Achievements of Victorian Women in the Struggle for Equality

The place of women in society and their struggle over the centuries for getting gender equality has been in the spotlight of history. Victorian women’s lives were differed significantly by its uniqueness, and during the entire 19th century with the women’s movement they managed to sign crucial achievements in the history of whole feminism.

The day when Alexandrina Vitoria became the queen of the United Kingdom, the new era began in the history of Britain and it continued for 63 years and seven months. These years are distinguished by many phenomena in Britain like the Industrial revolution, numerous inventions, political reform and growth in the economy, developments in educational and literary fields, new steps toward human rights, first women movement, and many others. “Victorianism remains a living concept in social and political debates, although its meaning is ambiguous: it is used to describe exploitation and class division, sexual repression, hypocrisy, values of hard work and self-help, moral certainties about family life, and a wide variety of arrangements intended to solve public problems”.

Victorian society was a class-based society and it was divided into the upper class which was formed by the prosperous families of the time, Aristocrats, Nobles Dukes, the middle class which was the second in social ranking, and were included by businessmen, shopkeepers, merchants, also bankers, doctors, etc. and finally the working class that was the lowest class of the period, and it consisted of many unqualified workers, who were working in a very harsh conditions and getting the lowest wages of time. So, life was not so easy for everyone who lived in Victorian era. Another problem except for class discrimination in the 19th century Britain was gender inequality.

Indeed, it is impossible to speak about every aspect of Victorian era in just one paper. However, this paper aims to explore a generally accepted image of Victorian women and their accomplishments via women’s movement during the 19th century. Therefore, in the first part for demonstrating Victorian women and their place in the society an important question was raised and answered with actual statements. In this part, there are many concrete examples of prejudice against female, and the accepted role of women in society. Thus, I began with a portrait drawn for women of that period as an ideal wife, an angel of society. While many people assumed this image a true woman ideal, 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, emphasised the problem in his essay ‘The Subjection of Women’ and underlined that the lives of women similar to slavery. Here, I also emphasised the attitude and coldness of the judiciary towards women’s lives. Additionally, I wanted to mention, the media’s perspective which was not so different than the judicial system. Some magazines and books of the time were doing propaganda and others like The Times were discouraging women’s desire for the equal human rights with men.

At the continuation, the second part contains solid examples about the women's movement, and their achievements during the women’s movement which lasted for decades. It was not a simple thing to get the Acts pass from the Parliament, while it was consisted only male members, and most of them against gender equality. They have many arguments against women’s suffrage, which I mentioned some of them in this part. A private letter of queen reveals that, even the Queen was not supporting women, in this rightful battle. But the insistence and power of the women, overcame all the obstacles, and some acts namely Infant Custody Act (1839), Matrimonial Causes Act (1857), Married Women's Property Act (1870) came into force as a result of Women’s movement. Some associations and unions between the women were established throughout the years of movement.

Exploring the women of Victorian period and their outstanding struggle toward gaining a fair place in society has vital significance especially in the history of feminism, and while some women in different places of world still struggling for getting gender equality. There are innumerable sources about Victorian women, but just to stay away from the misrepresentation and biased views, to complete the research precisely and deliver the comparison correctly to the readers, the sources are used in the research have been selected carefully.

Victorian women and portrait of ideal woman in 19th century

Undoubtedly, the life of Victorian women was not similar to today’s women’s lives. Who were the Victorian women, and how they were seen from the eyes of society and law? This question must be answered in order to grasp the main ideology behind the whole women’s movement of the 19th century.

Because of class inequality, the lives of women were also different. But in general, the Victorian women were seen as weak, incapable, powerless creatures; they have no right to decide for their own lives, they were a subjugation to men, their main role in life to marry, take care of their husband, children, and deal with household. The Victorian heroine was an almost standardized product. Her function was courtship, marriage. Coventry Patmore’s poem 'the Angel in the House' formed the widespread Victorian image of the ideal woman (wife) which has dedicated their lives and be obedient to their husbands. The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all-pure. This persona has been supported by society and domesticity and servility to the husbands were propagated by several books and journals. The books like ‘Household Management’ by Isabella Beeton and ‘Home Words for Heart and Heath’ by Charles Bullock advised women on how to become the perfect housewife. So, women were believed that the only respectable career for a woman is marriage, and they don’t need to be educated and experienced in any significant fields of science. Consequently, ‘strong-minded’ was one of the most abusive terms that could be applied to a woman, and even the most dedicated feminists strove to avoid being so labelled, although men never actually claimed that they preferred their women feeble-minded.

Although the lives of women were akin ‘slavery’; being a single, unmarried woman and a married woman were distinct in Victorian society, even in the same social class. Prakrithi described single women in his research Victorian Feminism, with these words. Single woman and childless woman’s position was ambiguous for they did not belong to any rightful status. Single woman was fated to suffer; her inability to give birth to children owing to her single status estranged her from the familiar notions of femininity. They became masculinized hags; they were seen as the transgressor of the Victorian norm and were considered low. The fear of being marginalized made women embrace Marriage since sexual partnership was believed to make partners happy.

The Victorian era was the period of inequality in genders and definitely giving absolute freedom to men. Women were seen a subordination to men, and it was not only from the eyes of ordinary people, but clergymen and Christianity were also confirming it as well. “Wives should be subject to their husbands as to the Lord … Christ is the head of the church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything”. In his essay ‘The Subjection of Women’, English philosopher John Stuart Mill writes: “All women are brought up from their very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of man; not self-will and self-government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others”. Queen Victoria’s devotion to her husband and dedication to her family made her the icon of 19th-century middle-class femininity and domesticity.

There were many issues that proved to us the inequality of genders in 19th century Britain. In fact, married women had no independent legal identity in the eyes of the law: husband and wife were deemed to be one person, and that person was the husband. Once a woman married, she became the de facto property of her husband. Her goods became his. He could beat her and rape her without fearing the law, provided he did not kill her. There was another law 'Rule of Thumb’, which allowed husbands to beat their wives with a stick no thicker than a man’s thumb and to lock them in a room if they wished, which was legitimate until 1891.

The hurdles the women faced were captured by the editor of The Times in 1868 when he wrote: “No woman has yet pretended to be on a level with men in physical strength. The fact is that physical strength has a good deal to do with politics in innumerable ways, and, for that reason alone, women are not capable of holding their own in the rough contests of the world. If they attempted to do it, they would sacrifice that delicacy, that gentleness, that submission that are now their most potent charms. They have at present the privileges and the protection of the weak. Let them undertake to defend themselves, and they must be content with the bare rights they can enforce. Instead of gaining any additional rights, they would risk some of the rights they possess; and they would inevitably lose the peculiar influence which is now derived from their very subordination”.

Ultimately, Victorian women were the people who lived in 19th -20th centuries, who deprived of many human rights and seen as weak, but didn’t obey this belief, fought back and acquired many legal rights.

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Achievements of Women’s movement

We observe substantial progress in 19th century Britain in many fields and the social status of women. The women who already exhausted from the gender inequality and cruelty of male domination gradually demanded greater economic and social opportunities, and more political and legal rights, which triggered women’s movement. The women’s movement was expanded during the 19th century but, even in the 18th century, there were advocators of women's rights and Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the founding feminist philosophers, who was the author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1792) that influenced her successors. She refused the common view which accepted the women’s subordination to the men and demanded gender equality.

Just from the 1830s women managed to get results for their demands. One of the most important acts of the Victorian period, which was directly concerning women and became a landmark in women’s rights was Infant Custody Act of 1839. It happened when the writer Caroline Norton, wanted to divorce her husband in the 1830s and searched for legal amends which let her divorce his husband and have custody. At first, she got custody of her 7 years old boy, later she was allowed to get the custody of the other two boys.

Years of the 1840s succeed in the field of education of women. Most families from the middle and upper classes considered the education of their daughters as a needless expense, and for them, it was more important to get some income by making their daughters work in factories and other places. In the 1830s there were few girls’ schools worthy of the name, as opposed to establishments that taught deportment, dancing, French and how to manage servants. “Education consisted of showy accomplishments designed to ensnare young men”. Until the late 1840s, there was nothing for women that resembled higher education. Florence Nightingale was one of the women of the period who struggled for being a nurse and became the founder of modern nursing. Although she was coming from a wealthy background, she took part in the Crimean war as a trainer of nurses and contributed to the establishment of the nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London. And the first institution for the higher education of women in Great Britain-Bedford College was founded by the British social-reformer Elizabeth Jesser Reid in 1849.

There were several attempts in the 1840s and early 1850s to bring in a divorce law that would treat women fairly. In 1854 a bill was suggested by the lord chancellor to the House of Lords about widening the scope of divorces, but it delayed for the next year. However, Matrimonial Causes Act finally passed into law in 1857. As a result, while there were three divorce cases in 1857, in 1858 it reached 300.

The first women's suffrage organisation of the United Kingdom Sheffield Female Political Association was established in February 1851 by several Sheffield women under the leadership of Anne Kent and Anne Knight. In the same year, they presented a petition in support of the suffrage of adult women to the House of Lords, which became unsuccessful.

Another feminist activist association that was supporting women's right to employment and education, was The Langham Place Circle which was formed in the late 1850s by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Bessie Rayner Parkes, Emily Faithfull, and other talented, active, young women. With the help of the Circle ‘English Woman’s Journal’ began publication in 1858. The Journal had paramount importance at the beginning of the women's movement. It quickly became the major organ of publicity and propaganda for the cause, the first real form for the discussion of women's problems.

In 1860s Britain gave the extension to male suffrage, and it raised the feminists for female suffrage. John Stuart Mill had tried unsuccessfully to push the point by organising petitions to be presented to parliament in 1866, 1867 and 1868. In 1867 the National Society for Women's Suffrage was established by Lydia Becker, but it was not effective. And in May 1870 Jacob Bright presented a bill demanding votes for women and drew attention to the unfairness of their pay: “There is not a male and female rate of taxation, but there is a male and female rate of wages and earnings. Women everywhere, with a few remarkable exceptions, are getting far less money than men; they have to work much longer for the same money; and they are even paid much less when they are doing precisely the same work”. Unfortunately, his bill rejected by the MPs of the parliament.

In 1870 women come down with another success, The Married Women's Property Act that allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property. A wider campaign was already underway for property rights for women, led by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, the leading feminist of the 1850s. She was an educationalist and women's rights activist and worked hard to reform the married women's property laws.

The years of 1870-1880 has a particular significance in women’s movement. Many women like Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Jane Ronniger organised meetings throughout whole Britain, and managed to collect 200,000 signatures a year to support votes for women. Millicent Fawcett was a political leader of Britain's largest women's rights organisation, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, who wanted to get female franchise via legal ways. Due to the lobbying of women and their supporters, the subject was debated in the House of Commons every year (excluding 1874) from 1870-1879. The debates continued beyond this time, although with less frequency. From 1886 onwards every vote taken showed that the majority of MPs favoured women’s suffrage. In spite of this, it was still not permitted to become law.

Although women were getting new achievements every year, they were not supported by their female monarch. In a private letter of 1870, Queen Victoria wrote: “I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights”, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. Were woman to unsex themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection”.

There were many arguments against women’s suffrage at those years, like:

• Women are by nature and also according to God and the Bible meant to be subordinated to men.
• Men are made for public life, women for private.
• It was a Trojan Horse: if you let them vote then soon, they’d demand to become MPs, which, it was self-evident, would be absurd.
• Men are logical, stable, thoughtful and strong-minded; women are ornamental, quick-tempered, illogical, fickle and emotional.
• If women had votes they would outnumber male voters, parliament would become feminised and Britain the laughingstock of the world.

In 19th Britain, most working-class women laboured in manufacturing works, or in domestic service for richer households or in family industries in order to support their families. However, the incomes of women were vital in the life of the family’s existence their work was often thought of as minor and less important, and they were getting less salary than men. But two strikes that took place in the 19th century, Dewsbury woollen weavers (1875) which later led to the formation one of the early trade unions, and Byrant and May match factory strike (1888), which got some support from the London Trades Council and all their demands were met, improved many minds, and women get more and more attention and succeeded the changes.

Women’s movement towards their rights and women’s suffrage increased and got encouragement for over the years, and finally, in 1918, during the reign of King George V, an act was passed giving women over the age of 30 the vote. And only in 1928, 60 years after campaigning began, that parliament finally equalised the voting age between men and women.

Conclusion

The 19th-century women, their lives, position in society, and battle against discrimination still protect its necessity in today’s history. The uniqueness of the existence of this period’s women and their accomplishments during the whole century deserves great attention. As the whole paper demonstrates, at the beginning of the movement, women were nearly rightless, the society has made a specific image, and was demanding the dependency of women to those norms. Women’s protests against injustice was accepted as violating the laws of God, and their own womanlike elegance. But gradually, they managed to overcome the obstacles has been put in front of them, and till the 20th century, they achieved many changes in the judiciary, that support their interests. They were no longer the property of men, they got the opportunity to higher education, better conditions in workplaces, and there were more legal regulations that supporting women’s rights. Women’s suffrage was another success of the women’s movement, that although caused many exhausting years of struggle, but at the beginning of the 20th century they got the right to vote. While in the modern world, there are still some countries, in which women in the battle for getting the same human rights for both genders, the paper especially draws the attentions to this point, and hope studying Victorian women and their remarkable campaign, could shed light on their path.