Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen: Sarah Stickney Ellis

While reading the section on Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen, I gained immense insight into the lifestyle of women in the Victorian era. Women's duties were strictly domestic; they were in charge of all affairs related to the home and of the family, while the men attended the business world, and were expected to financially provide for their home. These roles seemed unvarying and absolute. Tennyson captures the boundaries of these gender implications in his poem, The Princess:

"Man for the field and women for the hearth:

Man for the sword and needle for the she:

Man with the head and woman with the heart:

Man to command and woman to obey

All else confusion"(555).

In the Victorian era, a woman seeking a career or a man raising his children would have seemed outrageous. During this time, the wife was never the "bread-winner," nor was her husband "Mr. Mom." Such absolute definitions were placed on these now versatile roles, a jurisdiction that would seem quite odd to our modern day society. I would be infuriated knowing that my future had already been defined for me, and there was nothing I could do to escape it. A Victorian woman "could not work outside the home; they could not vote; they had no legal rights, even over their own children; they could not attend university or enter the professions"(556). All women were treated as convicts, with rules and regulations criticizing their every move. The had only one objective, one purpose: to tend to their children and keep their husbands content. Even these roles, the duties of the home, seemed to be unappreciated yet expected. (I wonder what Felicia Hemans would have written towards the lack of importance deemed upon these women and their duties?)   

Sarah Stickney Ellis wrote to encourage women to accept this social confinement and find contentment in the happiness of their superior male companions: their husbands, brothers, and sons. Ellis also discouraged women to seek education, for she found this did not benefit the women's domestic affairs and was therefore, unnecessary. 

In her writing, The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits, Ellis outlines the multiple reasons why women should seek only to perform household duties, and to focus only on domestic affairs and the importance of women confined to this realm. Ellis writes, "the influence of women in counteracting the growing evils of society is about to be needed more than ever" (558). She then questions, "Will an increase of intellectual attainments, or higher style of accomplishments, effect this purpose?"(558). Ellis argues that since women seeking education will not help them to fight "growing evils," then they should not, in any way attempt to gain intellect through academic conquests. The only focus a woman should have, at this time, is combating the calamitous happenings in society. Engagement in "superficial reading" will not be able to aid the women in assisting men, so they should not do it. 

I strongly disagree with Ellis on these points. When ever has knowledge of any kind and all kinds not assisted in one's ability to understand the world around them? If women are only taught to cook, clean, and watch over their children, what profound "influence" might they have over the "growing evils of society"? Ellis is encouraging women to focus on battling evil, when she discourages them to gain the tools appropriate to do so. I wonder if Ellis is aware of this, so she is simply building the self-esteem of these inferior women to think that they are important and have "influence," when they are actually being distracted from the injustice that defines their lives. Logically speaking, it would truly benefit society if women were able to break out of their confinement to the home. In this way, the knowledge of men could be coupled with the newly-gained knowledge of women. If female intellect had been ignored as it was in the Victorian era, we would have also ignored the discoveries of Rosalind Franklin, who made instrumental contributions to the understanding of DNA, or Caroline Herschel, who is attributed to discovering the planet Uranus. To think that these women, and many more who have helped to define many successes of discovery and ingenuity, could have been discouraged by society to seek education, is but a disgusting idea in my mind. The ignorance of this period, regarding the intellect of women, is shown by Ellis's writing, a woman who could have also made greater contributions to history, rather than attempting to stifle greatness in others.