Oppression Of Women During The Victorian Era

During the Victorian era, men and women were not seen as equal. Men, who were seen as the stronger sex, were expected to provide for their family financially as it would allow them to fulfill their physical needs. Women, on the other hand, were seen as the weaker sex and were expected to keep the home in good condition, raise a family, and care for her husband in order to fulfill their strong emotional needs. A man’s life was often interconnected with being public while a woman’s life was expected to be more intimate and private. Although most of society and society’s men didn’t see anything wrong with their treatment of women, most women during this time experienced severe oppression and were left unable to live a life independently in almost all aspects. Coventry Patmore’s The Wife’s Tragedy (1854), D.H Lawrence’s Odor of Chrysanthemums (1909), and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) all offer a different, but connected view of the treatment of women during this time. Coventry Patmore wrote The
However, she’s still expected to dedicate her life to her husband even though he lacks an emotional connection. In the lines “leaps and weeps against his breast and seems to think the sin was hers,” the reader is shown that men are treated more like Gods instead of humans. They can’t do any wrong, and when they do wrong, the woman is made to believe it’s her fault. When the man continues to show a lack of empathy or love, the woman is still expected to live happily through the lines “At any time, she’s still his wife; Dearly devoted to his arms.” Although Patmore seems to praise his wife for the way she lives and takes care of him, we also know that his wife must be completely submissive as society expected her to. Because he cherished enough to call her an angel, she was supposed to be okay with the fact that she seen the outside world only through