The Angel in the House, the Household General, the Ethereal Queen – Cultural and Patriarchal Representations of Women in 19th-Century Britain
The Angel in the House, the Household General, the Ethereal Queen – Cultural and Patriarchal Representations of Women in 19th-Century Britain

Summary/Abstract: Beliefs about female gender roles were firmly fixed in Victorian society. Women were considered inferior to men and looked upon as little more than ―property.‖ Furthermore, women hardly had any legal rights. Any money or property a woman had owned before marriage automatically became the possession of her husband, as were the children resulting from the marriage. Middle-class young girls had relatively little access to education and the most they could aspire to was a position as a governess. Life in lower-class families was tragically hard for women who were expected to bear children, rear them and go to work. Overall, the role of the Victorian woman can be accurately summed up by the phrase: ―married life is a woman‘s profession.‖ The present article attempts to trace the status of women in Victorian Britain as just one of the many examples of the biting inequality between the Kingdom‘s political and financial power and its (often) inhumane social conditions.

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