Single Women in Victorian England - Essay Example

Using the documents collections and the works listed below, construct a picture of the lives and fortunes of single women in Victorian England. (Keywords to look for: spinsters; redundant women; celibacy) L. Bland Banishing the Beast ch. 4 P. Jalland Women, Marriage and Politics S. Jeffreys The Spinster and Her Enemies M. Schumpf 'Single Women and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century England', Victorian Studies, no. 17, 1974 M. Vicinus Independent Women M. Vicinus A Widening Sphere Must also use works included in the document collection (which is provided as an attached file). Document Collection: S. Alexander, Womens Fabian Texts (RKP; London, 1988) C. Bauer and L. Ritt, Free and Ennobled: Source Readings in the Development of Victorian Feminism (Pergamon; Oxford, 1979) E.O. Hellerstein, L.P. Hume, K.M. Offen, Victorian Women (Stanford University Press; Stanford, 1981) P. Hollis, Women in Public: the Women's Movement, 1850-1900 (Allen and Unwin; London, 1981) P. Jalland and J. Hooper, Women from Birth to Death: the Female Life Cycle in Britain, 1830-1914 (Humanities Press; New Jersey, 1986) S. Jeffreys, The Sexuality Debates (RKP; London, 1987) C. A. Lacey, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group (RKP; London, 1986) J. Marcus, Suffrage and the Pankhursts (RKP; London, 1987) C. McPhee and A. Fitzgerald, The Non-Violent Militant: Selected Writings of Teresa Billington-Greig (RKP; London, 1987) J. Murray, Strong-Minded Women (Penguin; London, 1984) E. S. Riemer and J. C. Fout, European Women: a Documentary History, 1789-1945 (Harvester; Brighton, 1983) M. Schneir, The Vintage Book of Historical Feminism (Vintage; London, 1996) D. Spender, The Education Papers (RKP; London, 1987) Please use three or four different sources that haven't been listed. Footnotes should be used in the following style: Name of Author, Title of Work, Publication Place, Publisher, Date of Publication, Page Number. For example: Gleadle, K. British Women in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Palgrave: 2001, p. 38-39. A bibliography must also be included at the end of the essay using the same format. This is a collection of all the footnotes in one place. 2000 words required. Please do not worry about a bibliography as long as all sources are footnoted. The lives and fortunes of single women in Victorian England. The society of Victorian England was, as we know, very class-riven. Thus the lives and fortunes of single women in that society depended largely on the class they were born into and on the resources available to them. Some, like Mary Carpenter, were fortunate in those resources.1 As H Schupf points out, 'Traditionally, the options available to the middle-class spinster without resources were commonly limited to governessing or authorship; but for those who were both financially independent and unencumbered by relatives, there existed the additional possibility of charitable work.'2 Clearly, for the working classes, the situation was quite different. Yet unlike their middle-class and upper class counterparts, working-class women had job opportunities as domestic servants and in factories and, though both these occupations were lowly paid and demanding. As Jeffreys writes, 'unmarried women from the working class did have access to work and the vast majority of them were absorbed in the domestic servant industry which relied almost entirely on unmarried women.'3 Becoming a domestic servant had its appeal for many young women of the time, as they were thus enabled to break free from the immediate constraints of their background: 'The discomfort of poor, overcrowded homes and the problems of family life, beset by high birth rates, high mortality rates, and the emigration of men overseas, may have rendered domestic service in more prosperous houses [initially at least] an attractive alternative'.4 Attractive, perhaps, but not always reliable, for such work was casual and often seasonal, depending as it did on the shifts and movements of the upper classes. Not surprisingly, working-class single women were more sexually vulnerable than those of the middle-class, or at least they were more liable to become pregnant. 'Premarital sexuality among the urban poor was an adaptation and continuation of customary rural practices, but this kind of cultural transition was not free from jolting dislocations'. 5 From a legal standpoint, pregnancy was a woman's problem, certainly for the lower classes. The 1834 Poor Law Act carried 'bastardy' clauses which meant that women were solely responsible for the maintenance of their illegitimate children, effectively allowing men to evade any responsibility in the matter, and reducing pressure on them to marry. 6 Though job opportunities existed for working-class women, they were hardly sufficiently remunerative to provide them with an independent income. Their work - as seamstresses, laundresses, domestic servants and the like 'would rarely earn them more than six to eight shillings a week, working fourteen hours a day - barely half what a male day-labourer would earn'. 7 Those who worked in factories and sweat-shops were vulnerable to tuberculosis in the unhealthy conditions. Consumption was the great killer of the poor. In the early Victorian era, when the drift into the cities and the dislocations caused by the industrial revolution were at their height, prostitution became an attractive proposition for young, single impoverished women, as the earnings were potentially much higher than for other available work, but this of course created family and community tensions. Over time, working class values became more rigid as the working class became generally less mobile, and prostitution was seen as less of an option. 8 Meanwhile, amongst the middle classes, 'spinsterhood' began to be seen as a problem. As Vicinus points out, 'Increased wealth and the consolidation of bourgeois values in the early nineteenth century condemned spinsters to unremitting idleness and to marginal positions in home, church and workplace'. 