Victorian Values and Women in Public and Private

THE theme of this paper1 is the Victorian ideological divide between the public sphere (viewed as a masculine domain concerned with paid work and national politics), and the private sphere (viewed as a female domain concerned with home and family). These contrasts were in some respects ancient ones: the political dimension of public masculine persons and private female persons going back at least to Aristotle.2 Dichotomies of this kind have had varying force in different historical periods. This paper will suggest that both the ideology and its practical application had particular significance during the Victorian period and the years that immediately followed. A social construction of gender created gendered dualisms of which private and public was but one. Others included personal and political; nature and culture; biology and intellect; work and leisure; intellect and intuition; rationality and emotionality; and morality and power. Do we need these kinds of female / male oppositions? They involve types of shorthand statements of gendered Victorian values that have been taken over by students of the period. But whilst they impose order they may