THE VICTORIAN AGE

INTRODUCTION

The Victorian era of Great Britain is considered the height of the British industrial revolution and the
apex of the British Empire. It is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901, when Queen Victoria
reigned, though many historians believe that the passage of the Reform Act 1832 marks the true
inception of a new cultural era. The Victorian era was preceded by the Regency era and came before
the Edwardian period.

The Victorian era refers to Queen Victoria's rule which began in 1837 and concluded in 1901. Under
her rule, the British people enjoyed a long period of prosperity. Profits gained from the overseas
British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed a large, educated middle
class to develop. It was a tremendously exciting period when many artistic styles, literary schools, as
well as, social, political and religious movements flourished. It was a time of prosperity, broad
imperial expansion, and great political reform. It was also a time, which today we associate with
"prudishness" and "repression". Without a doubt, it was an extraordinarily complex age, that has
sometimes been called the Second English Renaissance. It is, however, also the beginning of Modern
Times.

The Victorian era was a period of dramatic change that brought England to its highest point of
development as a world power. The rapid growth of London, from a population of 2 million when
Victoria came to the throne to one of 6.5 million by the time of Victoria's death, indicates the
dramatic transition from a way of life based on the ownership of land to a modern urban economy.
'...the Victorian era of Great Britain is considered the height of the British industrial revolution and
the apex of the British Empire...'

This flourishing age was also a time of tremendous scientific progress and ideas. Darwin took his
Voyage of the Beagle, and posited the Theory of Evolution. The Great Exhibition of 1851 took place in
London, lauding the technical and industrial advances of the age, and strides in medicine and the
physical sciences continued throughout the century. The radical thought associated with modern
psychiatry began with men like Sigmund Feud toward the end of the era, and radical economic
theory, developed by Karl Marx and his associates, began a second age of revolution in mid-century.
The ideas of Marxism, socialism, feminism churned and bubbled along with all else that happened.

An art movement indicative of this period was the Pre-Raphaelites, which included William Holman
Hunt, Christina Rossetti, and John Everett Millais. Also during this period were the Impressionists, the
Realists, and the Fauves, though the Pre-Raphaelites were distinctive for being a completely English
movement. As stated in the beginning, the Victorian Age was an extremely diverse and complex
period. It was, indeed, the precursor of the modern era. If one wishes to understand the world today
in terms of society, culture, science, and ideas, it is imperative to study this era.
The social classes of England were newly reforming, and fomenting. There was a churning upheaval
of the old hierarchical order, and the middle classes were steadily growing. Added to that, the upper
classes' composition was changing from simply hereditary aristocracy to a combination of nobility
and an emerging wealthy commercial class. The definition of what made someone a gentleman or a
lady was, therefore, changing at what some thought was an alarming rate.

These major changes in all fields of life had made a major contribution in England’s future history.

I have chosen to write about this period because I consider the Victorian Age a time of challenges,
reforms, significant changes and prosperity, but also it is a magic period that hasn’t been exploited by
each of us. Because the Victorian Age is a very comprehensive topic, I mainly focused on women’s
issues and family aspects. I think that women in that period were a simbol of purity but also they
were surrounded by mistery. So, please take a few minutes now to step back in history. Slow your
clock to Victorian time, measured by the soft flutter of a lady's feathered fan, the gentle billow of
lace curtains lifted by the welcome breeze, the drowsy hum of insects on a hot summer afternoon...

THE LIFE OF A VICTORIAN WOMAN

During the reign of Queen Victoria, a woman's place was considered to be in the home. Then the
mood changed, as charitable missions began to extend the female role of service, and Victorian
feminism began to emerge as a potent political force.

IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN

During the reign of Queen Victoria, a woman's place was in the home, as domesticity and
motherhood were considered by society at large to be a sufficient emotional fulfilment for females.
These constructs kept women far away from the public sphere in most ways, but during the 19th
century charitable missions did begin to extend the female role of service, and Victorian feminism
emerged as a potent political force. The transformation of Britain into an industrial nation had
profound consequences for the ways in which women were to be idealised in Victorian times. New
kinds of work and new kinds of urban living prompted a change in the ways in which appropriate
male and female roles were perceived. In particular, the notion of separate spheres - woman in the
private sphere of the home and hearth, man in the public sphere of business, politics and sociability -
came to influence the choices and experiences of all women, at home, at work, in the streets.

