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Women were expected to be faithful to their husbands, or if unmarried, to refrain from sexual activity. There was more tolerance for men employing prostitutes or engaging in extramarital affairs. In the early Victorian period, a traditional idea that married women had an intense sex drive which needed to be controlled by their husband was still ...
Scholarly discussions of Victorian women's sexual promiscuity was embodied in legislation (Contagious Diseases Acts) and medical discourse and institutions (London Lock Hospital and Asylum). [7] The rights and privileges of Victorian women were limited, and both single and married women had to live with heterogeneous hardships and disadvantages.
Increased importance was placed on the value of the family and a private home. Women had limited legal rights in most areas of life and were expected to focus on domestic matters relying on men as breadwinners. Whilst parental authority was seen as important, children were given legal protections against abuse and neglect for the first time.
There is also evidence of Darwin's correspondence with women of that time who challenged the gender ideology such as Florence Dixie, a traveler, writer and hunter who endorsed equality in marriage and Caroline Kennard, an American writer and feminist. Dixie also wrote a book which created the fantasy of a world where men and women were equals. [3]
Inherent in the study of women's history is the belief that more traditional recordings of history have minimised or ignored the contributions of women to different fields and the effect that historical events had on women as a whole; in this respect, women's history is often a form of historical revisionism, seeking to challenge or expand the ...
First, women lived longer, often leaving them widowed with children. Second, women had fewer opportunities to work, and when they did find it, their wages were lower than male workers' wages. Third, women were often less likely to marry or remarry after being widowed, leaving them as the main providers for the remaining family members.
Witch bottles. According to Frederick Alexander Durham writing in 1892, the Britons at the time were in some ways just as superstitious as their ancestors. [5] According to the Andrew D. McCarthy, the finding and identification of more than 200 witch bottles reinforces the view that early modern Britain was a superstitious society, where evil could be fended off with a mixture of urine and hair.
[26] [27] Women had limited legal rights in most areas of life, and a feminist movement developed. [27] [28] Parental authority was seen as important, but children were given legal protections against abuse and neglect for the first time towards the end of the period. [29] Access to education increased rapidly during the 19th century.