Briefly Outline a Selection of Victorian Values

This essay is sacking to short outline a section of Victoria value such as separate spheres, religion and family. Outside the family sphere, one had to strive for self-improve ment and assiduity in ones on the job(p) life, and developed nations. The main focus of this essay is going to be on fall woman. In the nice era women were seen as refined and clean because of this view, their bodies were seen as temples which should non be adorned with jewellery. A woman should be reminded that hook up withing she gives up m either advantages.A few artists such as William Holman pursuit and Augustus Leopold Egg and many more(prenominal) portrayed these Victorian value with narrative artwork and this essay is going to discuss a few of these artists paintings such as The alter honorable sense and erstwhile(prenominal) and Present. The role of women was to have children and t stopping point to the house in product line to men, according to the concept of Victorian masculinity. If t hey didnt achieve this the their husbands would have mistresses impertinent their marriage. Decorating the home and wea frame in fine dresses became a way for women to express themselves.Religion went through its changes as Victorians lost interest in God. Patterson 2007 online However, Great Revivals would sweep across the countries of the world changing the lives of many. The separate spheres framework holds that men possessed the qualification for reason, puzzle oution, aggression, independence, and self-interest thus belonging to the public sphere. Women inhabited a separate, esoteric sphere, one suitable for the so called inherent qualities of femininity emotion, passivity, submission, dependence, and selflessness, all derived, it was claimed insistently, ground level womens sexual and reproductive organization. Patterson 2007 onlineIn reality women held an important position as wives since they took care of the household, any servants, helped with their husbands work, an d managed the finances, however from the viriles point of view, women were nothing more than overly emotional and mindless creatures control by their sexuality Mary Wollstonecraft penned her anger at the unfair and partial inequality that where imposed upon women by a vocal male absolute majority in an attempt to redress this balance.A womens role in life in the nineteenth century was decidedly placed within a male context both sexes were to be seen stageing within different realms with the men occupying what was to be known as the public sphere whilst the women were to be pitch in the domestic sphere Gordon Marsden 1955. Perhaps this splitting of realms, within the works and lower middling classes at least, into their respective roles was by-product of increasing industrialisation and its resultant hazards such as long working hours and poor working conditions imposed upon the family unit.The majority of women did not have the option not to marry it was simply a necessity for survival. Because companionship prevented women from making their own living, in that location was an inescapable dependence upon mens income Barred by faithfulness and custom from entering trades and professions by which they could support themselves, and restricted in the monomania of property, woman had only one means of livelihood, that of marriage her Gordon Marsden 1955.Therefore, no issue what the women passiond, just about were predestined to become wives due to their economic reliance on men. Secondly, to be even considered as a potential wife, women had to be not only virgins, but were expected to remain innocent and free from any thought of love or sexuality until after they had received a proposal The fallen woman was quite a theme for the Pre-Raphaelites. In this painting, The Awakening Conscience, we see a mistress rising from the seat of her lover, obviously stricken with the realization of what her life has become.The Awakening Conscience, painted by William Holman Hunt, is modify with symbolism a cat crouches chthonic the table devouring a dead bird, the womans hands are adorned with sound on every finger except where a wedding ring would be, and on the floor we see unraveling wool. The model in this painting is Annie Miller, who Holman Hunt rescued from obscurity. He was engaged to her and launched a c international ampereaign to kick downstairs her Gordon Marsden 1955. As a women, then ,the first thing of importance is to be content, to be inferior to men, inferior in mental power, in the alike proportion that you are inferior in bodily strength.Ruskins defence of the Awakening Conscience in his letter to the Times helps to subvert the idea of women cosmos dependent upon men he refers to the model repeatedly as the poor lost girl. He victimises her and renders her as virtually helpless as she starts up with agony, her eyes alter with tears of ancient days. Ruskin attempts to address the compositions