' ... Victoria became an icon of late-19th-century middle-class femininity and domesticity. '

The Victorian era, 1837-1901, is characterised as the domestic age par excellence, epitomised by
Queen Victoria, who came to represent a kind of femininity which was centred on the family,
motherhood and respectability. Accompanied by her beloved husband Albert, and surrounded by her
many children in the sumptuous but homely surroundings of Balmoral Castle, Victoria became an
icon of late-19th-century middleclass femininity and domesticity. Indeed, Victoria came to be seen as
the very model of marital stability and domestic virtue. Her marriage to Albert represented the ideal
of marital harmony. She was described as 'the mother of the nation', and she came to embody the
idea of home as a cosy, domestic space. When Albert died in 1861 she retreated to her home and
family in preference to public political engagements.

THE IDEAL WOMAN

Apart from the queen - who was the ideal Victorian woman? She may have resembled Mrs Frances
Goodby, the wife of the Reverend J Goodby of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, of whom it was
said at her death that she carried out her duties as mistress of a small family with 'piety, patience,
frugality and industry'. Moreover, '... her ardent and unceasing flow of spirits, extreme activity and
diligence, her punctuality, uprightness and remarkable frugality, combined with a firm reliance on
God ... carried her through the severest times of pressure, both with credit and respectability ...' (The
General Baptist Repository and Missionary Observer, 1840). Mrs Goodby exemplified the good and
virtuous woman whose life revolved around the domestic sphere of the home and family. She was
pious, respectable and busy - no life of leisure for her. Her diligence and evident constant devotion to
her husband, as well as to her God, identifies Frances Goodby as an example to other women. She
accepted her place in the sexual hierarchy. Her role was that of helpmeet and domestic manager.

By the time that the industrial era was well advanced in Britain, the ideology that assigned the
private sphere to the woman and the public sphere of business, commerce and politics to the man
had been widely dispersed. In popular advice literature and domestic novels, as well as in the
advertisement columns of magazines and newspapers, domesticity was trumpeted as a female
domain. The increasing physical separation of the home and the workplace, for many amongst the
professional and commercial classes, meant that these women lost touch with production, and came
to fashion an identity solely within the domestic sphere. It was through their duties within the home
that women were offered a moral duty, towards their families, especially their husbands, and
towards society as a whole. However, as the example of Frances Goodby shows, the ideal woman at
this time was not the weak, passive creature of romantic fiction. Rather she was a busy, able and
upright figure who drew strength from her moral superiority and whose virtue was manifested in the
service of others. Thus the notion of separate spheres - as lived in the industrial period - was not a
blind adherence to a set of imposed values. Rather it was a way of living and working based on
evangelical beliefs about the importance of the family, the constancy of marriage and woman's
innate moral goodness.

AT HOME
The home was regarded as a haven from the busy and chaotic public world of politics and business,
and from the grubby world of the factory. Those who could afford to, created cosy domestic interiors
with plush fabrics, heavy curtains and fussy furnishings which effectively cocooned the inhabitants
from the world outside. The middle-class household contained concrete expressions of domesticity in
the form of servants, homely décor, comfortable furnishings, home entertainment, and clothing.

Women's clothes began to mirror women's function. In the 19th century women's fashions became
more sexual - the hips, buttocks and breasts were exaggerated with crinolines, hoopskirts and
corsets which nipped in the waist and thrust out the breasts. The female body was dressed to
emphasise a woman's separation from the world of work. By wearing dresses that resembled their
interior furnishings, women became walking symbols of their social function - wife, mother, domestic
manager. The fashion for constricting corsets and large skirts served to underline not only a woman's
prime function, but also the physical constraints on her activities. It was difficult to move freely
wearing corsets that made it hard to breathe, and heavy fabrics that impeded movement. No wonder
that those women who could afford to keep up with the latest fashions were prone to fainting,
headaches and what was termed 'hysteria'.

WIFE AND MOTHER

At the heart of the domestic ideal was the mother and her children. Since early in the 19th century
the role of mother had been idealised. Motherhood was no longer simply a reproductive function,
but was imbued with symbolic meaning. Domesticity and motherhood were portrayed as sufficient
emotional fulfilment for women and many middle-class women regarded motherhood and domestic
life as a 'sweet vocation', a substitute for women's productive role. '... the childless single woman
was a figure to be pitied.'

Women of the middle classes spent more time with their children than their predecessors. They were
more likely to breast-feed, to play with and educate their children, and to incorporate them in the
day-to-day life of the home. Middle-class women who, by mid century, were giving birth 'confined'
within the home, now achieved true womanhood if they responded emotionally to their infants and
bonded with them through breast-feeding and constant attendance. Motherhood was seen as an
affirmation of their identity.

Marriage signified a woman's maturity and respectability, but motherhood was confirmation that she
had entered the world of womanly virtue and female fulfilment. For a woman not to become a
mother meant she was liable to be labelled inadequate, a failure or in some way abnormal.
Motherhood was expected of a married woman and the childless single woman was a figure to be
pitied. She was often encouraged to find work caring for children - as a governess or a nursery maid -
presumably to compensate her for her loss.
SOCIAL RESPOSIBILITY

The message that motherhood was woman's highest achievement, albeit within marriage, never
weakened through the course of the century. Indeed, it was in this period that motherhood was
idealised as the zenith of a woman's emotional and spiritual fulfilment. At the same time, however,
motherhood was becoming a social responsibility, a duty to the state and thus a full-time job, which
could not easily be combined with paid work. And mothering became something that was no longer
natural but which had to be learned. In the new industrial cities such as Manchester, Bradford and
Glasgow, infant mortality rates were high. Responsibility for the appalling death rate amongst infants
was roundly placed on the shoulders of mothers. Middle-class philanthropists, government
inspectors and medical men united in their condemnation of the infant-care methods of poor
women. Infant deaths, it was believed, could be prevented if poor mothers breast-fed their babies
and were taught baby care. '... the ideal of true motherhood demanded women be constantly
present for their children ...'

In reality, the high infant mortality rate in the industrial cities was just as much to do with poor
sanitation, dirty water, overcrowding and the pervasiveness of disease, but these were more difficult
problems to solve. Yet the ideal of true motherhood demanded women be constantly present for
their children - it implied a commitment to domesticity and was therefore seen as incompatible with
the demands of the labour market. Working-class mothers were therefore more likely to be labelled
irresponsible and neglectful, when in truth they were struggling to combine the demands of childcare
and putting a meal on the table.

SOCIAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLASSES OF WOMEN

A wealthy wife was supposed to spend her time reading, sewing, receiving guests, going visiting,
letter writing, seeing to the servants and dressing for the part as her husband's social representative.
For the very poor of Britain things were quite different. Fifth hand clothes were usual. Servants ate
the pickings left over in a rich household. The average poor mill worker could only afford the very
inferior stuff, for example rancid bacon, tired vegetables, green potatoes, tough old stringy meat,
tainted bread, porridge, cheese, herrings or kippers. By the end of the Queen Victoria's reign there
were great differences between members of society, but the most instantly apparent difference was
through the garments worn.