9 What was worse, over the Victorian period the proportion of women to men gradually increased, leading to a problem of 'surplus' or 'redundant' women, an issue that caused much debate. As the number of redundant women increased, their status fell. This was an inevitable consequence of the tendency to see women in terms of support for men, in spite of a growing number of women writers and activists who challenged this assumption. In spite of the debates on 'redundant' women, the key question was buried under the assumptions about men's and women's works. 'The problem of the single woman could be solved only by altering the divisions between men and women, between the public and the private; yet any radical change was unthinkable for the middle class.' 10 Instead, single women were encouraged to accept their fate stoically. An attitude of self-sacrifice was expected and encouraged. Inspiring examples were offered up, with Florence Nightingale as the most famous. Work was certainly encouraged, as in the remarks of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon - 'we must train ourselves to do our work well.. women should not make love their profession'11 - but the problem was that working hard didn't necessarily bring about economic independence. As Gleadle points out, 'much of the work performed by women, both in the upper and middle classes - such as social work, domestic labour, estate management and participation in family businesses was unpaid and noncontractual.'12 The very term 'spinster' implied a certain stoicism, not to say drudgery, and spinsters were contrasted favourably with bachelors, particularly in a moral sense. Still, the Victorian spinster had to struggle towards a dignified independence against a background that encouraged female dependence, weakness and childlikeness. Self-help books addressed to the spinster were very popular at the time. A typical example was The Afternoon of Unmarried Life, published in 1858. Like most books of its time, it discouraged feminine egotism in favour of forbearance and self-sacrifice. It also encouraged gardening and other practical activities as an antidote to the excitations of religious expression.13 There were more positive outcomes of the surplus women problem, especially later in the Victorian period. Spinsterhood was, in some circles, seen increasingly as a benefit, and advocates emerged. One of them, Henrietta Muller, wrote of spinsters as 'a new sturdy and vigorous type - we find her neither the exalted ascetic nor the nerveless inactive creature of former days'.14 The emergence of novels depicting 'the new woman' generally saw them as fending off brutish male desire, choosing celibacy and the company of women. 'Romantic friendship' between women was commonplace, in art as in life. Many of the letters between women friends of the time appear to us as highly sexual, but it's unlikely that homosexual feelings were often enacted. As Bland comments, 'In late Victorian Britain, although women were thought to harbour many aberrations, to most people homosexuality was not yet thought to be among them.' 15 Marriage was a great issue for many women of this time. Expectations were such that more intelligent and independent-minded women were caught in a dilemma, defined by Maria Sharpe at the time as 'the problem of self-realisation or self-sacrifice'.16 Sharpe was herself hesitating over whether to accept a proposal from the eugenicist and mathematician Karl Pearson. Her final acceptance, after years of uncertainty, seems indeed to have limited her scope for self-realisation considerably. The early feminist Mary Taylor responded to the general advice that women must marry with these words - 'Could any woman, after realising with sorrow how small her chances of such a consummation were, and looking round with terror to the hopeless poverty that was her destiny, receive comfort or encouragement from such futile advice'17 The options did indeed seem limited and uninspiring. Though few women took up the possibility, the career of actress provided an interesting barometer of Victorian views about the careers and independence of women. The status of actress also, it is true, rose with the status of the theatre generally, and with the rise in quality of plays, outside of the inevitable reworkings of Shakespeare. At the end of the century, the works of Shaw, Wilde and Ibsen provided some greater legitimacy to a career that was barely respectable. George Eliot's depiction of the actress Gwendolyn Harleth in Daniel Deronda provides an insight into the ambivalence with which such a role was considered by the intellectual class of the time.18 In spite of the 'new woman', negative images and characterisations of spinsterhood were common. There was a growing tendency to pathologise the spinster, physically, psychologically and sexually.19 Nor did women in general escape these critiques, though they also gained some sympathy in reaction. The plays of Ibsen, for example, and A Doll's House in particular, indicated a greater understanding of the problem of self-realisation for women. They divided audiences, but raised important issues for debate. Beyond the world of activism and ideas - a world in which women were making more and more of a contribution - the lives of spinsters varied markedly, though they were often lives of entrapment and drudgery. As Jalland writes, 'Thousands of spinsters cared for aging parents until their deaths, they acted as surrogate wives, they became resident maiden aunts, permanent child-minders and nurses, and unpaid housekeepers.'20 These were the so-called redundant women, without whom the lives and careers of men would have been littered with obstacles. This problem of redundant women certainly wasn't new, though the Victorians treated it as such. The fact was that females were being born at a higher rate than