Victorian Women on Women: Phases Two and Three

For phase two I used the card catalog in relation to Victorian Women in the 19th century. I took down a couple of texts that had interesting titles, two being "Beauty's Triumph" and "An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex." "Beauty's Triumph" had no author, and rightfully so. Its format, argument, and conclusion all show very risky approaches to woman's role in the 19th century. It is divided into three sections with an argument by a woman named Sophia, a response to Sophia by a male writer, and Sophia's conclusion about the superiority of women over men. The concept intrigued me because it sounded so modern in its ways of retort.

The second source I pulled was "An Enquiry...." by Thomas Gisbourne. The points made in text are very stereotypical role placed upon women in the 19th century. His first claim to a woman's responsibilities is "contributing daily and hourly to the comfort of husband, of parents..." with the list going on about various people in a domestic wife in the 19th century would interact with on a daily basis.

For phase three I used Barlee and Mulock-Craik to highlight what each thought a woman's duties were and why they were responsible for societal deeds. Ellen Barlee takes aspects of societal expectations for women and places them within context of what she believes a woman’s duties in life should be, and acceptable actions to partake in. Although actions are more like “deeds” in a sense of owing society some sort of interaction. Mulock-Craik is very clear that in her book A Woman’s Thoughts about Women, her reason was based on her opinion. However, her arguments for what women in the 19^th century where able to do were very similar to Barlee’s. However, I found that Mulock-Craik differed in the way that women were endowed with the need, or even right, just to do something. Mulock-Craik describes women’s versatile ability to assist society as the only thing women really have to do, since they have so much free time. She also talks about the contradictory stereotype that in women, “helplessness is feminine and beautiful”, but idle time is not acceptable. In her opinion, the only thing women and men are equally endowed with are time.

Barlee’s claims on women needing to work in societal deeds is the only thing a woman is socially allowed to do in terms of gaining any type of accomplishment in their lives that other people can see. They both see women as caretakers, and naturally so. Women have the children, so women assist the needy and helpless. Both authors state that women are high achievers that have the right characteristics to make them in charge of caring for people as their primary roles in life.

An outside source titled “An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex” by Thomas Gisbourne takes a very similar approach about what women are allowed and expected to do in their life to make them accomplished. However, the difference being obvious, it was written by a man. Gisbourne takes the top 3 priororities a woman carries, and ranked them in order of importance with “contributing daily and hourly to the comfort of husband, of parents, of brothers and sisters,” agreeing with Barlee and Mulock-Craik in terms of what a woman in good at. However Mulcok-Craik goes about a different rhetorical style and uses it to her advantage. She uses a “feminine style” in terms of being on a personal level and able to persuade the audience because it is so casual.