In defense of the Victorians
Nov. 21st, 2009 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI am so, so tired of seeing people describe something they don't like as "Victorian." Now, there are things that could with fairness be derogatorily described as Victorian - sweatshops leap to mind - but no one ever does.
No, if someone is appending the word Victorian to something it's probably to do with women's rights; the word prudery will probably mentioned; somewhere, a mention of piano legs decked in little skirts will probably be slipped in. "Putting women on a pedestal is just as sexist as believing women are the worms of the earth," the commentator will intone, gleeful that he's finally found a reasonable excuse for his belief that all women are bitches and whores (and he definitely means that in a derogatory sense) and should be treated as such.
Bite me. Women on a pedestal is a retrograde opinion now, but for the Victorians it was a step in the right direction. "Women are pure and awesome and good" may not be a full recognition of personhood (it implies that women who are somehow lacking these characteristics aren't actually women or even human) - but it's better than "Women are the source of all sin in the world, and therefore totally deserve it if you beat them with a stick." No, literally. Wife-beating didn't stop with the Victorian Age (but it hasn't stopped now, either), but at least it was no longer considered proper and acceptable and an integral part of husbandly duty.
The Victorians started the first academically oriented girl's high schools. They started the first women's and coed colleges. They graduated the first female doctors, who were by the end of the century numerous enough that advice books routinely included commentary on how one ought to address a female doctor.
And speaking of advice books: during the Victorian era women became in increasingly large numbers professional writers. They wrote not only advice books (which hitherto had been the realm of men, even when they were written for women) but novels too, and although many of their novels were silly, some of them have become classics - and even the silly novels helped women make a living off their writing, and that is worth applauding. (And it isn't like men didn't write reams of silly novels, too.)
And speaking of making money, it was during the Victorian era, teaching and nursing became respectable female employments - nursing became professionalized during the Crimean and Civil Wars, and teaching slowly became more respectable as the century passed. No, it isn't a great range of employments. But it's a wider range than wife, prostitute, seamstress or servant - and of those, only wife is respectable.
While we're on the topic of wives: Victorian courtship is getting a bad name these days, because it's been co-opted by the far, far Christian right as a good excuse not to let their daughters alone with any young men ever. Maybe for the upper ranges of Victorian society, that was true. But...have you read the later Little House books? When Laura and Almanzo are courting, they go on forty mile carriage rides through empty prairie. The only thing keeping them from getting it on is their character, and Laura's parents know her character is good and think Almanzo's is too and therefore don't feel any need to watch them like hawks.
(This is a topic for another post, but: both the far reaches of the abstinence movement and the far reaches of the sex ed movement seem to assume that teenagers are completely incapable of controlling their sexual urges. I find this obnoxious.)
No, Victorians were not advocates of free love. (Excepting the Oneida commune. But the Oneida commune was kind of different.) But they didn't have any effective birth control, so you couldn't expect them to be. Did they take their condemnation of sexual activity, any kind of sexual activity including kissing and staring into each others' eyes a little too long, too far? Sure. Is that anything new in Western history? No.
It was during the Victorian Age that divorce laws loosened, that women started to get custody of their children after divorce, that married women got property rights, that age of consent laws were raised to reasonable levels (in some places they had been as low as seven). It was during the Victorian Age that women started to be active politically, and not just in service of their husband's careers, but in service of ideals. Abolition, women's rights, a social safety net for workers: women were strong and active in them all.
And no, the Victorians did not put little skirts around their piano legs. Look at the advertisements: the legs are all wantonly naked. And yes, Victorian women could and did travel on their own: in trains, in stage coaches, on steamboats, on shanks mare even. Respectable women weren't supposed to walk about alone at night, or in bad parts of town; and has that changed at all?
So cut the Victorians some slack already. Of course, of course their women's rights record isn't as good as ours. But how do you think we got this far up the ladder? There's no need to kick the lower steps just because we've climbed beyond them.
No, if someone is appending the word Victorian to something it's probably to do with women's rights; the word prudery will probably mentioned; somewhere, a mention of piano legs decked in little skirts will probably be slipped in. "Putting women on a pedestal is just as sexist as believing women are the worms of the earth," the commentator will intone, gleeful that he's finally found a reasonable excuse for his belief that all women are bitches and whores (and he definitely means that in a derogatory sense) and should be treated as such.
