 1994, p.169)

It was not only the female authors who recognized and wrote about the societal constraints. Anthony Trollope, for example, wrote scathing novels about this historic era. He shows the irresponsibility of the society and how the wealthy have no regard for others besides themselves. They base their importance on their property, including the women they marry. In the book the Way We Live, Trollope describes in satirical detail how fathers find husbands for their daughters. Parents will do anything to find someone rich; the happiness of their daughters is the last thing considered. A subplot of the book, for example, describes how non-urbanites make their way into the citified society. Every year, many landowners move to London in the hope that their daughter would find someone to wed. A girl has no chance in the country to find the right sort of man. Georgiana Longestaffe is frantic, because her father does not know if he has enough money to keep a house in London until finding a husband. She cries to her mother: "What is to become of me? Is it not enough to drive me mad to be going about here by myself, without any prospect of anything? Should you have liked at my age to have felt that you had no choice of having a house of your own to live in?" (Chapter 15). Marriage at this time was a complex step-by-step process that had to be followed correctly for the right results. Usually, the mothers spread the news that her daughter was looking for someone and negotiated the alliances.. Ideally, he would be from a wealthy family with income.

The main plotline of the Way We Live takes place in London where the greedy and villainous Augustus Melmotte purchases a large house for himself, his wife and daughter, Marie, in the exclusive area of Grosvenor Square. In order that Melmotte can gain a reputation as "a great financier," a San Francisco conman by the name of Hamilton Fiske convinces him to organize and promote a fictitious railroad and set up a dummy high-society board of directors. Melmotte's rsulting large gifts to charity and lavish parties convince everyone that he is a financial genius, and much money is given to him for investments.

Meanwhile, Melmotte introduces Marie into the matrimonial arena at an extravagant ball for which, in hope of favors that will come, he gains the patronage of several duchesses and other regal individuals. Marie, believed to be the heiress of millions, has many highly placed but poor young noblemen asking for her hand in marriage. She falls in love with Sir Felix Carbury, who is the most shady of them all. Felix's interest in Marie has nothing to do with love, but only with her wealth. This behavior is expected, since he is just following through on all that he has been told while growing up. He has learned his lessons well. His mother commends him often for winning Marie's heart, even if it is for the wrong reasons.. As Trollope writes:

It was now his business to marry an heiress. He was well aware that it was so, and was quite prepared to face his destiny. But he lacked something in the art of making love. He was beautiful. had the manners of a gentleman, could talk well, lacked nothing of audacity and had no feeling of repugnance a declaring a passion which he did not feel. You he knew so little of the passion, that he could hardly make even a young girl believe that he felt it. When he talked of love; he not only thought that he was talking nonsense. But showed that he thought so (Chapter 15)

Felix and Marie make plans to elope and steal enough of her father's money to finance the event, but Sir Felix gambles away the money and does not keep his rendevous. Rumors start to fly about Melmotte's lies and forgeries. To save himself, he unsuccessfully forges a note to gain possession of Marie's trust fund. When all else fails, he commits suicide and Marie's whole life turns around. Hamilton Fisker, the one who suggested the railroad scheme to begin with, asks her to get married and move to America.

Marie reviews what has happened to her over the past year with the rise and fall of her father's wealth and the impact this has on her ability to attract a man. She has been "wooed so often," she says that now she does not know what to do. The material view of marriage is now damaged. First she had fallen in love with Sir Felix Carbury and convinced herself erroneously that he returned this love; it was not the money he wanted. Then she had moved on to Lord Nidderdale, one of her earlier suitors. Even though she did not love him, she needed to marry some one and "he might probably be as good as any other, and certainly better than many others." In fact, she had almost learned to like him and to believe that he liked her, before the truth came out about her father. Of course, though, he then deserted her. Marie was not angry at him for leaving, because that was his societal obligation. "From the moment of her father's death she had never dreamed that he would marry her. Why should he?" Of course, all this made her quite skeptical about marriage in general. Further, now she had over a hundred thousand pounds of her own. Now she could actually live on her own, but should she? Marie could not imagine opening up her own business or seeing herself as a single woman with total independence.

Besides, she tells herself, Hamilton is not that bad looking, not beautiful like Felix or easy good-humor of Lord Nidderdale, but not "distasteful to her." Also, he has a big house in San Francisco and apparently thriving financially. She also knew that a married women had more power over her money in the United States than in England. Overall, the pros outweighed the cons to marry Hamilton.

The most important aspect of Trollope's books, the Way We Live in particular, is the way that society revolves around money, power and prestige -- not love -- associated with marriage. One followed these patterns, regardless of the sham and villainy, or did not fit in. Melmotte's desire to marry his daughter, Marie, to nobility in order to become wealthy is one of the most noteworthy examples in the book. As Trollope writes: Melmotte's "daughter was valuable to him because she might make him the father-in-law of a Marquis or an Earl; but the higher he rose without such assistance, the less need had he of his daughter's aid. When Felix asks for permission to Marie, Melmotte's main question is whether Felix is, in fact, a Baronet. Melmotte would not have allowed a union without any gain in class level. In fact, Melmotte is so anxious to gain in class that he designs a complete fraud, which he begins to believe himself.

Lady Carbury strives to publish a couple of novels, despite her lack of talent, so her uncaring and selfish son, Felix, has the opportunity to succeed in marrying for money. Georgiana Longstaffe suffers complete humiliation just because she associates with less-respected people. Her father's monetary troubles force the family to stay away from London for the entire year, which is unacceptable for getting a husband. Georgiana, fearing she will never get married, ends up living with the Melmottes. Her brother points out "everybody doesn't make themselves part of the family. I have heard of nobody doing it except you. I thought you used to think so much of yourself...I can tell you nobody else will think much of you if you remain here." When Melmotte sinks after the fraud is discovered and commits suicide, Georgiana sinks along with them.

Yet, not all the literature written during this time was negative. Some women authors recognized that females, given the right traits and abilities, could overcome social constraints and find a more promising future in life. Jane Austin's books revolve around the topic of marriage, as quoted in the first line of Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," she believed that women had to make marriage their first priority. In the book, there are five different marriages, with varying degree of modernity to traditional -- success to lack of success

Elizabeth Bennett, is a complete opposite to the stereotypical Victorian woman. She refuses to marry solely to benefit herself socially and economically, because she does not like the suitor. Collins thinks that she is teasing -- how could any woman act contrary to convention? -- and believes that she will accept his offer. She tells him, "I have no pretension whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere." Instead, she chooses Darcy, who loves her humor and cleverness, qualities for which she is generally criticized. Jane Bennet and Bingley have an apparently successful marriage, as Austen, states:."... because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself."