By Aniqah Khan
Edited by Krutika Sharma and Mark Potter
“The theory of man and wife...the wife is to bend herself in loving submission before her
husband...the husband should be the stronger and the greater of the two. The theory is based upon that hypothesis and the hypothesis sometimes fails of confirmation”.[1]
The separate spheres model is the framework by which Gender was shaped, defined, and
understood in the Victorian period. The doctrine of the separate spheres model - the idea that men and women inhabited different roles in society - gained considerable traction in the late 1700s, reaching its height in the 1850s. The significance of this model is one which cannot be understated: "the separate spheres framework has come to constitute one of the fundamental organising categories, if not the organising category of modern British women's history".[2] Crucially, the prominence of this model is not without its limitations: many historians express concern over not only the veracity of such a model but how its popular application has been detrimental to the study of the Victorians and gender history as a whole. American scholar Cathy N. Davidson convincingly articulates how the application of this model has distorted modern gender studies, critiquing the separate spheres model as "a retrospective construction that has had the effect of recreating a binary gender division among contemporary critics that influences what books we write, read, teach, and cite in our own work”.[3]
The central claim of this essay is to argue that the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles has indeed outlived its usefulness. To explain, it is important to note that the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles is indeed only a model: an example to follow or imitate. It is, by nature, unattainable. Crucially, the model is an aspirational ideal for Victorian society - not a reflection of it. With this understanding, the clear disparities between rhetoric and reality are substantiated; a static framework cannot account for a dynamic society in which not all women have the liberty to withdraw from public employment. To explore the nuances of the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles and assess the extent to which the model has outlived its usefulness, this essay will consider the factors of class and income, rhetoric versus reality in light of popular prescriptive literature and female political intervention.
Arguably, the most cogent case highlighting the limitations of the separate spheres model of
Victorian gender roles is the factor of class and income; the fixed nature of the model fails to
account for the varied demographics of Victorian England, in which household incomes fluctuate across the country. Intimately linked to this matter was the ideology of domesticity: the sentimentalisation and celebration of the home. Indeed, by characterising the public sphere as a male space and the private sphere as a female space, a value system that defines womanhood as the ability to maintain the home is perpetuated. This division is summed neatly by Ruskin, who outlines the differentiating qualities between man and woman: “the man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial...often he must be wounded, or subdued, often misled, and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this”.[4] In this way, a precedent is created by which a woman could only be considered a ‘true’ woman if she devoted herself to her home - to strip herself of all sense of personal ambition, for she only existed to serve those around her.[5] This failure to acknowledge women's various contributions to Victorian society is harmful, presenting a skewed history of the era.
The greatest difficulty which arises from this, however, is that the separate spheres model of
Victorian gender roles is based upon assumptions. Firstly, the assumption that all women were married to men whom they were able to rely upon financially and, secondly, that all women would sacrifice personal ambitions for the sake of their household. These expectations cement the fact that the separate spheres model is an aspirational ideal for Victorian society and not a reality. More specifically, due to the blatant disregard for those who endure financial strain, it can be asserted that the ideology of domesticity was specifically a feature of middle-class life - an embodiment of the freedoms of the upper class and "the dream of the lower-middle class".[6] In this way, it is evidently not applicable to Victorian society at large.
Accordingly, 1911 census data (see figure 1) reveals that in a sample of twelve towns, over twenty percent of married and widowed women were in full-time employment. From the sample, the highest percentages of full-time employment among this demographic were 42.5% in Blackburn, and 42.3% in the city of London. This data confirms the fact that the ideals of domesticity were incongruous with the Victorian reality. Rather, it suggests that women supported their families by undertaking full-time, wage-paying jobs in conjunction with their full-time domestic commitments. Indeed, the mid-Victorian boom created manifold opportunities for female employment across the nation through the forces of urbanisation, developing technology and industrialisation. Moreover, it is interesting to note that full-time employment amongst married women was the highest in Blackburn. The expansion of female employment varied by region and is explained by Steinbach as such: "...those who lived in the north and worked in manufacturing, and those who lived in the south and worked in agriculture or a service industry. In the industrialised north, women were key workers in textile factories".[7] While this data highlights the inadequacies of the separate spheres model, proving that women worked in the public realm, it is important to acknowledge that the high concentration of female employment in the north is not coincidental. The heart of England's textile industry was based in the north, with booming woollen industries in South Lancashire and West Yorkshire. This is significant because it underscores the fact that women were still being gatekept into 'female trades' despite female integration into the public space.
