The document discusses the "Woman Question" and changing views of women's roles in Victorian England. It provides excerpts from writings that showcase the debate, including those advocating for expanding women's education and opportunities beyond the home, as well as those promoting the ideal of women's primary role being in the domestic sphere as wives and mothers. The selections illustrate the tensions between traditional views and the emergence of feminist thought advocating for women's independence and ability to pursue meaningful work and advancement.

1. The “Woman Question”
Victorianism and Gender

2. “The greatest social difficulty today”
The greatest social difficulty in England today is
the relationship between men and women.
The principal difference between ourselves
and our ancestors is that they took society as
they found it while we are self-conscious and
perplexed. The institution of marriage might
almost seem just now to be upon trial.
--Justin M’Carthy, Westimster Review
(July 1864)

3. “A feeble instrument”
Sarah Ellis, Women of England 1839
I still cling fondly to the hope, that, ere
long, some system of female instruction
will be discovered by which the young
women of England may be sent home
from school prepared for the stations
appointed them by Providence to fill in
after life, and prepared to fill them well.

4. “I am but a feeble instrument”
Then indeed may this favoured country boast of her
privileges, when her young women return to their
homes and their parents, habituated to be on the
watch for every opportunity of doing good to others;
making it the first and the last inquiry of every day,
"What can I do to make my parents, my brothers, or
my sisters, more happy? I am but a feeble
instrument in the hands of Providence, to work out
any of his benevolent designs; but as he will give me
strength, I hope to pursue the plan to which I have
been accustomed, of seeking my own happiness
only in the happiness of others."

5. “The Angel in the House”
No liken'd excellence can reach
Her, thee most excellent of all,
The best half of creation's best,
Its heart to feel, its eye to see,
The crown and complex of the rest,
Its aim and its epitome.
For she's so simply, subtly sweet,
My deepest rapture does her wrong.
Yet is it now my chosen task
To sing her worth as Maid and Wife;
Nor happier post than this I ask,
Mrs. Beeton’s Book of To live her laureate all my life.
Household Management, 1861

6. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household
Management, 1861
“Strength, and honour are her
clothing” —Proverbs, xxxi. 25.
AS WITH THE COMMANDER OF
AN ARMY, or the leader of any
enterprise, so is it with the
mistress of a house. Her spirit
will be seen through the whole
establishment; and just in
proportion as she performs her
duties intelligently and
thoroughly, so will her
domestics follow in her path.
“Woman’s Power”?

7. Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens
Now their separate characters are briefly these: The
man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is
eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the
defender. His intellect is for speculation and
invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for
conquest, wherever was is just, wherever conquest
necessary. But the woman’s power is for rule, not for
battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or
creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and
decision.

8. Ruskin, Of Queens’ Gardens
She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their
places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no
contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her
office, and place, she is protected from all danger and
temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world,
must encounter all peril and trial: to him, therefore, must
be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error … But he
guards the woman from all this; within his house, as
ruled by her, need enter no danger, no temptation, no
cause of error or offense. This is the true nature of home
—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all
injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.

9. Royal Family 1846

10. "Wherever a true wife comes, this
home is always round her"

11. The idealized wife and mother

12. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The works of women are symbolical”

13. Aurora Leigh (1857)
The feminist Prelude
“My chief intention is the writing of a sort of novel-poem
running into the midst of our conventions and rushing
into drawing-rooms ‘where angels fear to tread’ and
speaking the truth as I conceive it plainly”
Virginia Woolf: Barrett Browning "was inspired
by a flash of true genius when she rushed
into the drawing-room and said that here,
where we live and work is the true place for
the poet.”

14. Jane Eyre dreams of “action”
Anybody may blame me who likes when I add further that now
and then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds, when I
went down to the gates and looked through them along the
road, or when, while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs.
Fairfax made jellies in the store-room, I climbed the three
staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having
reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and
hill, and along dim sky-line — that then I longed for a power
of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach
the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but
never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience
than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of
acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within
my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what
was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other
and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I
wished to behold.

15. Jane Eyre dreams of “action”
Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called
discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in
my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my
sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third
story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and
solitude of the spot and allow my mind's eye to dwell on
whatever bright visions rose before it — and, certainly,
they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved
by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in
trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my
ear to a tale that was never ended — a tale my
imagination created, and narrated continuously;
quickened with all of incident, life, fire, and feeling, that I
desired and had not in my actual existence.

16. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with
tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if
they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller
doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against
their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides
political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which
people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm
generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need
exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as
much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a
restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men
would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more
privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine
themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to
playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is
thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they
seek to do more or learn more than custom has
pronounced necessary for their sex.

17. Writing the New Woman
Harriet Martineau: When I was young, it
was not thought proper for young ladies to
study very conspicuously; and especially
with pen in hand. Young ladies (at least in
provincial towns) were expected to sit down
in the parlour to sew, — during which
reading aloud was permitted, — or to
practice their music.

18. Writing the New Woman
Dinah Mulock: But “what am I to do with my
life?” as once asked me one girl out of the
numbers who begin to feel aware that,
whether marrying or not, each possesses an
individual life, to spend, to use, or to lose.
And herein lies the momentous question.

19. Writing the New Woman
Florence Nightingale: Is man’s time more
valuable than woman’s? or is the difference
between man and woman this, that woman
has confessedly nothing to do?

20. Writing the New Woman
Florence Nightingale: Women are never supposed to
have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be
interrupted, except “suckling their fools”; and women
themselves have accepted this, have written books to
support it, and have trained themselves so as to
consider whatever they do as not of such value to the
world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the
first “claim of social life”. They have accustomed
themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a
merely selfish amusement, which is their “duty” to
give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.