The Victorian head of household dressed his women to show off family wealth. As the 19th century
progressed dress became more and more lavish until clothing dripped with lace and beading as the
new century dawned. A wealthy woman's day was governed by etiquette rules that encumbered her
with up to six wardrobe changes a day and the needs varied over three seasons a year. A lady
changed through a wide range of clothing as occasion dictated. Fashion history and photographic
records clearly illustrate there was morning and mourning dress, walking dress, town dress, visiting
dress, receiving visitors dress, travelling dress, shooting dress, golf dress, seaside dress, races dress,
concert dress, opera dress, dinner and ball dress. Fashion plates were hugely successful in this era
giving ladies supposed to women visual clues on how to dress for their new found status. Yet change
was happening everywhere. Many women adopted the tailor made garment that showed their more
serious concern to be recognised as thinking beings with much to offer society beyond being a social
asset for a husband. By 1900 the railway, the typewriter, telephones, the post, the camera, the
sewing machine, artificial rayon fibres and the bicycle became normal for many. For some gas, water,
electricity and even the motor car were already in use. New inventions and how to use them led to
new thinking and women of all classes felt the dynamic atmosphere of change as much as men.
Reform was in the air as intellectual female thinkers began to state their case. Many joined the
Fabian Society, a group of non revolutionary thinking socialists. Others sought reform for more
practical dress, better education, the right to take up paid work if they wished and better
employment prospects if they were poorly paid women. Most importantly brave women campaigned
for votes for women and birth control information even though many never lived to see the changes
they fought for.

VICTORIAN DELICACY

Women in the 19th century liked to be thought of as fragile ladies. They compared themselves to
delicate flowers and emphasised their delicacy and femininity. They aimed always to look pale and
interesting. Paleness could be induced by drinking vinegar and avoiding fresh air. Sometimes ladies
discreetly used a little rouge on the cheeks, but make-up was frowned upon in general especially
during the 1870s when social etiquette became more rigid. Actresses however were allowed to use
make up and famous beauties such as Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry famous beauties of the
1880s could be powdered. Most cosmetic products available were still either chemically dubious, or
found in the kitchen amid food colourings, berries and beetroot. A pale skin was a mark of gentility. It
meant that a lady could afford to not work outdoors getting suntanned which was then considered
vulgar and coarse. Continuous work in sun and harsh weather coarsened the skin then, as it does
now. Parasols were de rigueur and used to protect the complexion. Rooms were shuttered with dark
heavy velvet curtains to keep out the sun's rays. Some effort was made keep the décolleté neckline
in good condition as it was often exposed in evening dress. Fine blue lines would be painted on the
skin to increase the appearance of delicate translucent skin showing veins. During this time it was
thought that a woman's crowning glory was her hair. It was rarely cut, usually only in severe illness. It
was also supplemented by false hair depending on the current fashion.

WOMEN AND URBAN LIFE IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN

The idea of femininity in the Victorian era was encapsulated in the idea of the 'woman's mission', but
this passive role could not be tolerated for long. Women soon began to seek a more independent life

WOMAN'S MISSION
Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) was a period of intensive industrialisation, urbanisation, and
social change. Whereas in previous centuries generations had stayed in the same communities and
remained close to the parental home, in the 19th century there was considerable mobility within the
population. Within the span of two generations, a family might move from the country to the city,
then to the suburbs. For the new members of industrialised middle classes, social identity was
created around sets of values which marked them out as separate and different from the aristocracy
above them and the working classes below them. Broadly speaking, middle-class identity was built on
a platform of moral respectability and domesticity. '... the moral health of the nation ... depended on
the moral purity of its women.'

Women played a central role in all this, and the ideal of femininity was encapsulated in the idea of a
'woman's mission', which was that of playing a model mother, wife and daughter. Women were also
seen as moral and spiritual guardians - as Samuel Smiles declared in Self-Help, 'The nation comes
from the nursery.' In other words, the moral health of the nation and its empire depended on the
moral purity of its women.

DOMESTIC SPHERE

The pure woman was closely associated with the shelter of the private sphere, of the home. Her
purity guaranteed the home as a haven and a source of social stability and, in turn, feminine purity
itself was ensured through the protection of the domestic sanctuary. Within this interlocking set of
beliefs, the classification of deviant forms of female behaviour was as critical as the definition and
promotion of female respectability. The image of the prostitute thus became a symbol of the danger
and disorder of the city streets. Domestic values were also partly defined in relation to a debate
concerning the country and the city. Within popular accounts, the countryside was seen as the
opposite of the disease-ridden and potentially revolutionary city. It was healthy, moral and peaceful,
and its homes were imagined as happy, timeless and natural. Ideas concerning the countryside, the
home and the family came together in the construction of a rural ideal. According to middle-class
values, the family was a 'natural' and stable unit which should ideally be located in a rural setting, or
at least a suburban version of the rural.