In the same vein, financially independent women also failed to conform to the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles because the notion of conformity was highly dependent upon a woman's individual desire to transgress against the bounds placed upon her. In this instance, wealth served as a significant factor in how women were able to manoeuvre themselves beyond such social boundaries. Thus, in many circumstances, wealth became synonymous with agency. This notion is best explored in Jeanne M. Peterson's “No Angels in the House: The Victorian Myth and the Paget Women”.[8] In this publication, Peterson utilises the example of women from the Paget family and their ability, through wealth, to claim ownership over their interests and skills “beyond the cultivated life of the family”.[9] These women have been used to illustrate wider trends among upper-middle-class women in the nineteenth century.
Perhaps most prominent in Peterson’s case study was Rose Paget, the daughter of Sir George
Edward Paget, Regius Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge, born in 1860. Paget is remembered for her contributions to the field of science, with her interest leading her to attend lectures and study at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1887.[10] Most notable was her socio-economic status, which enabled Paget to pursue the sciences, confronting the “conventional arena of Victorian female ‘accomplishment’”.[11] Indeed, the Victorian education system was “highly gendered”, helping to “inculcate children into the gender roles for which they were destined as adults”.[12] A girls’ education was often shorter and “less academic”, concerning subjects such as modern languages, music and art whereas boys’ education “stressed the classics” and was often received formally outside of the home.[13] Fundamentally, as aforementioned, this was to train young boys and girls to conform to the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles. The boys would aspire to work in the public sphere, showcasing their intellectual flexibility, whereas girls would aspire to depend on such an accomplished man by serving as the homemaker. The critical nuance,
if not a flaw of this model, is the fact that women such as Rose Paget were fundamentally
independent; upper-class women inherited wealth and thus were not raised under the same
pretences as women of lower classes who were expected to rely upon a partner financially. Instead, Paget and other upper-class women were financially secure, and thus the insistence upon domestic ideals is alleviated. In essence, there was no reason to dampen her own interests in the sciences to conform to the standards of marriage set by the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles because her wealth served as agency to create her own standards.
The usefulness of the separate spheres model is also challenged by the role of prescriptive literature in the Victorian era - the quintessence of the power and influence that the model carried in popular culture. By the 1850s, “domestic ideology permeated literary and visual representational practices at every level”.[14] The pervasiveness of such an ideology is unique due to its two-fold nature: on the one hand, the publication of various conduct books and manuals suggests an acceptance of the ideology - if not an endorsement of it. On the contrary, there is a suggestion that the extensive publication of conduct literature confirms that the model was redundant. If such a social attitude had to be taught, then there is an acknowledgement that men and women were not inherently different.
This two-fold curiosity is best exhibited in the popular conduct book ‘Mrs Beeton's Book of
Household Management’ 1861. This book was a comprehensive guide on how to run a Victorian household, written by British journalist Isabella Beeton. The popularity of this publication cannot be understated, selling nearly two million copies by 1868. Indeed, this book was aimed towards the “housewife”, for Beeton admitted to her belief in the book's preface that “there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways”.[15] As aforementioned, the assumption that all married women are housewives is to disregard working-class women and thus, confirms to readers that the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles is merely a middle-class ideal. It is also interesting to note the extent to which prescriptive literature, in upholding gender ideals, simultaneously served to belie the authority of the writers. Indeed, Beeton contradicted the very doctrine of separate spheres - that “women were expected to be private rather than public” - because, as a journalist, she was existing in the public realm, expressing her opinion without censor.[16]
The inadequacy of the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles is perhaps most striking in its political application, exposing the formerly established faultline by which the ideals of Victorian gender roles do not translate to their reality. Specifically, this can be examined in the way by which Victorian women were able to mould the model to their own advantage - disrupting social practices by blurring the boundaries between public and private. In this way, women were able to subscribe to the ideals of Victorian gender roles while also undermining them. This unique nuance is best demonstrated by, but not limited to, the actions taken by the Kensington Society in the years 1865-68.
