The Bourgeois Family

If a twentyfirst
century returned to Victorian England in a time machine, the traveler
would immediately notice any number of differences between our world and theirs; the smells
London would be remarkable to the modern sensibility: horsedung
and straw in the streets, the
smells of fatty foods frying, and the sweaty smell of workers and servants who had no access to
bathing beyond the kitchen tap to name two. The smell of flaring gas from the street lighting
system before electricity arrived would have been very noticeable. Arguably, the noise pollution
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of the Victorian age might surpass the streets of modern New York. There would be no jet
aircraft or boom boxes, but the clatter of hundreds of thousands of horse hooves drawing cabs,
carriages, and freight wagons created an assault on the ears. Before the 1870s, one would be
surprised at the darkness of the evening away from the gaslighted
main streets.
On the other hand, one might well notice that everyone wore very wellmade
hats and
welltailored
clothing, even workers. The Rail Service was excellent and completely
dependable. The Royal Post provided four or five swift deliveries per day and the postmen wore
resplendent uniforms—red coats with gold piping. One would notice that the populace was
remarkably homogenous aside from a few Lascar sailors or visitors from India. The sight of an
African American or a Native American on the sidewalk would have been considered exotic.
One would have also noted “the terrifying inadequacy of medical and dental care.”
Terrible teeth, toothache pain, halitosis were manifest in public every day. Along with this
evidence one would see children’s coffins being trundled in glasssided
hearses along the
cobblestone streets testifying to the prevalence of infant mortality. One would see ragamuffin
children, children working as chimney sweeps, and active in every sort of labor imaginable. One
would also have noticed the everpresent
evidence of class distinctions and deference to the
social hierarchy. Cockney’s would instinctively “knuckle their foreheads” in the presence of a
Lady or a Gentleman. A dozen things at once would show us that the Victorian Age was utterly
alien to our own. “But the greatest, and the most extraordinary difference [would be] the
difference between women, then and now.” (A. N. Wilson, pp. 30708)
No age ever praised the virtues of family life more thoroughly than our Victorian
ancestors. The Victorian family was patriarchal, bound by unspoken rules and the wife was seen
as the domestic angel who provided a safe haven for her husband and a strong, moral example
for the children. Although the middle class wife was in no way the equal of her husband in the
sense that she shared access to education or political and civil rights, she did exert power over
other people. The Victorian wife was the household manager, responsible for the moral
instruction of the servants as well as the children. Families were large, and the average wife
spent “about 15 years in a state of pregnancy and nursing children in the first year of life.”
After infancy, children were expected to be seen but not heard. The alternative would have been
bedlam. Victoria and Albert's marriage was a true lovematch.
Victoria gave birth three times in
the first three years of marriage, six times in her first eight years of marriage. In all, the Royal
couple had nine children. Although all of her children lived to adulthood, she did not enjoy
childbearing: “What you say of the pride of giving life to a soul is very fine my dear,” she wrote
to her oldest daughter, "but I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments
when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.”
Feminist scholars have deconstructed the language of patriarchy in Victorian literature and
culture. They have also pointed out that even the fashions in respectable feminine clothing
reflected the strict boundaries imposed on women. We should remember however, that all those
hoop skirts, corsets, and petticoats were also outward signs of wealth and social status —of
“respectability.” Armored as she was, the middle class wife could scarcely have done physical
labor even if she wanted to do so.
It is perfectly legitimate to read the message of female subservience writ on the page of
female fashions, but I would also suggest that something else is work here: that profound
Victorian fear of the natural personality. It is not really necessary to deconstruct the message of
patriarchy in Victorian literature; it was everywhere. Young women were taught to aspire to
ideal of femininity popularized by writers like the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson:
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Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion. (Spielvogel)
Victorian psychology taught that men were more animalistic than women, more tied to their
primitive natures. Perhaps the most Victorian of all novels might be Robert Louis Stevenson's
classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: the novel of a man who gives in to the beast within us all.
Victorians like Dr. Thomas Bowdler believed that it was impossible to overstate the importance
of morality; indeed good behavior and good morality was the only defense available to society in
a time of economic and political upheaval. One must be ever vigilant lest the beast within burst
the bonds of law and custom. Edmund Burke expressed the idea well: “Manners are of more
importance than law. The law touches us but here and there and now and then. Manners are
what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant,
steady, uniform, and insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.” (Gertrude
Himmelfarb, p. 282). Because of this, men's sexual escapades were tolerated as inevitable; those
of women were never tolerated. All of this amounted to a double standard. Women were
expected to live a life of utter purity, yet young ladies at finishing school were taught to flirt and
manipulate the men in their lives.
The Victorians elevated genderdefined
roles to the status of universal truths, at least for
middle class women. Many respectable women aspired to the ideal of domesticity expressed by
one book of advice to young wives:
Where want of congeniality impairs domestic comfort, the fault is generally
chargeable on the female side. it is for woman, not for man, to make the sacrifice.
She must be plastic herself, to mold others. There is, indeed, something unfeminine
in independence. It is contrary to nature, and therefore it offends. A really sensible
woman feels her dependence. She does what she can; but she is conscious of
inferiority, and therefore grateful for support. She knows that she is the weaker
vessel, and that as such she should receive honor. (Spielvogel)
Many middle class wives were caught in a nowin
situation. For the sake of her
husband's career, she was expected to maintain her public image as the idle wife, freed
from demeaning physical labor and able to pass her time in ornamental pursuits. In many
ways, the great symbol of all this was Queen Victoria herself

http://www.suu.edu/faculty/ping/pdf/VictorianBritain.pdf