THE CITY

Modern urban life presented the Victorian middle classes with many complex social and moral
problems. The public sphere of the city was regarded as dangerous and corrupting.It was the location
of crime and poverty and anyone could succumb to diseases generated in the slums and carried on
the air by an invisible smell, or 'miasma'. Women played a particular role in this image of city life.
Respectable women, it was claimed, could not be part of the public sphere of city life. If women left
the safety of the home and were on the streets, it was claimed, they became corrupted by the
transgressive values of the city. They would be thought to be either prostitutes or vulnerable working
women - with both groups the victims of a hostile and threatening environment. '... as soon as she
paused she could become a victim of this hostile urban world.' Victorian artists often turned to the
image of the endangered working woman for modern life subjects. Charles Hunt's painting, A Coffee
Stall, Westminster (c.1860, Museum of London) shows a number of urban types who have stopped at
a refreshment stall in the centre of the metropolis. Attention is focused on the two figures on the
right. One is a young milliner's apprentice with her hat-box, and the other is an ominous, top-hatted
'swell', the seducer, who will inevitably turn the woman into another of his sexual victims. The
woman would have been thought to be vulnerable, because her work took her through the city
streets alone to deliver goods to clients and, as soon as she paused, she could become a victim of this
hostile urban world.

ORDINARY WOMAN

Current views concerning Victorian femininity continue to be dominated by the 19thcentury concept
of domestic purity and the associated figure of the ideal woman, the 'angel in the house', carrying
out her mission as wife, mother and daughter. But we should not allow this particular conception of
Victorian femininity to blind us to the existence of different, sometimes conflicting, versions of
female respectability in this period. Are we really to believe that upstanding women of the Victorian
middle classes did not travel alone in the city? That they did not walk to visit friends and relatives, or
travel on the omnibus or underground railway? 'Respectability was not as clear-cut as Victorian
domestic values would suggest.' It is time to take the angel out of the house and place her back on
the pavements of the city - not as a victim, but as a confident pedestrian. Evidence of the everyday
presence of 12 ordinary women on the city streets can be found in many historical sources from the
period. Women were evidently quick to exploit the new opportunities offered by technology and
industrialisation. One lithograph from the 1860s (London Transport Museum) depicts King's Cross,
one of the original stations of the underground railway. The focus is on the architecture and the
engine, but the incidental details of the figures on the platform show women of respectable dress
and appearance, on their own, travelling independently across the city. Indeed, female use of the
underground was so extensive that the Illustrated London News welcomed the publication, in 1868,
of a new railway map which 'appears to be exactly that for which the British matrons are urgent'. But
respectability was not as clear-cut as Victorian domestic values would suggest. The urban crowd
brought together strangers of all classes in greater numbers than ever before and offered
unprecedented opportunities for social interaction. So we can begin to imagine women as far more
active and independent participants in the social and economic world of Victorian cities. Certainly
there were dangers in the city but there were also immense possibilities and sources of pleasure and
excitement.

