Women in Victorian England - Essay Example

Women in Victorian England The plight of women in the early 19th century was radically changed through the influence of women who worked towards creating a world in which they were no longer merely a part of the male identity, but were fully viable within the legal world which would move their empowerment to the cultural landscape. The world changed dramatically in the 19th century, but the laws that governed the rights of women were influenced by the emergence of female writers who supported those who worked for the cause in order to promote change. The ideology of separate spheres worked for women as they began to show that even in their separate world from men they had the power to enact change. The ideology of separate spheres was a cultural philosophy of the separation of female and male roles. The line of demarcation was relatively simple. The public sphere was the domain of men and the domestic sphere was the domain of women. While this separation was not absolute, women had to contend with the cultural implications as well as the legal ramifications of having no real legal standing within the public sector. This meant without a male representative who could stand in her place to support her cause, and without that male having standing over her person, she was at the mercy of society and without much recourse to right wrongs committed against her. This ideology was not conducive to the needs of women as change began to roll through a variety of aspects of life. These changes begin to emerge during the reign of Queen Victoria and mark her reign with the advancement of society within Britain. In 1837 Queen Victoria became queen of England when her uncle, King William IV died. Queen Victoria was eighteen at the time of his death meaning that she was eligible to take the throne without a regent, which put her in the role as sovereign at a very young age. Her reign lasted for 63 years and seven months, during which time the world changed dramatically. A great number of advances occurred in industry, science, society, and military areas which helped civilization to move forward into a time of betterment for the citizens of England. However, it was the women’s movement that caused some of the larges changes during her reign than any other, despite the slow simmer that it held in the background of all of the other advancements. Women moved from being merely extensions of the males in their lives to full legal entities, capable of creating change within their personal circumstances through legal action. A woman became a full individual, no longer the possession of her husband, but the embodiment of her own ownership. During the early part of the 19th century, English women took up the cause of the abolishment of slavery, their voices ringing with American voices in the cause to free all men and women from ownership. During the course of this movement, a metaphor for female oppression began to emerge through the cause of slavery (Hall, Rendall, and McClelland 2000, p. 123). Eventually, the metaphor dropped away, leaving a women’s suffrage movement that was active in trying to gain roads towards allowing women the legal standing within society that would allow women to have more than the good graces of the males in their life through which to support their lives. Hall, Rendall, and McClelland (2000), state that “it was not…the drudgery of hard labour for women which constituted slavery for women, but the effects of long standing patriarchal oppression and its shaping of the submissive - or slavish - character of women” (p. 124). In 1846, the Westminster Review published an article that discussed the ‘fictions’ about the way in which literature was framing the woman’s experience. Property laws, and the lack of the female empowerment to inherit or own, was creating issues with women as they began to earn enough of their own contributions to the family fortune. The way in which literature was portraying the female experience highlighted the injustices of the law, creating a social identity in which women were framed as victims of their culture (Frank 2010, p. 105). The power of fiction to influence social policy was put to the test through the impression that was given by the tragic heroines of these types of novels. Barbera Leigh Smith Bodichon issued a pamphlet from which she voiced the injustices that were being done through legal methods towards women, calling for reforms in British law so that the position that women held could be legally viable. The pamphlet outlined the following problems: Married women had no legal existence. Women were considered as one with their husbands, therefore once they married their legal identity was absorbed into that of their husband. She is considered under the condition of covertures, where she is sheltered from responsibility, her actions the responsibility of her husband. A husband has a right to the person of his wife. The body of a woman was no longer her property, but belonged to her husband and in his custody. Her personal property became belonged to him. Whatever she owned, and under whatever capacity she owned it, her belongings no longer what capacity she owns them, become his property. He takes her chattels real. Any property she owns that is not personal, or that is considered tangible, including interests in real estate, became his upon their marriage. Equity. The Courts of Equity, when the husband recovers property that is by right his wifes, obliges him to make a settlement of some portion of it on her so that she will be provided for if she is virtuous. Her right to support. The Courts of Common Law, nor of Equity have the right to force a man to support his wife. The Ecclesiastical Courts (the queen’s courts as she was the head of Church) and a Magistrates Court at the insistence of the church have the right to make such a forced demand. His power of her real property. As long as both the husband and the wife are alive, the husband has complete control over the wife’s property. A woman’s earnings are