men, but the higher mortality rate among males, the effects of emigration, as well as the tendency, particularly among the upper classes, to postpone marriage for economic reasons, all increased the numbers of spinsters and indeed 'old maids', a sub-group that was constantly derided and denigrated. As one contemporary writer, Richard Carlile put it, old maids belonged to a 'sort of sub-animal class', in which a lack of any requited passion produced 'a sad mental defect'.21 One of the most interesting, if unserious, early treatments of the spinster issue was Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Cranford, a fiction of a town entirely inhabited by women, all respectable, genteel and impoverished practitioners of 'elegant economy'. While the spectre of female sexuality is barely raised in Cranford, the 'city of women' manages to function well, and a spirit of sympathy and co-operation reigns, anticipating the women's circles and support networks of a later age.22 Even so, women without husbands were for the most part seen as anomalous in a society 'where marriage and motherhood were conceived to be the sole female vocation for middle and upper class women.'23 This sense of redundancy often had severe psychological effects upon women, with various types of illness surfacing, such as neurasthenia, an illness increasingly common in young single women of the upper class. Usually unprovided with the education, encouragement and incentive of their brothers, the sisters of prominent men, such as Alice James, sister to William and Henry, and Helen Gladstone, sister of the long-serving Prime Minister, were reduced to a life of invalidism, an outcome which both reinforced and was facilitated by the prevailing attitude to women's nervous ailments. Along with these examples of extreme 'failure' and reduced circumstances, there were successful examples of single women who were able to realise their ambitions. One such was Elizabeth Haldane, to whose 'self-sustaining nature, marriage would have been a hindrance'.24 From a highly successful academic family, Haldane wrote biographies of Descartes and George Eliot, and a history of nursing, as well as translating many important works, all without having obtained any formal education. Most unmarried women of this class though, lived between these two extremes, hiding their light under a bushel and suppressing their own interests to play a supporting, domestic role within the family. For the middle class, female singleness could still be held up as an ideal and a possibility, especially for those trapped in a loveless marriage or burdened with domestic chores. Charlotte Bronte captured this ideal well early in the Victorian era: 'I speculate much on the existence of unmarried and never-to-be-married women nowadays, and I have already got to the point of considering that there is no more respectable character on this earth than an unmarried woman who makes her own way through life quietly, perseveringly, without support of husband or brother, and who, having attained the age of forty-five or upwards, retains in her possession a well-regulated mind, a disposition to enjoy simple pleasures, fortitude to support inevitable pains, sympathy with the sufferings of others, and willingness to relieve want as far as her needs extend.'25 Notes 1 Schupf, H, 'Single Women and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century England', Victorian Studies, no. 17, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1974, p300-325 2 Schupf, H, 'Single Women and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century England', Victorian Studies, no. 17, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1974, p301 3 Jeffreys, S. The Spinster and Her Enemies. London; Boston: Pandora Press, 1985, p87 4 Walkowitz, J, 'The Making of an Outcast Group', in A Widening Sphere, M Vicinus (ed), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977 p 74. 5 Walkowitz, J, 'The Making of an Outcast Group', in A Widening Sphere, M Vicinus (ed), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977 p 74-75. 6 Walkowitz, J, 'The Making of an Outcast Group', in A Widening Sphere, M Vicinus (ed), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977 p 75. 7 Walkowitz, J, 'The Making of an Outcast Group', in A Widening Sphere, M Vicinus (ed), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977 p 76. 8 Walkowitz, J, 'The Making of an Outcast Group', in A Widening Sphere, M Vicinus (ed), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977 p 80-91. 9 Vicinus, M. Independent Women. London: Virago, 1985, p3. 10 Vicinus, M. Independent Women. London: Virago, 1985, p15 11 Murray, J. Strong-Minded Women. London: Penguin, 1984, p268-269 12 Gleadle, K. British Women in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Palgrave: 2001, p. 51 13 Vicinus, M. Independent Women. London: Virago, 1985, p13 14 Bland, L. Banishing the Beast: English feminism and sexual morality 1885-1914. London: Penguin 1995, p166-167. 15 Bland, L. Banishing the Beast: English feminism and sexual morality 1885-1914. London: Penguin 1995, p170 16 Bland, L. Banishing the Beast: English feminism and sexual morality 1885-1914. London: Penguin 1995, p178 17 Murray, J. Strong-Minded Women. London: Penguin, 1984, p60 18 Kent, C. 'Image and Reality: Actress and Society', in A Widening Sphere, M Vicinus (ed), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. 19 Bland, L. Banishing the Beast: English feminism and sexual morality 1885-1914. London: Penguin 1995, p171 20 Jalland, P. Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. p253. 21 Jalland, P. Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. p256. 22 E Gaskell. Cranford. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. 23 Jalland, P. Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. p259. 24 Jalland, P. Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. p285. 25 Murray, J. Strong-Minded Women. London: Penguin, 1984, p160. Read More