FAMOUS VICTORIAN WOMEN

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets writing in nineteenth-century
England, was born in London December 5, 1830, to Gabriele and Frances (Polidori) Rossetti.
Although, her fundamentally religious temperament was closer to her mother's, this youngest
member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies
from her father. Judging from somewhat idealized sketches made by her brother Dante, Christina as
a teenager seems to have been quite attractive if not beautiful. In 1848, she became engaged to
James Collinson, one of the minor Pre-Raphaelite brethren, but the engagement ended after he
reverted to Roman Catholicism. When Professor Rossetti's failing health and eyesight forced him into
retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother attempted to support the family by starting a day
school, but had 25 to give it up after a year or so. Thereafter, she led a very retiring life, interrupted
by a recurring illness which was sometimes diagnosed as angina and sometimes tuberculosis. From
the early '60s on she was in love with Charles Cayley, but according to her brother William, refused
to marry him because "she enquired into his creed and found he was not a Christian." Milk-and-
water Anglicanism was not to her taste. Lona Mosk Packer argues that her poems conceal a love for
the painter William Bell Scott, but there is no other evidence for this theory, and the most respected
scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite movement disputes the dates on which Packer thinks some of the more
revealing poems were written. All three Rossetti women, at first devout members of the evangelical
branch of the Church of England, were drawn toward the Tractarians in the 1840s. They nevertheless
retained their evangelical seriousness: Maria eventually became an Anglican nun, and Christina's
religious scruples remind one of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch : as Eliot's heroine
looked forward to giving up riding because she enjoyed it so much, so Christina gave up chess
because she found she enjoyed winning; pasted paper strips over the antireligious parts of
Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (which allowed her to enjoy the poem very much); objected to
nudity in painting, especially if the artist was a woman; and refused even to go see Wagner's Parsifal,
because it celebrated a pagan mythology. After rejecting Cayley in 1866, according one biographer,
Christina (like many Victorian spinsters) lived vicariously in the lives of other people. Although pretty
much a stay-athome, her circle included her brothers' friends, like Whistler, Swinburne, F.M. Brown,
and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). She continued to write and in the 1870s to work for the Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge. She was troubled physically by neuralgia and emotionally by
Dante's breakdown in 1872. The last 12 years of her life, after his death in 1882, were quiet ones. She
died of cancer December 29, 1894.

VICTORIAN WEDDING

″The Wedding Day has arrived, the most important event in a Victorian girl's life. It is the day her
mother has prepared her for from the moment she was born. The Victorian girl knew no other
ambition. She would marry, and she would marry well.” Naming the Day The wedding itself and the
events leading up to the ceremony are steeped in ancient traditions still evident in Victorian customs.
One of the first to influence a young girl is choosing the month and day of her wedding. June has
always been the most popular month, for it is named after Juno, Roman goddess of marriage. She
would bring prosperity and happiness to all who wed in her month. Practicality played a part in this
logic also. If married in June, the bride was likely to birth her first child in Spring, allowing her enough
time to recover before the fall harvest. June also signified the end of Lent and the arrival of warmer
weather. That meant it was time to remove winter clothing and partake in one's annual bath. April,
November and December were favored also, so as not to conflict with peak farm work months.
October was an auspicious month, signifying a bountiful harvest. May, however, was considered 27
unlucky. "Marry in May and rue the day," an old proverb goes. But "Marry in September's shine, your
living will be rich and fine." Brides were just as superstitious about days of the week. A popular
rhyme goes: Marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all,
Tuesday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday for no luck at all. The Wedding Ensemble Once
the bride chose her wedding day, a prerogative conferred upon her by the groom, she could begin
planning her trousseau, the most important item of which was her wedding dress. Brides have not
always worn white for the marriage ceremony. In the 16th and 17th centuries for example, girls in
their teens married in pale green, a sign of fertility. A mature girl in her twenties wore a brown dress,
and older women even wore black. From early Saxon times to the 18th century, only poorer brides
came to their wedding dressed in white--a public statement that she brought nothing with her to the
marriage. Color of the gown was thought to influence one's future life: White--chosen right Blue--
love will be true Yellow--ashamed of her fellow Red--wish herself dead Black--wish herself back Grey-
-travel far away Pink--of you he'll always think Green-ashamed to be seen Ever since Queen Victoria
wed in 1840, however, white has remained the traditional color for wedding gowns and bouquets. A
woman then used her dress for Court Presentation after marriage, usually with a different bodice. 28
The early Victorian wedding dress had a fitted bodice, small waist, and full skirt (over hoops and
petticoats.) It was made of organdy, tulle, lace, gauze, silk, linen or cashmere. The veil was a fine
gauze, sheer cotton or lace. The reasonable cost of a wedding gown in 1850 was $500, according to
Godey's, with $125 for a veil. By 1861, more elaborate gowns cost as much as $1500 if constructed
with lace. Formal weddings during this period were all white, including the bridesmaid's dresses and
veils. Veils were attached to a coronet of flowers, usually orange blossoms for the bride and roses or
other in-season flowers for the attendants. The bride's accessories included: short white kid gloves,
hanky embroidered with her maiden name initials, silk stockings embroidered up the front, and flat
shoes decorated with bows or ribbons at the instep. For the widow who remarried in the early and
mid-Victorian eras, she did not wear white, had no bridesmaids, no veil and no orange blossoms, (a
sign of purity.) She usually wore a pearl or lavender satin gown trimmed with ostrich feathers. In the
later decades, she was allowed attendants as well as pages, but no veil or orange blossoms. She
could wear a shade or two away from white, preferring rose, salmon, ivory or violet. As for jewelry,
diamonds have always been popular. When white dresses were in vogue, pearl and diamond
combinations were fashionable. The mid-Victorians had a more extravagant display of wealth, often
a diamond tiara for the ceremony. Combination pieces of diamond jewelry that could be separated
later as individual pieces were popular. Traditionally, the jewelry worn by the bride was a gift from
her husband. The earlier in the day the wedding, the less jewelry. Finally, for the bride, you may
recall the English rhyme: "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and
a lucky sixpence in your shoe." Something old was often a family heirloom and the bride's link with
the past. Something new could be her dress or a gift from the groom. Something borrowed was of
real value like a veil or headpiece, and returned to the owner. Something blue was often the garter
or an embroidered handkerchief. The touch of blue symbolized faithfulness, while the sixpence
ensured future wealth.

