Sexuality and double standards in the Victorian Era
One of the enduring inventions of the Victorian era is the sleazy tabloid press, for although the newspapers remain traditional in appearance, the new journalism of the 1880s fills them with sex and scandal. King of the new breed of editors is William Thomas Stead (1849-1912), son of a Yorkshire Congregationalist minister.
In 1883, W T Stead becomes editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and soon gives the public a mix of moral outrage and salacious titillation. At the start of June 1885, readers are warned not to buy the issue of 6 July because it will contain shocking matters. On that date, the issue is headlined 'The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon', and describes in detail the trade in child sex. It covers the purchase of young girls from their mothers, the procuring of virgins for upper-class gentlemen, the international trade in little girls and the 'unnatural vices' to which they are subjected.
But when Stead claims to have actually witnessed a girl, Eliza Armstrong, being bought from her mother for £5, he goes too far. The story is a set-up and the girl's father, who did not know about it, brings a prosecution against Stead for abduction. The disgraced Stead is sent to jail for three months. After that, he carries on as a sensationalist journalist before dying on the Titanic.
But over-zealous newspaper editors are not the only victims of sex scandals. In 1891, Charles Parnell – the charismatic leader of the Irish movement for self-rule in the British parliament – falls from power because of his long-standing affair with Kitty O'Shea, the wife of another Irish MP. This is a political catastrophe for Ireland, which remains under British rule until the war of independence in 1919-21.
Other victims include Charles Dilke (1843-1911) – a Liberal MP whose hopes of being Gladstone's successor are dashed when he is cited as an adulterer in an infamous 1886 divorce case – and the homosexual Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), who spends two years in prison for homosexual offences. He writes about his experiences in the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol and dies in exile in Paris.
Women
Victorian women are second-class citizens. They have fewer legal rights than men, and almost no political rights – in particular, they're not allowed to vote. By law, a married woman is the property of her husband, and her possessions – even her children – belong to him. Influenced by the Bible, many people believe that men and women are born to fulfil different roles: men to command, and women to obey men and bear and raise their children. But, in an age when contraception is still primitive, giving birth is hazardous – many women die in childbirth or soon after.
On the pedestal
Respectable Victorian women are heavily idealised. The main myth is the 'angel in the house', named after an 1854 poem by Coventry Patmore (1823-96). Those who subscribe to this myth see women as innocent creatures who need male protection – and the best form of protection is confinement in a solid, middle-class home.
Along with this is the notion of 'separate spheres' – men deal with public business, women with private. Women's sphere of action is moral, while that of men is material. Women inhabit their own worlds where they nurture the nation's values. Women are not just homebodies, but embodiments of pure virtue, humble and submissive. They wear bodices that completely cover their bosoms and arms, and their skirts reach down to their ankles. However, novels such as Anne Brontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) show that the myth of domestic heaven often conceals the reality of domestic hell.
A third myth of Victorian womanhood is that of the 'fallen woman'. Based on traditional Christian notions of woman as the daughter of Eve, the idea of the 'fallen woman' says that women are innately prone to corruption. Victorian society makes a rigid separation between pure angels and immoral women.
Hypocrisy and double standards
Conceptions of women's passive sexual nature, added to ideas about possessive patriarchal individualism, equal male dominance. Any sexual transgression in polite society is severely policed. No matter how great the provocation, simply by leaving her husband a woman quits respectable society and becomes an outcast. Although she may have done nothing wrong, she is a 'fallen woman' … and fallen women are excluded from polite society.
This system gives middle-class men plenty of opportunity to indulge in hypocrisy and double-standards. It is seen as natural for gentlemen to use prostitutes but unnatural for women to have affairs. But while many middle-class women accept the system, the priorities of working-class women are often different. Yet the factory and mines legislation of the 1840s is motivated more by a concern for women's morals rather than by a concern for their physical health. If working hours are limited, women will have more time to spend at home caring for their families.
Prostitution
Prostitution is not illegal. Estimates of the number of prostitutes in Victorian London differ depending on who is doing the estimating. The police claim there are 7,000, while the Society for the Suppression of Vice says 80,000. A 19th-century city commonly has 1 prostitute per 36 inhabitants, or 1 per 12 adult males, which means 55,000 prostitutes for London, often called 'the whoreshop of the world'.
Off limits
London has relatively few brothels but does have many rooming houses that tolerate prostitution. In the 1870s, Mary Jeffries runs an exclusive brothel, catering to the aristocracy. One of her rooms is fitted like a torture chamber for sado-masochistic sex.
Many prostitutes are independent, working women. They are primarily young, single and aged between 18 and 22. Most have previously had low-wage jobs, primarily working as domestic maids; a few support illegitimate children. They visit pubs, which are off limits to respectable woman. Many prostitutes only work temporarily and often begin when they move from one town to another or from the countryside to London. Most prostitutes soon settle down, many marrying former clients.