Bite me. Women on a pedestal is a retrograde opinion now, but for the Victorians it was a step in the right direction. "Women are pure and awesome and good" may not be a full recognition of personhood (it implies that women who are somehow lacking these characteristics aren't actually women or even human) - but it's better than "Women are the source of all sin in the world, and therefore totally deserve it if you beat them with a stick." No, literally. Wife-beating didn't stop with the Victorian Age (but it hasn't stopped now, either), but at least it was no longer considered proper and acceptable and an integral part of husbandly duty.
The Victorians started the first academically oriented girl's high schools. They started the first women's and coed colleges. They graduated the first female doctors, who were by the end of the century numerous enough that advice books routinely included commentary on how one ought to address a female doctor.
And speaking of advice books: during the Victorian era women became in increasingly large numbers professional writers. They wrote not only advice books (which hitherto had been the realm of men, even when they were written for women) but novels too, and although many of their novels were silly, some of them have become classics - and even the silly novels helped women make a living off their writing, and that is worth applauding. (And it isn't like men didn't write reams of silly novels, too.)
And speaking of making money, it was during the Victorian era, teaching and nursing became respectable female employments - nursing became professionalized during the Crimean and Civil Wars, and teaching slowly became more respectable as the century passed. No, it isn't a great range of employments. But it's a wider range than wife, prostitute, seamstress or servant - and of those, only wife is respectable.
While we're on the topic of wives: Victorian courtship is getting a bad name these days, because it's been co-opted by the far, far Christian right as a good excuse not to let their daughters alone with any young men ever. Maybe for the upper ranges of Victorian society, that was true. But...have you read the later Little House books? When Laura and Almanzo are courting, they go on forty mile carriage rides through empty prairie. The only thing keeping them from getting it on is their character, and Laura's parents know her character is good and think Almanzo's is too and therefore don't feel any need to watch them like hawks.
(This is a topic for another post, but: both the far reaches of the abstinence movement and the far reaches of the sex ed movement seem to assume that teenagers are completely incapable of controlling their sexual urges. I find this obnoxious.)
No, Victorians were not advocates of free love. (Excepting the Oneida commune. But the Oneida commune was kind of different.) But they didn't have any effective birth control, so you couldn't expect them to be. Did they take their condemnation of sexual activity, any kind of sexual activity including kissing and staring into each others' eyes a little too long, too far? Sure. Is that anything new in Western history? No.
It was during the Victorian Age that divorce laws loosened, that women started to get custody of their children after divorce, that married women got property rights, that age of consent laws were raised to reasonable levels (in some places they had been as low as seven). It was during the Victorian Age that women started to be active politically, and not just in service of their husband's careers, but in service of ideals. Abolition, women's rights, a social safety net for workers: women were strong and active in them all.
And no, the Victorians did not put little skirts around their piano legs. Look at the advertisements: the legs are all wantonly naked. And yes, Victorian women could and did travel on their own: in trains, in stage coaches, on steamboats, on shanks mare even. Respectable women weren't supposed to walk about alone at night, or in bad parts of town; and has that changed at all?
So cut the Victorians some slack already. Of course, of course their women's rights record isn't as good as ours. But how do you think we got this far up the ladder? There's no need to kick the lower steps just because we've climbed beyond them.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 05:59 pm (UTC)I don't study the Victorians that much, but Lesley Hall's history site (http://www.lesleyahall.net/) has been fascinating reading to me about this.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:11 am (UTC)There goes all the for-class reading I was planning to do this weekend...well, this is educational, right?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 06:09 pm (UTC)Much of our perceptions about the Victorian era stem from 1900-1930, where the very rapid change in social mores felt much more dramatic than it really was; the younger generation felt that their elders were helpless prudes who clung to horribly outdated and restrictive mores, and the older generation had so much trouble adapting to the new reality of the world. A Victorian mother might have worked as a shopgirl in her youth and gone for long walks with her sweetheart in the countryside--but still would be slightly shocked at a daughter or granddaughter who cut off all her hair, showed her ankles in public, got a job of her own, and dated without a chaperone.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:34 pm (UTC)NO IT ISN'T!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:56 pm (UTC)I think the lesson here is that people should just not compare things to historical eras. They will get it wrong and it will make the gods of history weep bitter tears, or they will get it right and no one will believe them.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 04:16 pm (UTC)I like to think that tilting at windmills - even completely random windmills that no one else cares about - at least makes the people watching stop and think about their behavior, and maybe if they see enough different people tilting at enough windmills stopping and thinking will become a habit.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 04:22 pm (UTC)