Since the women in the Victorian age received the straight and direct pressure and were restricted in a frame of a well-set femininity, they lost the opportunity to develop other female qualities. They could only be tender, sweet and pure rather than brave, independent and mature. Women were treated as the objects instead of individuals that possessed their own thoughts and opinions. Women were protected, idolized and oppressed in the Victorian culture (Moran 35). The image that the public approved was the only single version which had ignored the other possibilities, opportunities and experiences that women owned differentially. Women were repressed by being shaped as one typical model instead of being allowed to develop the other personalities and feminine charms. They were not allowed to pursue their
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own happiness, but to maintain the coherence of the family. Women would be protected by the family at home and subordinated to the males. They were repressed by fathers and brothers when they were single and by husbands when they were married. As Moran elaborates on the issue of women’s rights in the Victorian age:
Even in this “natural” environment, women lacked rights. When the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 made divorce more easily obtainable, the burden of proof needed by a woman against her husband was more extensive than that required by the husband against his wife. In the event of separation, a mother had few rights over her children. (35)
Until the 1870s, this phenomenon did not change for a better way. A married woman before that time “had no legal claims over her earnings or inheritance acquired after marriage” (35). As a result, women were still submitted to their husbands’ authority. A woman “gained rights over property and money she possessed prior to marriage only in 1882” (35). The Victorian society not only deprived women of their economic rights, but also sexual freedom. They would punish women for erotic experience outside marriage but would forgive or even allow men to have fun.
The sexual double standards locked the women up in their houses and created continuously the images of women being passive and being repressed without any power or energy. The Victorian women would be judged by their reputations. If a middle-class woman had a sexual affair with other man outside the marriage, she would be excluded by her fiancé or husband, and even her children. She would also be rejected by her own family, friends and the public. “In matters of sexual conduct and social customs particularly, deviation was not permitted” (37). In Lady
Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Erlynne worries that her daughter would be isolated by the
society if she runs away from home. She strongly pulls her daughter away from the dangerous zone not only for love but also due to the reason that she judges her- 27 -
daughter is not tough enough to confront these difficulties and discrimination by the public. Mrs. Erlynne’s judgment of her daughter as a mother and an experienced woman is absolutely accurate because Lady Windermere still hesitates whether she should return to Lord Windermere after she arrives at Lord Darlington’s house. She is shocked and stunned by all the sudden changes and she even doubts her decision.
Wilde used Lady Windermere to illustrate how men in the Victorian age had their unpractical fantasies towards women but ignored the possibilities and individuality of women. Therefore, a fallen woman in the Victorian age might work in the prostitution as it would be a way to survive and to escape from starvation. Women who stepped outside the social conventions received criticism and discrimination. They would be regarded as foolish, mad, wicked, ridiculous and ungrateful because they did not follow the high principles which could promote the harmony of society. Victorians would view them as destroyers of the culture, while the female anti-feminists hated their absence of tenderness as they thought the fallen women diminished the women’s cultural influence.
At that time, the “most popular alternative to vacuity for the middle classes was charity. Trained to be loving and emotional, without sexuality, young ladies threw themselves into church work, or perhaps with less uniform ardor, the serving of the family” (Vicinus, xi) as it could be a suitable and comfortable way to give out their passions and transform their sexual desire to the spirit of serving the others. In A
Woman of No Importance, Mrs. Arbuthnot works in the charity because she has
nowhere to go and she considers only churches welcome sinners. The Victorian women had few opportunities to enter public life or receive from higher education.
The working-class women were being treated in a worse condition. On the one hand, working-class women needed to work hard necessarily in order to support their family no matter they were “in factories, in the field, in service, or struggling with
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piecework” (Moran 36). Indeed, the social pressure restricted middle-class women to enter to the domestic employment such as being a governess or teaching. On the other hand, they still had the responsibility to manage the family as wives and mothers. In short, Women in the middle class were labors, and were deprived of the rights of freedom that they should have had in the Victorian age. They not only maintained the family financially, but also needed to handle all the house works and took care of the children after they finished working. Mrs. Arbuthnot seemed to be categorized to the middle-class woman, as Gerald was introduced to work as Lord Illingworth’s secretary by Lady Hunstanton. Gerald considers working for Lord Illingworth is definitely a chance to achieve success.