Ideals of Womanhood in Victorian Britain

While researching for my paper, I came across the BBC website section dedicated to the History of Victorian Britain. There is a huge article entitled Ideals of Womanhood in Victorian Britain by Lynn Abrams which outlines all the responsibilities and ideals of womanhood during this era.

This is pertinent to my paper regarding Alice Elgar for comparing her as the enigmatic Victorian woman that she was to the ideal Victorian woman. This article has actually been a great source for understanding what women stood for and what was expected of them during this time period. I read it in tandem with Percy M. Young’s book Alice Elgar, Enigma of a Victorian Lady. By reading them together, I could better understand Alice’s puzzling life and what she struggled with.

During this time it a women’s place was in the home and a man’s place was in the public business world. Abrams begins her article with a brief discussion of the icon of the Victorian era, Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria characterized this era by her femininity that was centered around family life and domesticity. She was a mother to a total of nine children with her husband, Prince Albert, but also considered the “mother of the nation.” She became the icon of the middle class marital stability and family life.

Abrams continues her article with an outline of the ideal Victorian woman; a woman who carried out her duties as wife, mother and basically household manager. She was to be good and virtuous, such as Mrs. Goodby (a Preacher’s wife who Abram’s mentions), and her life was to revolve completely around family and domestic life. Abrams mentions this woman because she had a constant devotion to her husband to to God, which made her an ideal woman. [In essence, this is what Alice Elgar did to support her husband, but I think his life was so different than the ideal man that it seemed the puzzle pieces just didn’t fit.] The women’s role was that of “helpmeet and domestic manager.” [Alice Elgar was surely a helpmeet to Edward.] The domestic role women played was a duty to society as much as it was to their families. Adams points out that the ideal woman during this time was not a meek, tea sipping, passive creature, but a busy, able women who “drew strength from her moral superiority and whose virtue was manifested in the service of others.”

In the next section of the article, Adams discusses home life and work life being very separate and the importance of creating that distinction in the decor of the home and the way women dressed. The middle class household was well decorated in the latest trends and had comfortable furniture. Upper class citizens could afford heavier, more elaborate fabric for their furnishings. Adams makes an interesting comparison between the way women decorated their homes and the way they dressed. She says that women’s clothes began to mirror their function in the home. The clothes were highly sexualized with oversized bustles, undergarments like corsets and hoop-skirts that shrunk the waistline and shoved breasts up and in. She says “the female body was dressed to emphasize a woman’s separation from the world of work.” [It’s interesting to think about Alice Elgar in this manner. From accounts I have read, she was not considered a physically beautiful woman. In Percy Young’s book, he does mention Carice’s comment that her mother wishes she could have been more beautiful for Elgar’s sake.]

Within the household, women were pressured by publications as to the proper way to run the household. Most middle class women had one servant [in the Elgar’s case, they had one servant who was “passed down” from Alice’s mother after she died.] At this point, working class women also began to demand privileges for themselves in the home. Domestic industry grew so that women could be paid for working in their own homes (albeit with a very low paying salary), while keeping up the front of this ideal domesticity. [Similarly, Alice Elgar found her place within the domestic industry as her husband’s manager. She took a twist on this idea of working within the home and found her own place.]

Motherhood during the Victorian era was completely different than what it used to be. Motherhood (and womanhood) was now characterized by mother’s bonding with their children, breastfeeding, educating and creating an better life for the child by incorporating them into the daily routine. Adams says womanhood was achieved if they “responded emotionally to their infants.” A women who did not have a child was “pitied.” [Alice Elgar “finally” accomplished this feat of womanhood when she gave birth to Alice at the age of 41. Percy Young wrote in his book that Alice taught her daughter, Carice, to read by the age of four.] Adams also writes that motherhood became something of a social responsibility and was no longer natural, but had to be learned. [This fits right in with Alice Elgar’s life. She gave up her life completely to what was the “ideal” during the time, not to what came natural to her- becoming a writer and a career woman. But Alice was so loyal to her family and so was committed to maintaining the life she had chosen, though it seems she became bored and depressed with the pressures of domestic life and responsibility, as Young points out.]

Lynn Abrams also discusses women’s social and political missions during this era. She discusses women reaching out to the poor and doing charity work and also their push towards equal voting rights for women. She says “women believed that the key to philanthropy was the personal touch, so the lady reformer ventured out to those in need.” [I think charitable causes that women were interested in are amusing to mention here since Alice essentially took Elgar under her wing. It is almost as if he was her charitable cause. I wonder if this is what the other women may have also thought about Elgar. Was he everyone’s charity case?]