Victorian women
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Victorian Women – Pioneers of Photography
Although for centuries humans have known the principle of the “camera obscura” – in which light passing through a pinhole can throw an upside-down and reversed image onto the opposite wall of a darkened room – it wasn’t until 1826 or 1827 that a Frenchman named Nicéphore Niépce figured out a way to preserve the images. Photography was born. Nicéphore Niépce’s photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras is believed to be the oldest surviving camera photograph. His discoveries were quickly followed by those of such photographic pioneers as Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot, who publicly announced their own photographic processes in January 1839. To preserve a photographic…
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W.S. Gilbert – The Dragon at the Stage Door
Many Victorians assumed that actresses were “no better than they should be” (i.e. very bad indeed). According to Hesketh Pearson, in Gilbert and Sullivan, “In those days actresses were considered to be saleable property. Their social status was extremely low, and the average middle-class Englishman scarcely differentiated the back of a stage from a brothel.” However, that certainly wasn’t the case for the actresses in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. William S. Gilbert insisted on all his players behaving with utmost propriety. Jessie Bond, the long-time Savoyard actress who created many of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most delightful contralto roles, from Hebe in HMS Pinafore to Pitti-Sing in The Mikado to…
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W.S. Gilbert – Tilting at Social Windmills
Nothing succeeds like success! Although W. S. Gilbert is known mainly for his brilliant comic operas with Arthur Sullivan, he wrote many other plays, some of which addressed serious social issues and which turned out to be the inspiration for later works by other playwrights. Here are a few examples: Charity (1874) is a play about Mrs. Van Brugh, a good woman who, in her youth, lived with a man without benefit of marriage, and they had an illegitimate child. Now a widow of 35 years’ standing, she has dedicated her life to helping those in need. She has almshouses, and scandalizes the village by letting in not only good Anglicans,…
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Beauty in the Eye of the Victorian Beholder
What features were considered beautiful in the Victorian age? Would our teenage Victorian sleuth, Lucy Turner, have considered herself beautiful by the standards of the day — and if so, what would she have done about it? Lucy, as we can see from her photos, was small and slender with blonde hair and blue eyes. She probably would have had light colored eyebrows and eyelashes, and possibly even freckles on her nose. Being the youngest daughter of a respectable, upper-middle-class widow, however, she would not have worn make-up. Victorian women were under pressure to look beautiful, but no respectable female of that age would be caught wearing cosmetics – at least not visible cosmetics. Any woman…
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Victorian Crochet for Christmas
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Shopping — Victorian Style
Women of the Victorian era enjoyed shopping as much as women do today. By the middle of the 19th century, shopping had evolved into a way for middle-class Victorian women to get out and explore the city without male companions. The first prototype of the shopping mall might be said to have been the Great Exhibition of 1851, which displayed consumer goods from around the globe. A Victorian woman in the 1860s on a shopping expedition in London would probably head toward the West End, where the shops catered to fashionable upper-middle-class ladies. She might also go to Regent Street, which was designed as a promenade and shopping area with…
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Arthur Sullivan: Early Success and Early Heartbreak
(Note: Sorry for the delay in posting this week’s blog — I finished a free short story, which you can read here.) Everybody liked Arthur Sullivan. Good looking, charming, funny, smart, superbly talented. How could they not? Men liked him and women fell in love with him. According to Hesketh Pearson, author of Gilbert and Sullivan, “With women his appeal was immediate and often permanent. His oval, olive-tinted face, his dark luminous eyes, his large sensuous mouth, and the generous crop of black curly hair which overhung his low forehead, no doubt added to the attraction.” But despite all this, Arthur Sullivan’s first serious love affair ended in heartbreak. Michael…
- Victorian feminism, Victorian love and marriage, Victorian theater, Victorian women, Victoriana, W S Gilbert
Was W. S. Gilbert a Victorian Feminist?
What did W.S. Gilbert think about women? During the Victorian era, the division between the worlds of men and women seemed particularly wide, with many popular male writers making efforts to restrict women to the domestic sphere of influence. But as society at large changed, the role of women in public life was expanded – women began to be admitted to colleges and universities, reformers such as John Stuart Mill advocated for women’s right to vote, and women were increasingly able to participate in the world outside their homes. So what was William S. Gilbert’s attitude toward women in the public arena? “Gilbert always enjoyed the company of women, particularly…
- Lucy Agnes Blois Turner, Victorian feminism, Victorian love and marriage, Victorian medicine, Victorian women, Victoriana
Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: A Book Review
I highly recommend Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady to anyone who wants to read a fascinating account of one woman's life and struggles during the mid-Victorian era.
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That singular anomaly, the lady novelist!
In The Mikado, “that singular anomaly, the lady novelist” was on Koko the Lord High Executioner’s “little list” of people who wouldn’t be missed – but although some male critics may have wished it so, lady novelists certainly weren’t singular anomalies during the Victorian era. In fact, W.S. Gilbert himself was in love with one such “anomaly.” Before he met and married Lucy Turner, who was, as he later told a friend, “his centre of every bit of happiness he had, his only peace, his only safety, his guardian angel, the only person he trusted unchangingly”, Gilbert proposed to, and was rejected by, Miss Annie Hall Thomas. Gilbert had many…
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Skittles the Victorian Courtesan
In the first of my upcoming mystery stories featuring Lucy Turner and William Gilbert, Lucy gets to know the Duchess of Sanditon, a young woman with a checkered past – before marrying her older, war-hero Duke, she had worked as a “pretty horsebreaker” just like the famous real-life courtesan, Skittles. Who was Skittles, you ask? Skittles was the nickname of Catherine Walters, Small and slender with blue gray eyes and chestnut hair, she was exceptionally beautiful and dressed with excellent taste. Her personality has been described as bubbly, outspoken, direct and bawdy, as well as affectionate and sympathetic even toward lovers who had left her. She never wrote…
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19th C. Britain’s Changes Under Unchanging Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria was born 24 May 1819, the only daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent. A year later her uncle, the Prince Regent, became George IV. He reigned for 17 years. When George IV died 20 June 1837, Victoria became queen. She was crowned on 28 June 1838, a mere 18 years old. Thus began the second-longest reign of an English monarch – Queen Victoria ruled for 63 years and seven months, a length of time which has only been surpassed by the present Queen, Elizabeth II. During those six decades and more, England underwent great social, political, economic and technological changes. The English Regency, which lasted from 1811 to 1820, marked the…
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Victorian Crochet for Christmas
Christmas is not too far away! Are you crafty and wondering what to make for that beloved Auntie or other relation? Fear not! There’s still time to crochet a Victorian-style gift for a family member who appreciates handmade things. During the Victorian era, a dutiful upper-middle-class woman’s leisure time would have been occupied in making decorative items to wear and to decorate their homes. Working for financial gain was out of the question for a well-off married Victorian woman – it would have reflected poorly on her husband. Furthermore, the woman of the house would have servants to clean and cook for the family, so she would have turned her…