VICTORIAN FAMILY

Believing that their sons and daughters could rely on a rosy future, and wanting to equip them to
drive its maximum benefits, Victorian parents subscribed to ST. NICHOLAS, and other children's
magazines. A mainstay for two generations, ST. NICHOLAS serialized works by some of the nation's
foremost writers - among them Louisa May Alcott (EIGHT COUSINS), Frances Hodgson Burnett
(LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY), Mark Twain (TOM SAWYER ABROAD) and Rudyard Kipling (THE JUNGLE
BOOK). Such celebrated poets as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Robert Louis Stevenson also
were commissioned to write verse specifically tailored to its young audience. In this exploding
periodicals market, competition was fierce for both circulation and advertising. Dress patterns and
other innovative promotions such as CHROMOS, the nineteenthcentury version of posters, were
offered as subscription inducements. Picking blackberries, dabbling toes in a sleepy brook, playing
cat's cradle and rolling hoops, weaving clover necklaces and blowing a wish on a dandelion - such
were the pleasure of Victorian childhood. And no one caught the gossamer threads of this innocent
world, its simplicities and solemnities, like Kate Greenaway, artist, author, illustrator, fashion
designer. Her enchanting poems and wide-eyed children in Empire-style gowns, wide sashes and
breeches were the JEUNE MODE of two generations. Reading aloud was a national pastime. Poetry,
nonsense rhymes, limericks, mysteries, adventure stories were read to and by old and young alike,
Picture books - the sentimental, poignant, dewy-eyed children of artist Maud Humphrey, the
whimsical, detailed calligraphic illustrations of Walter Crane - were read again and again. BABES OF
THE YEAR, a lavish picture book of winsome toddlers, was an instant success when published in 1888.
It's author was Maud Humphrey, and for the next twenty years her fat-cheeked children would peer
with sweet innocence from advertisements, children's books, calendars and greeting cards. In the
1880s publishers generally preferred women illustrators, believing that they understood children
best and had childlike minds themselves. Maud Humphrey certainly did not have a childlike mind,
nor was she particularly close to her three children. She was strong-willed and determined - more
respected than loved, according to her son, Humphrey Bogart. 36 Parents took their children
seriously, sparing neither rod nor love. Rules were clear-cut, infractions punished swiftly, but
Victorian children were also doted on by an entire world of nannies and nursemaids, a retinue of
aunties, cousins and grannies. They were dressed in Lord Fauntleroy velvet breeches and Alice-in-
Wonderland pinafores; given elaborate parties; smothered with too many toys; petted, fawned over,
adored. Children's parties were often as elaborate as the ones their elders gave for themselves. Tea
parties for as many as fifty guests were not unusual. After dancing, games and magic lantern show,
children dined at tables set with white linen and silver. Tea, sweet cakes, ices, and fresh fruit in
season were served on the family's best china. While Victorians passionately espoused education,
they were less passionate about paying for it. Teachers had to make do on meager incomes; even
governesses were paid a pittance, their annual salary roughly equaling the cost of a mistress's
daytime frock. In the little red school-houses, education was often primitive. Slates, hornbooks and
learning by rote were the teacher's tools, and pen and paper if the school district was rich enough to
provide them. For rewards, pupils received merits of excellence in punctuality, diligence and
deportment - attributes that were highly valued by the new industrial economy. Schoolhouses were
built every six square miles, the distance a child could comfortably walk round-trip in one day. The
school year was pegged to farm work: children got out of school in May for spring planting and did
not return until after fall harvest. School marms came and went with rapidity. Often boarding with a
local family, a teacher had little privacy, but sufficiently good visibility to meet a suitor well beyond