The Kensington Society was a discussion society where issues of common interest were debated among women, with specific regard to women's suffrage. Critically, meetings took place in the domestic arena of forty-four Phillimore Gardens, the home of its president. Membership was principally composed of highly educated, upper-class women. The society is best remembered for collecting and delivering a petition to parliament demanding women's suffrage in June 1866.[17] Indeed, it is precisely this incredible feat that brings to the fore how redundant the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles was: the Kensington Society, without the right to vote or even enter the House of Commons, were able to make ‘women’s issues’, national issues. Most crucially, this was achieved all the while subscribing to the separate spheres model. To explain, the Kensington Society were able to permeate the male political arena, inserting themselves into national debates from their prescribed domestic arena of forty-four Phillimore Gardens. With a great sense of irony, it was this private, intimate setting that allowed the women to discuss matters frankly. There is a
suggestion here that the separate spheres model created a safe space for women to discuss and meticulously plan their efforts to infiltrate public life without suspicion. As Ann Dingsale asserts: “Members of the Kensington Society were united by the opportunity to debate issues in a private, yet formal, setting, and to ‘network’ with women who were eager for
change”.[18] Kathryn Gleadles further explores the false dichotomy between an unpolluted private sphere and a public political sphere. She explains that the domestic sphere was itself constructed in terms of political space, referring to the home as a site for “informal discussion groups, political correspondences, ideologically motivated consumer choices, politically inspired child-rearing methods and so on, all of which were crucial to the emergence of specific radical political cultures”.[19] With this being said, it is important to reiterate the fact that such women were able to plan their meetings with great care and diligence due to their status; highly educated, upper-class women were spared from the shackles of domesticity because their wealth allowed them to aspire outside of home life.
In conclusion, it is fair to assert the view that the separate spheres model of Victorian gender roles has outlived its usefulness. This is principally because the model was an ideal that could not conform to the reality of Victorian life. In particular, the model’s inability to consider the wide-ranging demographics of Victorian society. With this being said, the model is not redundant. Indeed, the model is useful when examining the ideals and aspirations of the middling class - only the middling class. In essence, if the model is framed within this narrow context, then its application can be considered of use. By the same token, it is exactly the highly specific, limited nature of this model that renders it useless; it is so limited in its application and exclusionary in its narrative that it ceases to serve a valuable contribution to Victorian gender studies.
Figure 1: 1911 Census Data, The National Archives,
<https://nationalarchives.gov.uk/search/results/?_q=1911+Census+Data+ > accessed 8 January 2021
Notes
[1] Anthony Trollope, The Belton Estate: Issue 78, Volume 1 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1866), pp. 266-267.
[2] Amanda Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women's History”, The Historical Journal, 36/2 (1993), p. 389.
[3] Cathy N. Davidson, “Preface: No More Separate Spheres!”, American Literature, 70/3 (1998), p. 444.
[4] Kate Millett, “The Debate over Women: Ruskin versus Mill”, Victorian Studies, 14/1 (1970), p. 68.
[5] Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860”, American Quarterly, 18/2 (1966), pp. 151-74.
[6] Jeanne M. Peterson, “No Angels in the House: The Victorian Myth and the Paget Women”, The American Historical Review, 89/3 (1984), p. 708.
[7] Susie L. Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth- Century Britain (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 173.
[8] Peterson, “No Angels in the House”, p. 691.
[9] Peterson, “No Angels in the House”, p. 691.
[10] Peterson, “No Angels in the House”, p. 691.
[11] Peterson, “No Angels in the House”, p. 686.
[12] Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians, p. 171.
[13] Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians, p. 171.
[14] Kay Boardman, “The Ideology of Domesticity: The Regulation of the Household Economy in Victorian Women's Magazines”, Victorian Periodicals Review, 33/2 (2000), p. 150.
[15] Isabella Beeton, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, (S. O. Beeton Publishing, 1861), p. 78.
[16] Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians, p. 167.
[17] John Stuart Mill, (1866) “Motion for a Return”, Api.Parliament.Uk <https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1866/jul/17/motion-for-a-return> [accessed 9 January 2021].
[18] Ann Dingsdale, (2007) “Kensington Society (act. 1865–1868)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-
9780198614128-e-92488> [accessed 8 January 2021]
[19] Kathryn Gleadle “The beginnings of modern feminism”, in June Hannam (ed.), Feminism (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 24-25.
Bibliography
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