Account for changes, ststus and expectations of working class women in victorian period (england only) - Essay Example

Women were beginning to question their allotted place in society as more and more opportunities opened for them in the urban centers of the country, providing them with a means of supporting themselves and freeing themselves from the yoke of male domination. However, at the same time, these positions were not the equal rights positions of modern times, so it was often difficult to determine whether one wanted to sacrifice freedom for comfort or comfort for freedom. Rarely was it possible to attain both and often it was found, too late, that it was possible to attain neither.

The Victorian period’s characterization as a time of change is appropriate, particularly when taken in context with the changes occurring in the lives of women. Thanks to advances in technology and a general shift toward the cities, women’s spheres were fundamentally shifted in the home, in society and in work and they became more and more recognized as a force to contend with in the nation’s legislative process. The difficulties faced by women can be traced somewhat through literature, such as George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876).

A little knowledge about the author is itself an education in the struggle of women to accomplish their goals. Although the book is published under a male name as the only means by which it could possibly gain the attention of a publisher, the author was actually female, a woman named Mary Ann Evans. This begins to illustrate the inability of women to control their own careers or destinies as well as their struggles to break these bounds. In the Victorian era, the barriers of the class system rigidly defined the role of a woman.

At the time women belonged to four distinct classes: nobility and gentry, middle-class, upper working-class, and lower working-class (Levine-Clark, 1991). These women each had their own specific standards and roles within society.