Why are there so many fallen women in Victorian literature?

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Why are there so many fallen women in Victorian literature?

To look at the reasons why there are so many fallen women in Victorian literature it is imperative to look at the history of the time and the social issues surrounding it.

The Victorian period lasted for over 60 years and in that time the Victorians saw rapid change, which brought industrial revolution and great social transformation. There was a mass exodus from the country to the towns, which started in the late Georgian period. This brought about great wealth and great poverty, which affected all classes. This mass change of population distribution highlighted many social issues, prostitution being one of the major ones. Even within this context however, police figures demonstrate that prostitution was stable in 19th century England and probably even falling because of the growing urban populations.

 “Jeffrey Weeks suggested that working class sexuality was increasingly the object of middle class scrutiny and attempts at ‘colonisation’, which is how he describes systematic campaigns for the ‘moralisation’ of the poor.”

Prostitution and women’s rights was an issue forced by Josephine Butler who fought vehemently for the repeal of the contagious disease acts in the 1860’s.The role of women and the women’s movement was beginning to gain support and speed. Women were beginning to push the boundaries and asserting themselves as individuals with rights. In the early part of the Victorian era, Anne Knight had founded a Female Political Association in 1847 to demand votes for women. Also Harriet Taylor Mill, who in 1851 argued for women's suffrage, in the Westminster Review.

Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859 and later the Descent of Man, 1871, also challenged the Victorian’s preconceptions. They suggested that men and women were sexually and mentally different and it was therefore unnatural for women to have sexual feelings. These rapid changes to beliefs customs and codes are reflected in the novelists as they questioned their own views and those around them, of women and their sexuality.

 Gaskell preached her humanitarian ideals through her books. In Mary Barton and later, Ruth, she opened up the debate on the fallen woman and her decline into prostitution. As the reader encounters Esther, the fallen aunt, one is shown the torment that she is undergoing in choosing the life that she has.

“One thought had haunted her both by night and by day, with monomaniacal incessancy; and that thought was how to save Mary from following in the same downward path to vice.” 

She portrays the prostitute with sympathy, beginning with the poetry lines:

“Know the temptation ere you judge the crime”

This immediately informs the reader of Gaskell’s sympathies and brings the sense of realism to the piece.

Gaskell’s use of prison and newspaper reports, in the same chapter, supports this sense of realism and brings an authoritative tone to her thoughts on the subject. She often alludes to the reader, confiding, using rhetorical questions, and imploring the reader for sympathy.

This moral, almost biblical edge seems to suggest that Esther is not beyond redemption but must die to achieve this.

“She had come to see the place familiar to her innocence, yet once again before her death” 

Dickens uses a much more conciliatory tone in his “appeal to fallen women” in that he sees a role for them in life if they can shun their former profession.

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“And because it is not the lady’s wish that these young women should be shut out from the world after they have repented and learned to do their duty there, they will be supplied with every means, when some time shall have elapsed and their conduct shall have fully proved their earnestness and reformation, to go abroad, where in a distant country they may become the faithful wives of honest men, and live and die in piece.”

Even in this context however there is little for the prostitute to do but die or emigrate!

 Leading feminists of the day however, ...

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