Along with this is the notion of 'separate spheres' – men deal with public business, women with private. Women's sphere of action is moral, while that of men is material. Women inhabit their own worlds where they nurture the nation's values. Women are not just homebodies, but embodiments of pure virtue, humble and submissive. They wear bodices that completely cover their bosoms and arms, and their skirts reach down to their ankles. However, novels such as Anne Brontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) show that the myth of domestic heaven often conceals the reality of domestic hell.
A third myth of Victorian womanhood is that of the 'fallen woman'. Based on traditional Christian notions of woman as the daughter of Eve, the idea of the 'fallen woman' says that women are innately prone to corruption. Victorian society makes a rigid separation between pure angels and immoral women.
sexuality
Conceptions of women's passive sexual nature, added to ideas about possessive patriarchal individualism, equal male dominance. Any sexual transgression in polite society is severely policed. No matter how great the provocation, simply by leaving her husband a woman quits respectable society and becomes an outcast. Although she may have done nothing wrong, she is a 'fallen woman' … and fallen women are excluded from polite society.
This system gives middle-class men plenty of opportunity to indulge in hypocrisy and double-standards. It is seen as natural for gentlemen to use prostitutes but unnatural for women to have affairs. But while many middle-class women accept the system, the priorities of working-class women are often different. Yet the factory and mines of the 1840s is motivated more by a concern for women's morals rather than by a concern for their physical health. If working hours are limited, women will have more time to spend at home caring for their families.
Changing the law
Women are active in campaigns for the removal of laws that force them into subservience. In 1855, Caroline Norton (1808-77) campaigns successfully for an amendment to the Divorce Bill that allows married women, when separating from their husbands, to keep whatever property they had before the marriage. She also secures the right for married women to be allowed to sue and be sued, and to make contracts in their own names. (Oddly enough, however, Norton does not want the vote to be given to women.)
Other women, such as Barbara Leigh Smith (1827-91), also campaign for female equality – and not only women: in 1869, publishes his Subjugation of Women.
In 1857, the divorce law is reformed but still favours the husband. Not until 1882 does the Married Women's Property Act give women the full right to own property in their own names and to keep their own earnings. Other laws in 1873 and 1886 made it easier for mothers to get custody of their children and appoint guardians. In 1895, violence becomes grounds for a judicial separation with the payment of maintenance by the husband.
Education and work
From the 1850s girls' schools could prepare their pupils for entry to colleges and universities, and for a few, into professions such as education and medicine. Another form of independence was also gained through the various Married Women's Property Acts. By the 1890s advanced women smoked, rode bicycles and fought for emancipation. In 1897 the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies was founded. Technological and commercial developments provided new opportunities for female employment at the end of the century, in factories, in offices and particularly in shops.
A table of employment gives an example of where women worked in 1900 :
