As „Vicotorian women“ can be seen the women between roughly the years 1850 to 1900, during the time India was a British colony and queen Victoria also the Empress. In this years it’s the first time they begin to fight for their rights, especially the right to vote. Social and polotical unions are formed and they claim for more same rights. For example, the Matrimonial Causes Act was introduced(1857), which allows the women to keep the money they earn during their marriage. Finally they reached also the right to vote, wich was first enabled in 1918 (by the way, in Germany it was introducend in 1919) with the differnce that their allowance began at the age of 30, instead of the men who could vote from 21 years on. This was equalized 10 years later.
Within the marriage it was the woman’s part to bear children, and also her only task. During her life she was or had to be pregnant more or less 8 times, but considering that some children died very early, only 4-5 grew up. If a woman became pregnant before marriage she had to marry the „producer“ immediately, or was sent away form her family to bear the child secretly. Because of the fear of losing work many abortions took place.
Further more a woman’s place was at home, as I already said to care for their motherhood but also for domestics, which were regarded as enough to fulfill a females life.
Surely also the education of the women wasn’t very good. Most of them only visited Primary and Secondary school, only a very little part of them had the possibility to go to a University. In fact, the part of female students was very little.
Worth mentionning: ElizaElizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917)
The first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain. She founded a hospital for poor women and children in London.
Concerning the clothes is remarkable that those for men became slightly more comfortable and had and
easier fit. In contrary the woman wore bound by the growth of rigid conventions stipulating the ‘correct’ dress for each occasion. An enormous variety of styles was worn by women during this half-century, many of them remarkably ugly. The invention of the sewing machine seems to have encouraged over-elaborate decoration, and the introduction of aniline dyes produced some garish colours.
As skirts were drawn back in the late 1860s, the hair was also drawn up and back to reveal the ears, which before had been covered, but kept flat on top, with curls on the head. With the first bustles in the early 1870s the hair was lifted higher, falling onto the shoulders in curls or occasionally worn in a chignon. During this period enormous amounts of false hair were used by the very fashionable Catholic countries. Hair might fetch a good price, and peasant girls in Germany, Italy and France cut their hair as a source of income; even middle-class girls in England or America, in need of cash, might sell their hair.
Interesting sources:
