Queen Victoria and the Role of Women

This June marks the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and as I think back on England's royals, I can't help but remark on my favorite queen of all, Queen Victoria. She has continued to have a special place in English memory as well as in popular culture across the shores here in America. Most recently, she was played by Emily Blunt in the strikingly beautiful film Young Victoria.

Queen Victoria reigned for over 63 years (the longest reign of any British monarch). During that time, the British Empire experienced great expansion and progress which paralleled the technological, economical and social advances of the Industrial Revolution. Victoria's reign also saw the rise of the middle class and changing roles for women. Among Victoria’s greatest contributions was her promoting a culture of domesticity and family life. She was a model of morality, and a striking contrast to the regents that preceded her. Although she was Sovereign, she celebrated her role as wife and mother. Her marriage to Albert was a happy one and they had nine children together. The public often saw her out and about with her family, and she soon came to represent a feminine ideal for women to emulate.

The home was hailed as the center of a woman’s moral universe, and a symbol of her feminine capabilities. Coventry Patmore’s "The Angel in the House" eulogized the Victorian wife and homemaker and set up an ideal for women to emulate. Homemaking was no longer mundane drudgery but re-envisioned as the means by which a woman fulfilled her God-given calling. The Victorian era in many ways created the feminine ideal of a woman as wife, mother and homemaker. Although later generations of women would question a woman's role in the home, it was a welcome and notable change for women during Victoria's reign.