Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen

Given that the period from 1837-1901 is christened the “Victorian Age”, it is interesting to consider the writings of the famous Queen Victoria. Described as a “believer in the notion that men and women should occupy different spheres”, her personal feelings about the place of women seem more unconventional (576). Not only did she “pioneer” the use of chloroform in childbirth, her letters to her daughter display not a glowing account of marriage and motherhood, but rather a sort of melancholy that such is the role of women. I found it ironic that the most powerful woman in England felt so trapped. Queen Victoria, of all women of her age, should have been able to have the freedom to live how she felt best.

Instead, she proceeds to complain in almost every letter. It appears that being a pioneer is neither so glorious nor as easy at it seems. Queen Victoria had to take on the responsibilities of the Crown at a young age, “Think however what it was for me, a girl of 18 all alone, not brought up at court as you were-but humbly at Kensington Palace-with trials and difficulties, to receive and be everywhere the first! No, no one knows what a life of difficulties mine was-and is!” (577). It is strange to me that such a complainer could head an era of idealism. She does not seem to appreciate the fact that at least she is Queen and not a poor factory worker or cart-hauler in a coal mine. However, in typical Victorian fashion, she was simply concerned with her own progress; the sensational reports of parents killing their own children for money, as mentioned by Carlyle, or Dickens’ report of the condition of the prisoners at Newgate probably never graced her ears.

Queen Victoria demonstrates an acute sense of the physical inequality between men and women; she believes women must suffer more than men must. This difference is because men, luckily, do not bear children. Indeed, pregnancy and childbirth seem to be Queen Victoria’s chief complaints about being a woman. She describes her feelings during her pregnancies as “pinned down-one’s wings clipped-in fact, at the best (and few were or are better than I was) only half oneself-particularly the first and second time” (577). She is not a sentimental mother at all, nor does she pretend to be one. She admits to her daughter that she does not see childbearing through such a rosy lens, “What you say of the pride of giving life to am immortal soul is very fine, dear, but, I own I cannot enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments, when our poor nature becomes so animal and unecstatic…” (578). Evidently, Victoria thinks that giving life is not one of woman’s better capabilities, since animals were commonly considered to be beneath humans. Her feelings of being trapped may have stemmed not only from the Victorians’ lack effective birth control strategies, but the fact the woman was encouraged and expected to like having children. Any sentiment to the contrary was almost heretical.

Queen Victoria views not being forced to have kids as an “unbounded happiness” that would leave a woman free to worship her husband (577). It is interesting that although Victoria was against women having equal political rights as men, there is an element of balance in the ideal marital relationship she depicts. Not only would the wife, in a “foretaste of heaven” be free to adore her husband, the husband would adore her in return and be “ready to meet every wish and desire of your’s” (577). The idea that the husband and wife would be at each other’s beck and call in an era when the elite had many servants is very intriguing. Queen Victoria seems to imply that romantic adoration involves mutual servitude.

Queen Victoria sees that women get the “short end of the stick” not only in the physical aspect of being a wife and then a mother, but also in the institution of marriage itself. She notes, “This I call the ‘shadow side’ as much as being torn away from one’s loved home, parents and brothers and sisters. And therefore-I think our sex a most unenviable one” (577). Indeed, Victoria states that if she had her way, none of her daughters would be married (578). She seems very against the institution of marriage. Her reasoning is that marriage involves a loss of freedom and personal joy for the woman involved,

“All marriage is such a lottery-the happiness is always an exchange-though it may be a very happy one-still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband’s slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, free young girl-and look at the ailing, aching state a young wife is generally doomed to-which you can’t deny is the penalty of marriage” (579).

The description of marriage as a “lottery” reveals a view of marriage as a crapshoot for marital bliss, the price to play being the wife’s happiness. Yet she also admits in the same sentence that marriage can be happy. Her own feelings upon her husband’s death are evidence that her marriage, at least, was a happy one, “Oh! How I admired Papa! How in love I was with him! How everything about him was beautiful and precious in my eyes! ….Oh! the bitterness of this-the woe!” (580). Her views on marriage vary; she seems to imply that happy marriages are wonderful, but unhappy marriages enslave women.

Queen Victoria seems to be of a contrary nature. On the one hand, she decries the women’s rights movement as “…dangerous & unchristian & unnatural…” (580) but at the same time complains about the sacrifices involved in being a wife and mother. It seems if she really felt that women were being treated badly, she of all women could change it as she had the most direct influence upon the King and therefore more influence over the laws of England. Ultimately, Queen Victoria is the quintessential Victorian: lots of talk and little real change to show for it.