the six-square-mile range. She was expected to be in good health, neat in dress but not fancy;
gentlemannered and resourceful in the face of discomfort, which could include snowstorms, poison
ivy or chilblains. On sunny days there were picnics, games of hide-and-seek, marbles and skipping
rope in the schoolyard, declamation contests and box suppers to raise money. In its small way, the
schoolhouse was a minor hub of life for the families who lived within its nesting area.
Victorian homes offered children a large network of various caregivers built in to the family structure.
Each married couple had an average of six children, but the average household was considerably
larger. Rarely would one find the nuclear family living alone. Only thirty-six per cent of families
consisted simply of a set of parents and their children. Extended families were also rare. Only 10 per
cent of families had three or more generations under one roof. The average household would more
likely be a conglomeration of a nuclear family along with any number of random outsiders. The
stragglers could include any combination of lodgers, distant relatives, apprentices and/or servants.
The composition of the home constantly changed: older children married or went off to work, while
babies were born and died. Babies and young children were extremely susceptible to illness. In the
worst and poorest districts, two out of ten babies died in the first year. One fourth of them would die
by age five. Life expectancy varied greatly depending upon the quality of the area in which people
lived. In industrial towns, like Liverpool, the average life expectancy was twenty-six years. In a better
area, like Okehampton in Devon, it was fifty-seven years. The national average of England and Wales
was forty years at mid century. Therefore as a child grew older, he was likely to lose one or more
siblings as well as one or both parents. Children usually enjoyed the benefit of their mothers’
presence on a daily basis. The mother’s place was considered to be in the home. Common thought
dictated that a woman 38 should be available at all times to care for her husband and children. She
would supervise the staff, servants and/or nannies, if her family could afford them. The idea of a
working mother was considered highly improper and thought to result in neglect of husband,
children and home. Supposedly, illness or even death might arise in the children. An absent wife
would also find an unhappy and strained relationship with her husband. Reporting on Birmingham, in
Chadwick’s 1842 Report on Sanitary Conditions, The Committee of Physicians and Surgeons declares
that: “The habit of a manufacturing life being once established in a woman, she continues it and
leaves her home and children to the care of a neighbor, or of a hired child, whose services cost her
probably as much as she obtains by her labor. To this neglect on the part of their parents is traced
the death of many children; they are left in the house with a fire before they are old enough to know
the danger to which they are exposed, and are often dreadfully burnt... To the habit of married
women working in manufactories may also often be traced those jealousies and heart-burnings,
those quarrels and that discontent which embitter the home of the poor man.” (Hopkins 103) It was
simply considered natural for a woman to stay home. In Preston, a mill town, twenty-six per cent of
married women and fifteen per cent of wives who also had children worked outside of the home. In
the poorer districts, figures might reach as high as thirty per cent. More commonly women would
take in work that they could do at home, such as sewing or washing. They might even work part time
cleaning homes or doing other such domestic work. So, the majority of children had the support of
their mother at homeunless, of course, she had died. Women had a higher mortality rate than men.
They frequently ate less than the men, making them more susceptible to illness. Many died in
childbirth. Poor hygiene and their frequent exposure to illness through their duties of nursing the sick
would make them more likely to contract infection.