power and immediacy from wh ich there is not a single object in all the way but it becomes tragically if rightly readHollis,P 1979. He concludes that Hunts work challenges its contemporaries and that there will not be assemble one powerful as this to meet he moral nuisance of the age to waken the mercy the cruel thoughtlessness of youth, and to subdue the severalties of discretion into the sanctity of compassionRutherford online n. d. Hunts the Awakening Conscience, in this context whitethorn be seen as a form of morality text. The work was a direct outgrowth of mid-Victorian society which believed that harlotry posed an inherent threat to the stability of the middle-classes as prostitution encompassed and symbolised the worries of a newly industrialised society which could lead to social instability and perhaps even to a have intercourse social breakdown.It was believed that he slide into prostitution was the end of a more general moral breakdown in ones life which was believed to stem from the act of seduction, in 1840. William Tait in Magdalism, defined a womans seduction as an act of corrupting tempting, or enticing females from a life of chastity, by bills of false promises. The 1850 Westminster Review wrote that womens desires scarcely ever lead to their fall for the desire scarcely exists in a definite form until they have fallen it may therefore be seen that the ideal women becomes de-sexed in her search for moral virtue Rutherford online n. . William Holman Hunts The Awakening Conscience represents not only a modern life number of a fallen Magdalene but can be loosely interpreted as an example of portraiture by Pointons comment in which we can see that the woman became as symbolically objectified as her image. In contrast Augustus Leopold Eggs painting, known as Past and Present Nos. 13, (1858), is a triptych in the genre of narrative painting. The subject is the fallen woman and together the three paintings depict an entire scenario from uncovering and outcast to th e moments before the womans final demise.One picture shows the children only in the home the other picture shows their mother living under the Adelphi Terrace arches in London. The paintings illustrate the tensions in Victorian culture in the midst of morality and sexuality. Eggs moral narrative on social issues Patterson 2007 online was in(predicate) in drawing public attention to the need to address sexuality roles and their consequences such as split. The sad woman in the third picture, most likely contemplating suicide, is a result of legislation that allows a man to divorce his wife without compensation for adultery Patterson 2007 online.whoredom, was legal during the Victorian era, seemed to embody the encourage of the two categories of women present in Victorian society the first was the pure wife and mother, the angel in the house the other was the depraved and sexually-crazed prostitute. Prostitution was a product of middle-class society and only socialism, it was cl aimed ,could put an end to the evilNead L 1988. However because wives and mothers were not truly respected, my belief is that prostitution reflected what men really considered all women to be whores for the gratification of their sexual desires.And then in Victorian England a large number of women were prostitutes In a society that forced women into a position of economic dependence upon men. In conclusion mens and societys consistent exposition of womens roles according to their separate spheres and the reproductive system can excessively be seen through what today we would consider the weird sexual values of Victorians. The issue of adultery was also skewed to favour men. While a wifes adultery was sufficient cause to end a marriage, a woman could divorce her husband only if his adultery had been deepen by another matrimonial offence, such as cruelty or desertion.Referencing List Branes Lucy. (2007). Narrative Painting? Eggs Triptych And The Art of Persuasion. Available http// www. victorianweb. org/painting/ en/paintings/barnes2. html Last accessed 29 May 2012. Hollis P ( 1979). The womens movement. London George Allen & Unwin. 6-15. John A (1986). Unequal Opportunities Womens Employment in England. Oxford Basil Blackwell. 45-261. Lewis J (1986). Womens Experience of Home and Family. Oxford Basil Blackwell. 123-249. Lynda Nead,1988,The Prostitution and Social Chaos,Blackwell Myths of sexuality Marsden,G (1995).Personalities and Perspectives in the Nineteenth Century Society. London Longman. 3-11. Rutherford. A,A Dramatic Reading of Augustus Leopold Egg untitled Triptych Available online http//www. tate. org. uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/rutherford. htm accesses 22 March 2012 Sigsworth M,E (1988). In search of Victorian Values. Manchester Manchester University Press. 89-100. Patterson,C. (2007). Men, Divorce And Custody. Available http//menstuff. org/issues/byissue/divorcecustodygeneral. html Last accessed 29.