not her own, but her husbands. Money earned by a woman belonged to her husband to do with as he chose (Bodichon 1854). The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 moved the act of divorce from the purview of the Ecclesiastical Court to that of the civil courts, thus affirming the legality of marriage under contract law rather than sacrament. However, this act did not provide an autonomy for women. The act still supported the patriarchal powers of men over women, thus negating her rights to bring about a divorce unless under specified reasons such as abandonment, in which case she would be determined a femme sole (Shanley 1993, p. 47). While the act is often considered an enormous step towards the rights for women, in actuality it did nothing to give them any real sense of legal standing in the courts. The Married Woman’s Property Act of 1870 and the Amendment Act, 1874 created a great shift in the legal status of women in England. Women were given a personal status within the law which allowed for certain types of acquisitions which included some real estate. Women became a viable force within the legal world in order to bring matters to the courts to have them settled, a right that did not exist before the act was put into place. According to Griffith (1875), Lord Hatherly stated that “It cannot be now disputed that when a woman is the owner of real estate to her separate use, she is, to all intents and purposes in the position of the femme sole”, thus reaffirming that a woman could act as an individual (p. 4). Having legal status had the effect of changing the female identity. While social and cultural roles were slow to respond, the notion that women were a viable entity outside of the person of their husband created a slow shift within society, creating the concept that a woman was more than just an extension of a male. She was beginning to become an individual who might eventually have her own ideas, her own philosophy, and her own empowered sense of righteousness that could threaten the male population. This was a frightening notion, but one that could not be stopped once it had begun. The reign of Queen Victoria was marked by her representation of the traditional gender roles of women. She was seen as a dutiful wife and mother, her image desperately used to try and support the ideology of separate spheres under which gender roles had operated in Britain for centuries. However, throughout the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century, women had been proving that “women used their supposed moral superiority and domestic duties as wife, mother, educator, and caretaker, so firmly prescribed in the ideology of separate spheres, to claim a voice in public discourses and thereby become entangled in the question of what constituted Britishness” (Cusack and Bhreathnach-Lynch 2003, p. 21). Throughout history, no matter what the level of legal legitimacy was given to women, they have held sway and influence on all matters both private and public. Without legal standing, clever women have used men to promote their causes and enact their needs, creating figure heads who would act at their behest. With legal standing, women have worked within the law in order to promote their rights and push forth the notion that standing on their own without the leave of men was both a right and true course for humanity. Through the use of legislation, women found rights, but winning over the patriarchal attitudes has taken generations and still remains a matter of work in forcing their legitimacy to stand next to the male gender in all things. The 19th century in Britain provided a framework of legal movement that allowed women to have a viable voice within society. With the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, the context of marriage was made a legal contract, although women were still subject to their lack of standing as a legal entity. With the Married Woman’s Property Act of 1870 and the Amendment Act, 1874, women became legally capable of creating their lives within the public sector and empowered to manage those lives without the leave of men. The cultural attitudes that separate men and women through the ideology of separate spheres had to be combated through education and example in which women showed that they were fully capable of acting within the public sphere without threatening the standing of men within that realm. By the twentieth century women had won a great many battles, improving their legal standing and beginning their cultural shift in the attitudes that had held them back for so many generations. Works Cited Bodichon, Barbera Lee Smith. 1854. A brief summary in plain language of the most important laws concerning women. London: Holyoake. (Primary Source) Cusack, Tricia, and Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch. 2003. Art, nation and gender: ethnic landscapes, myths, and mother-figures. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate. Frank, Cathrine O. 2010. Law, literature, and the transmission of culture in England, 1837-1925. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate. Griffith, John Richard. 1875. The Married women's property act, 1870, and the Married women's property act, 1870, Amendment act, 1874. Its relations to the doctrine of separate use. With appendix of cases, statutes and forms. London: Stevens & Haynes.(Primary Source) Hall, Catherine, Jane Rendall, and Keith McClelland. 2000. Defining the Victorian nation: class, race, gender and the Reform Act of 1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Price, Richard. 1999. British society: 1680 - 1880 : dynamism, containment and change. Cambridge [u.a]: Cambridge Univ. Press. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 1993. Feminism, marriage, and the law in Victorian England. Princeton Paperbacks. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Victoria, and Christopher Hibbert. 1985. Queen Victoria in her letters and journals: a selection. Lives and letters. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. Read More