Victorian Women by Joan Perkin

This paper examines the concept of the “New-Woman” in Victorian literature in all genres written by men and women.The “New-Woman” was also referred to at this time as the “Woman Question”.In this paper the “New- Woman”, the “ Woman Question” and feminism are interchangeable. This write-up handles four issues: the problem faced by the Victorian woman, events, legislation and publications crucial to Victorian feminism, Queen Victorian and feminism and lastly the Victorian writer and the “Woman Question”.The Victorian writer wrote essays, novels, plays and poems.Using the feminist critical theory, the paper argues that the predominant theme in Victorian literature was the presentation of the “New- Woman”.The paper reveals that the “Woman Question” was so preoccupying that no writer could avoid it during the Victorian period and that feminism really or essentially started during the Victorian period when women were given or got remarkable improvements in their lives.

Humanities and social sciences, 2016

Victorian society laid much emphasis on the moral righteousness of women and therefore expected of woman to be an Ideal Woman. The Victorians made proper arrangements of education and tutoring to inculcate the four cardinal virtues of True Womanhood in Victorian woman. As indicated by Barbara Welter (1966), the four cardinal virtues, which a lady was required to have keeping in mind the end goal to become a True Woman, were “piety”, “purity”, “submissiveness” and “domesticity”. The paper contests the idea of the True Womanhood through an array of instances from literature, religion, and socio-political practices. It also explores Victorian patriarchal politics of the legend of True Womanhood to reveal the reason for the rise and fall of the “Ideal”.

2020

THE SOURCES OF FEMINIS M IN THE WORKS OF VICTORIAN WRITERS Verovkina O. Ye., Nesteruk S. M. 1. Women's fight for independence and new tendencies in Victorian literature To begin with, it should be pointed out, that before studying the subject of our research, it is necessary to make an investigation of the period and society, in which its people lived, their way of life, traditions and laws in order to pave the way for a study of the Victorian writers' works. So, in this chapter the historical, social and economic backgrounds of the Victorian age will be reviewed, so that to analyze the ways in which these might have influenced the content of literary works of this time. According to Blackwell the reign of Queen Victoria, after whom the period between 1837 to 1901 has been referred to the Victorian Era, was a landmark period in the history of Great Britain 1. This era was marked by country's acquiring new social functions, which were caused by new industrial conditions and rapid population growth. As for personal development, it was built on self-discipline and self-confidence, supported by Wesleyan and Evangelical movements 2 .

2015

In this chapter we will explore the radical changes that took place during Queen Victoria’s reign by focusing on certain key ideas or larger clusters of thoughts and the reactions that they generated. As we shall see, the Victorian era was a period marked by unprecedented changes, and Victorian thinkers and writers had a mixed reaction towards these shifts. Some of them welcomed change as a sign of progress, while others considered it an indication of decline and nostalgically contemplated past glories. Here are the major key concepts which this chapter investigates as they are organized in units:

Journal of Women's History, 1997

2016

Green, Colleen J. Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2016. Bad Girls in Corsets: Women and the Transgressive Body in the Nineteenth Century. Major Professor: Thomas Rickert. Women, and their bodies, posed an increasing anxiety for Victorian society. Culturally and outwardly, the Victorian era strove to maintain a level of decorum that, increasingly, the nineteenth-century woman were, rebelling against. The urge for women to break through social barriers and constraints binding them to the century created a divergence in thought from the traditional mores of the past, in turn affecting the ways in which womens’ bodies were portrayed, displayed and manipulated by the authors and artists of the century. As women entered actively entered into spaces once closed to them, they furthered the rift of uncertainty and discomfort. Importantly, critical attention must be paid to these social deviants, the transgressing women of the nineteenth century, those women who exist in the margins of the...

Victorian Literature and Culture, 2019

This essay reflects upon the future of Victorian feminist scholarship in an era of increasing precarity that also has seen radical scholarly re-interpretations of sexuality, gender, and sex. Using examples from the life and work of collaborative authors "Michael Field" as a case study, this essay suggests that re-imagining subjects from the past may help us address urgent, politically-inflected disciplinary and pedagogical debates in the present.

RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

The great social and cultural changes in the Victorian period had a great impact on gender roles. In both public and private sphere, the divisions in gender roles started to disappear with the emergence of a type of woman willing to be active in every area of life. Along with more frequent appearance and growing numbers of women in the work force through the late nineteenth century Elaine Showalter’s notion of “sexual anarchy” and its different forms were invigorated. How the social status of women started to change along with industrialization by the end of the nineteenth-century was also reflected upon Victorian literature. For instance, in Mrs Warren’s Profession the protagonist Vivie represents the new woman type who is ambitious to get education and to participate in work life as a self-sufficient woman in Victorian drama. When compared with the traditional woman type, she is more free-minded, independent and career-oriented. In D. H. Lawrence’ The Rainbow, Ursula, is another s...

CEPOS, 2017

Abstract Many authors began to write about the sufferings and endurances of women in the Victorian Age. More and more novels focused heavily on traditional, typical Victorian female characters and their interactions. As to the movement for the emancipation of woman from the unjust burdens and disabilities to which the five authors made it a subject to reveal the benign qualities of woman, Hardy, Thackeray, Gaskell, Trollope and George Eliot also focused the condition of woman, besides Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters – with a remarkable account of the social institutions of Victorian London. This does not mean that those novelists held feminist ideas, they simply he wanted to give woman her feminine privileges and rights. This study aims to explore most important Victorian writers who wrote about woman to seek the accuracy of Victorian views towards women. Charles Dickens was a pioneer in dealing with the kind of woman that was identified in that era. We also include Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Brontë who had different ideas in this point

San Román Cazorla, Julio, 2019

This work, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four and A Scandal in Bohemia, will deal with the analysis of Victorian society, considering Imperialism as the beginning of a new way of thinking and industrialization as a reflection of the new ideology and social system in Great Britain. I will develop the explanation of the Victorian project, dealing with the threat that imperialism supposed to it, the ‘Woman Question’, the creation of a collectively-driven personality and the differences between social classes, exposing the character of Sherlock Holmes as the ultimate Victorian gentleman (according to the ideas of the Carlylean hero).

2023

2012

With an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses political history, the history of ideas, cultural history, and art history, The Victorian World offers a sweeping survey of the world in the 19th century. The volume offers a fresh evaluation of Britain and its global presence in the years from the 1830s to the 1900s. It brings together scholars from History, Literary Studies, Art History, Historical Geography, Historical Sociology, Criminology, Economics and the History of Law, to explore more than forty themes central to an understanding of the ...

English Victorian era was a period of a series of values and codes of social strict behavior that regulated in every detail the life and the social ranks. By its organization, its architecture, its administration, its role and its purpose, the Victorian house is a clear and complex example of Victorian mentality. On top, Victorian wives or so-called «Angels of the House» are sharp crests of the status of women in the 19th century England, their existence and their daily responsibilities on life, religion, family, sexuality and distinction of classes. The approach of this book is, therefore, to the portrait of the Victorian middle-class woman, first by the description of her house, then by the analysis of its significant economic and political role and responsibilities, not only at home, in her relationship with her husband, her children and staff, but also on the social scene in industrial cities and changing out of his private domain.

1998

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