When a woman was disapproved in the masculine world, she became weak and fragile. Her only function was being a wife and a mother in the family (Basch 5).
“Family” is a very important issue in the Victorian age. The reason that the Victorian principles and doctrines could operate continuously was because of the family construction. Family was the inner powerful structure of the society and home-life was the mainstay of the moral system in England (A Woman of No Importance Act I, p.81). Family life constructs “with family ties, with patterns of intimacy, neglect, love, duty, the delegation of authority and responsibility, the nurture of ideals and codes of conduct and with the effect of these upon society as a whole” (Wohl 15). The Victorian family was a “self-sufficient unit, an inner world of mutual dependencies that almost precluded contact with outside society” (15). In addition, Victorian family also established the protective atmosphere and provided the essential preparation for the young people to enter and influence the society at the same time. “Thus the Victorian family [emerged] as both a refuge and a springboard” (15). The reason that
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the Victorian family could remain as the cornerstone of the Victorian society was due to the women—the invisible but significant factor. Although women were regarded as the subordinate to the males as their social status was lower than men, they were the key subjects who kept the family function working. Vicinus proclaimed that “the perfect lady’s role function was marriage and procreation” (x) and usually these two stages in life were considered as one. “All her education was to bring out her ‘natural’
submission to authority and innate maternal instincts” (x). Moreover, “young ladies were trained to have no opinions lest they seem too formed and too definite for a young man’s taste, and thereby unmarketable as a commodity” (x). The model of the perfect lady was established by the Victorian society. As women were educated to believe that they were indeed morally superior but inferior to men in their lives because of their lack of the sexual drive and their weaker natures, the chaste women seemed to be exerting an “all-pervasive moral influence” (xiv) at home. Women who violated the moral code would be viewed as the fallen women, they threatened to overthrow the society with the identities of prostitute, adulterer and divorcee. The most dangerous women were adulterous women. They would be labeled as lustful women and would not be accepted by the society and the public. Thane also supplied another statement that women in the Victorian age would rather constantly and passively be oppressed in the family because they could not remain living independently without the family’s economic support. No matter what kind of cruel realities and hazards they had to encounter, Victorian women still thought the goal for a female was marriage and motherhood as they were taught to put all their effort to become the typical and trained women which fit the stereotype and the taste of the patriarchal society (Thane 182).
Most of the Victorian women dreamed of being a wife and a mother, rather than to have a larger dream as to achieve success or to contribute to the nation or the
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society, as this “prominent achievement and profession” could only be fulfilled and executed by the male in the patriarchal societal structure. Women’s job in the family was to maintain the family function. To the Victorian empire, the motherhood could
“promote the raising of the healthier national stock” (Thane 183) among the lower-class family because earlier in the century, good mothering was proposed as the contribution of the women to firm up the rapidly changing British society. The Victorians were convinced that a stable home could produce cautious and responsible citizens. Its additional purpose was to help to broaden Britain’s international position.
The relationship between men and women in the Victorian family was more or less universally patriarchal. The Victorians believed that women were sexually dormant until their passions were aroused by the men. It seemed that when it came to protecting the family structure the society would leave the burden to women. The women held the key influence towards the family because they were responsible for the children’s care and the household chores but they were treated by the society unfairly. They did not own any authority and economic power in the family; instead, they needed to fit themselves to play the roles of a tender wife and competent mother.
But, Mrs. Erlynne does not play the roles in Lady Windermere’s Fan, while Mrs.
Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance holds her belief and sticks to her own choice rather than sacrificing herself to submit to the patriarchal family construction.
“When it came to love and marriage, the Victorians were a curious mix of romance and realism” (Kerr-Jarrett 14), Kerr-Jarrett declared that the Victorians viewed family with some forces to balance with all of the elements of romance and realism, sentiment and hard common sense. The Victorians regarded the family as one unity, but if the mother parted with the sons and daughters, the family would fall into disgrace and stressful as they not only lost one of the family member, but also lost the reputation around the neighborhood. Therefore, neither Mrs. Erlynne nor Lord
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Windermere wants Lady Windermere to know the true identity of Mrs. Erlynne—the birth mother of Lady Windermere—because this will be too overwhelming to Lady Windermere. Both of them aim to protect Lady Windermere from any harm.
Victorian families in general also developed a very clear social purpose. “It was the family, after all, that ‘civilised’ the individual human being, that—on a very practical level—made him or her a worthier, more useful member of the larger family of society” (Kerr-Jarrett 14-15). Therefore, the Victorians honored the family functions. Of course the Victorian family raised the position of the men in the family due to the patriarchal society that the men needed to be the “revered head, earning his family’s living and directing its relations with the outside world” (15). But the women’s status was certainly subordinate and limited. They could only stay at home, because home was all-important, and it would be a place for them to operate their functions as women, especially the function to influence their children. The Victorians thought that a perfect woman needed to be a wife and a mother because this
“profession” was not only the center of the family, but also the magnet that could nurture and educate a man to become a civilized being and a social Christian.
Therefore, the wife was definitely the light of the home (15). The basic level of the family life was marriage, therefore; on this subject, many young men and women respected marriage as a way to raise their economic and social position. Consequently, they looked forward to their ambitious parents to arrange their life for them, as marriage was a general means of “increasing one’s credit and one’s fortune and of ensuring one’s success in the world” (16). But, the middle-class Victorians in particular would put more emphasis on love in the marriage rather than the jump board of the financial and social status. Realistically, although many Victorians also supported that a successful and balanced marriage should be combined with love, they still considered about the material circumstances. In addition, they also considered
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that between fortunes and ages of both, there should be a rough parity to aviod that the wealth and possession would be advantaged to only one side. If not, the one who had better-established social status should offset all the possession. The Victorian young girls took love as an important subject in the marriage; but more significantly, their prior life business was looking for the right husband. Therefore, most of them entered marriage with ignorance and innocence. But for the men, being married “was always a sure badge of respectability” (17). Man was the head of the woman. A man was the “protector, chief breadwinner and head of the household” (Perkin 73) and could take charge of the wife and children, with them being obedient and submissive to his principles and rules. Perkin argues that “[m]arriage sanctified by religion was a sacrament, binding two people together for life” (73). By marriage, two became one person in law, but the men took the power over the women. Perkin continued to declare that the husband possessed the authentic authority:
He had almost complete control over her body, and their children belonged to him. Unless a marriage settlement arranged things differently, the husband was entitled to all his wife’s property, and he could claim any money she earned. Indeed, as soon as a woman accepted a proposal of marriage, her property belonged entirely to the man. It was argued that
‘were she permitted to give away, or otherwise settle her property, he might be disappointed of the wealth he looked to in making the offer.’ The ironic thing was that in the Church of England marriage service a man promised to endow his wife with all his worldly goods, yet in practice it was the wife who forfeited her property to him. (73-74)
To some extent, the Victorian women’s status and positions were pathetic and miserable; no matter being a wife or a mother, as men took charge in the family. That was how the patriarchal family was regarded as the essential and fundamental basis of
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the civilized Victorian society (74).