Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age / Edition 1

by Martha Vicinus

Overview

The ideal woman of the Victorian era was a combination of sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption, and worship of the family hearth—with marriage and procreation being a woman’s only function. Suffer and Be Still is a collection of ten lively essays which document the feminine stereotypes that Victorian women fought against, but only partially defeated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253201683
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	09/22/1973
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.55(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Perfect Victorian Lady
Martha Vicinus

1: The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society
M. Jeanne Peterson

2: From Dame to Woman: W.S. Gilbert and Theatrical Transvestism
Jane W. Stedman

3: Victorian Women and Menstruation
Elaine and English Showalter

4: Marriage, Redundancy or Sin: The Painter’s View of Women in the First Twenty-Five Years of Victoria’s Reign
Helene E. Roberts

5: A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease
E.M. Sigsworth and T.J. Wyke

6: Working-Class Women in Britain, 1890-1914
Peter N. Stearns

7: The Debate over Women: Ruskin vs. Mill
Kate Millett

8: Sterotypes of Femininity in a Theory of Sexual Evolution
Jill Conway

9: Innocent Femina Sensualis in Unconscious Conflict
Peter T. Cominos

10: The Women of England in a Century of Social Change, 1815-1914: A Select Bibliography
S. Barbara Kanner

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"... indispensable reading for any scholar of Victorian cultural and sexual history." —Journal of Social History

From the Publisher

"... indispensable reading for any scholar of Victorian cultural and sexual history." —Journal of Social History

Journal of Social History