Contextual Research:

Morality, Sexuality and Relationships of Women in the Victorian Era

·         Wikipedia page on Women in the Victorian Era:

While women in the Victorian era were expected to only have sex with one man, their husband, it was acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners in their life.

This meant that though women had to stay with their husbands on the grounds that divorce wasn’t an option, it was socially acceptable for men to participate in lengthy affairs with other women.

 If women did have sexual contact with another man, they were seen as ruined or fallen.

Victorian literature and art was full of examples of women paying dearly for straying from moral expectations. Adulteresses met tragic ends in novels such as ‘Anna Karenina’ by Tolstoy, ‘Madame Bovary’ by Flaubert, while in ‘Tess of the d'Urbervilles’, Thomas Hardy depicts a heroine punished by her community for losing her virginity before marriage (the novel is deliberately ambiguous as to whether the encounter was consensual or a rape).

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·         The Victorian Web:

Female sexuality in Victorian times was a loaded subject, filled with the contrasting ideals of the domestic wife and the femme fatale.

This era was also responsible for introducing the "new woman" and the "fallen woman," two other dichotomous ideologies. The religious and social ideal of femininity was encapsulated in the idea of a woman's mission as daughter, wife and mother, while the cultural (literary and aesthetic) was consumed with images of mystical, deadly and sexually enticing female subjects.

The modern urban life of women was the basis for the idea of the fallen woman:

Respectable women, it was claimed, could not be part of the public sphere of city life. If women left the safety of the home and were on the streets, it was claimed, they became corrupted by the transgressive values of the city. They would be thought to be prostitutes or vulnerable workingwomen, both victims of a hostile and threatening environment.

The other female type, the new woman, represented in urban space was the endangered workingwoman, often depicted as young vulnerable girls who had become victim to the hostile urban world.

 Pure women were seen as moral and spiritual guardians, fighting against the immoral influence their evil counterparts posed, not only to their household but also to the entire nation's moral health (Parker 12).

Images concerning female respectability were circulated at all levels of Victorian culture, infiltrating the minds of both men and women with not only the positive propaganda and moral reprobation, but also the erotic images, creating a very ambiguous ideal for women.

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·         The British Library : Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians:

During the Victorian period men and women’s roles became more sharply defined than at any time in history.

 As the 19th century progressed men increasingly commuted to their place of work – the factory, shop or office. Wives, daughters and sisters were left at home all day to oversee the domestic duties that were increasingly carried out by servants.

Separate spheres:

From the 1830s, the two sexes inhabited what Victorians thought of as ‘separate spheres’, only coming together at breakfast and again at dinner.

This ideology rested on a definition of the ‘natural’ characteristics of women and men.

Women were considered physically weaker yet morally superior to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere. 

Not only was it their job to counterbalance the moral taint of the public sphere in which their husbands laboured all day, they were also preparing the next generation to carry on this way of life.

The fact that women had such great influence at home was used as an argument against giving them the vote.

Marriage and sexuality:

 A young girl was not expected to focus too obviously on finding a husband. Being ‘forward’ in the company of men suggested a worrying sexual appetite.

Women were assumed to desire marriage because it allowed them to become mothers rather than to pursue sexual or emotional satisfaction.

One doctor, William Acton, famously declared that ‘The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind’.

Girls usually married in their early to mid-20s.

Typically, the groom would be five years older. 

This reinforced the ‘natural’ hierarchy between the sexes and it also made sound financial sense as young man needed to be able to show that he earned enough money to support a wife and any future children before the girl’s father would give his permission.

Some unfortunate couples were obliged to endure an engagement lasting decades before they could afford to marry.

If a young man was particularly pious he might manage to stay chaste until he married. Many respectable young men, however, resorted to using prostitutes. All the major cities had red light districts where it was easy to find a woman whom you could pay for sex. 

Unfortunately syphilis and other sexual diseases were rife, and many young men unwittingly passed on the infection to their wives. For those unlucky enough to develop full-blown tertiary syphilis, the result was a painful and lingering death, usually in the mid-40s.

Young and not-so-young women had no choice but to stay chaste until marriage. They were not even allowed to speak to men unless there was a married woman present as a chaperone. 

 Prostitution:

The prostitute was the shadow that haunted the well-run middle-class home. She serviced the needs of the men of the house, not just before marriage but sometimes during it too.

Just like the men she slept with, but unlike their wives, the prostitute was a worker in the economic market place, exchanging services for cash.

Doctors such as William Acton were extremely worried by the ‘problem’ the prostitute presented, in particular the way she spread sexual disease amongst the male population. For this reason the ‘Contagious Diseases Act’ was instituted from 1860 which allowed, in certain towns, for the forced medical examination of any woman who was suspected of being a sex worker. If she was found to be infected she was placed in a ‘Lock Hospital’ until she was cured.

 A reform movement led by Josephine Butler vigorously campaigned for a repeal of the acts, arguing that it was male clients, as much as the prostitutes, who were responsible for the ‘problems’ associated with prostitution.

Many charities were instituted to help reform prostitutes. Charles Dickens even collaborated with the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts to set up a ‘Magdalen House’ which would prepare girls for a new life in Australia.

Despite these efforts, prostitution continued to flourish for as long as there were bachelors who were prevented by economy from marrying until their late 20s, and working-class women who desperately needed to make money to raise their own children.

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