Christina Pendrak
ENGL 212
March 31, 1999

What would it be like to be an angel? When angels are pictured they are usually dressed in white flowing gowns, female in gender, maybe blond hair and blue eyes, peaceful, serene, almost all-knowing, and silent. This is how the higher classed women of the Victorian age were viewed. Coventry Patmore coined the phrase "Angel in the House" when discussing the women of that time and indeed victorian women were unlike any of those who preceded them. They were book educated, colleges for women were even established by Queen Elizabeth. They were meant to be a worshipped object rather than a thinking, feeling human being in the eyes of men and society. They were also very bored with their lives, a true "Angel in the House."

In the twentieth century education is available to everyone, man and woman, but the ninetieth century women did not have that freedom and were fighting to get it. A girl’s education before then was usually cut off once they left the nursery, but the Victorian age brought about a few changes. Education was seen as an important privilege in life, even Queen Elizabeth supported the further education of women. No longer were girls just learning to sew and pour tea, but Algebra and Science. They learned these subjects, and excelled intellectually, but what can they do with their new found knowledge? Basically nothing. The boys of the family get their education and then break free of the "nest" and explore the world, while the girls, when they’re done with their education, "come home, and stay at home" (Mulock 1604). Girls try different "branch[es] of intellect after another" to try and find a niche in the intellectual world, but it hardly, if ever, works and they are forced in becoming another restless woman (Nightingale1607). In the novel Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, Louisa is educated right alongside of her brother. Dickens even portrays her as smarter than her brother at some points. They get the same education, but they are allowed to do different things with it. Tom, her brother, goes off and gambles and works. Louisa doesn’t have that choice, she is immediately married off and must become the "angel of the house" with no intellectual outlet available to her. This is the great transition to the gaining of women’s rights, give them one privilege and they’ll crave for more. Women "sought education" but were not allowed to use it, this is like taking the freedom away from a lioness, the lioness dislikes it’s position and circumstances and so fights for it’s freedom, the way that victorian women fought for intellectual outlets in the world, fought to obtain jobs as authors, lawyers, and doctors. The women of the Victorian age are set apart from all others in that they strived to gain freedom of knowledge, and then freedom of speech.

What happened to those women who did not shun society and never found their place in the intellectual world? They became wives, mothers, and objects to be seen rather than heard. Upper class women were not expected to do much, there were servants for the house and for their needs, a governess for the children, what was left for a woman to do but invest "whole energies... to the massacre of old Time" (Mulock 1604). If they did try to be a writer, or an artist, it was never viewed as having "sufficient importance not to be interrupted" at any time of the day (Nightingale 1608). Their writings and art usually had to be a hidden hobby, when people came to call, all traces of their work had to be hidden, and she had to look like she was doing some task fit to her station for the better of her family, such as embroidering handkerchiefs. The lack of attention and refusal of acknowledgment towards their intellect was not carried over to her appearance. Her looks and her manners are what truly defines her as an "angel of the house" or not. Louisa, in Hard Times, had a fire in her eyes and a robust look about her when she was young and outspoken, when she became a wife those eyes turned "very gentle" and her face was "rather delicate," clearly this is a big change (61). Is her physical changes viewed as such because now she’s a married woman? A married woman to Dickens was a "little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily" (14). Did women, when they marry, suddenly acquire a feeble mind along with the wedding ring or was that the masculine view of every woman’s mind? Some view that the reason women were allowed to be educated was so to "bring out her ‘natural’ submission to authority and innate maternal instincts," if this is true, the men of England gave their women a weapon for freedom rather than a recognition of submission (Vicinus). With the giving of higher education and the ability to think on her own, instead of becoming more submissive, they became more outspoken. Such an example is Florence Nightingale, her writing "Cassandra" was a very outspoken piece, in which she argues against society and the expected position of all women. She was one of many who decided to not marry but rather find their place in the intellectual world, she was also one of the many who were actually quite successful for her times. Girls were starting to see the success of other victorian women and soon no longer were they "papa’s nosegay of beauty to adorn his drawing-room," they became great novelists, nurses, and anything that they could earn a place of position in (Mulock 1604). Even with all this success in the world, the view, did not change in Victorian times, it happened later. Women who were successful at finding outlets other than their expected duties were either publishing and working under anonymous or masculine names, or were viewed as misfits in society if they claimed credit for their work. So, an "angel of the house" was supposed to be quiet, submissive, feeble, and interested "in all things and all people," the education they received was not useful in their married lives, and in fact gave them a tool to strive for more freedom and equality within society (Mulock 1605).

If you lived as a married woman, who was not allowed to vent her creative and philosophical mind, and had nothing more to do than visit and receive acquaintances, embroider handkerchiefs, and decide the menu for the week, wouldn’t you be bored? Maybe it is because women today have such freedom of speech and action that we can not imagine what it is like to spend over half a lifetime at this task with no pause except in childbearing. Most people are bored half way through their summer vacation, which is as close as most of us get to how victorian women lived, how could we live that way for thirty or forty years? In a way, it was almost cruel for society to give women an education, yet never let them use in a useful way. An education is fuel for the mind, it makes the mind think, dream, and wish. The dreams that victorian women had were kept secrets but still dreamt "till they have no longer the strength to dream," yet they kept dreaming because it was all they really had (Nightingale 1609). Victorian women lived lonely lives, it doesn’t seem that they really had very many true friends, and husbands are never talked about as companions to whom they could speak of their wishes and dreams or speak of anything of importance really. They spent their days in the company of other women, stuck in the same position, yet were bound by society to remain quiet, meek and mild creatures. "They have abundance of time and nothing to occupy it," one can only sew so long or visit so many or receive so many callers (Mulock 1604). Victorian women really had "nothing whatever to do" (Mulock 1604). "Is man’s time more valuable than woman’s?" (Nightingale 1607). Why do men have such freedom of action and women do not, not even in their own homes. They are not allowed, by society, to exercise their "passion, intellect, moral activity," but rather live their lives in dull monotony. It doesn’t seem a very big stretch to say that the women of Victorian times were quite bored with their lives. Maybe this is why they fought so hard for more independence and now we of their future are reaping the benefits of their struggle.

Educated, icons, and bored with their station in life, victorian women started the crusade of womens’ rights and made the world an overall better place. The image of these women being angels is not very fitting to their times, they are indeed womens’ angels who gave us freedom, but in their times it does not seem that the phrase "angel in the house," was very fitting. When we think of angels, don’t we also think of freedom? Angels are not trapped inside of a house, bound by rules to be speechless or feeble. They live with the "Higher Power," are still under his rule, yet are free. Victorian women lived under their husbands’ and societies’ rules, lived among them but were insignificant for the most part, and they were not free. Maybe they should be referred to as ghosts instead of angels, for ghosts do not have the same freedom, or the happiness that angels do.

Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th Ed. Vol 2. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. 1854. United States: Bantam, 1981.

Mulock, Dinah Maria. "From A Woman’s thoughts About Women." Abrams 1604-1606.

Nightingale, Florence. "From Cassandra." Abrams 1606-1609.

Vicinus, Martha ed. Introduction. Suffer and Be Still. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.