I declared my intention to spend a good portion of this space challenging some popular myth-perceptions of the Victorian era, so let's begin with one of my favorites: myth-perceptions about what life was like for the Victorian woman. A bit of casual research online will quickly convince you that the 19th century was an awful time to be a woman. As just one example, here's a summary of a course on "19th Century Feminism," offered on Study.com: Women had few rights in the 19th century. They could not own property, could not vote, did not have legal rights to their children, could not work outside the home, and were generally controlled by their husbands. Women's roles in the 19th century were encompassed by the domestic sphere. They were largely in charge of domestic duties, such as raising children and housework, and were confined to their homes, while men participated in public duties, such as politics and commerce. Also, the sky is green and it never rains in England (or Indianapolis in the summertime). While there are one or two at least partially accurate assertions here, the statement as a whole doesn't hold water. But before I dump a pile of facts on you, let's approach the statement with logic, and see if it holds up to scrutiny even if one does not know the facts. Let's begin with the term "19th century." A lot can change in a century. If, for example, you've ever watched a movie filmed in the 1930s, you'll know that things looked a bit different than they did in 1999. In reality, while women of the 1840's might have done X, those of the 1860's most certainly did Y, while those of the 1880's not only did Z but considered those X-folks (who might have been their great-grandparents) to be hopelessly old-fashioned. Saying "women of the 19th century did X" is like saying "people of the 20th century wore poodle skirts and bell-bottoms." Sure they did, but not at the same time – and by the end of the century, no one would have dreamed of wearing either. This particular class addresses the roles of women in 19th century America, but America did not exist in a vacuum. Laws affecting women in Britain also had effects in America, and vice versa. Advances in women's rights moved at very different speeds on opposite sides of the pond. Sometimes Britain led the way; sometimes America did. In this and the next three blogs, we'll look at the roles of women in both countries. Now let's look at the word "women" itself. The statement doesn't say that these conditions applied to "some" women or even "most" women. By simply stating "women," the implication is that the conditions applied to all women in the 19th century, everywhere, all the time. The statement that "women... could not work outside the home," then, logically, implies that no women worked outside the home in the 19th century. A Victorian Maid Girl's Own Paper, 1884 Now, I hope, logic is starting to murmur, er, um, but what about the servants? The reliance upon servants is something many people despise about the Victorian era. (Spoiler alert: It's not as elitist as you might think, but that's a topic for another blog.) Indeed, the statement that "19th century women couldn't work outside the home" would come as a great surprise to over 1.6 million women in Britain – the estimated number who were employed in domestic service in 1881. (I confess, these stats are from Google AI, but are drawn from some highly reputable sources, such as BBC History and Cambridge University.) In 1851, it was estimated that 25% of working women were employed in domestic service; the number rose to 35% by 1881, while in London it might be as high as 50%. In America the numbers were lower; the 1870 census, the first to track women's employment, showed over 800,000 women in domestic service – just under 50% of all those who listed paid occupations. In America, however, fewer women worked "paying" jobs or outside the home for one simple reason: as late as 1870, 74% of the population of the US was considered "rural," residing in small towns or on farms. One could argue that much of Britain was rural as well – but the distance to "town" in America could be much, much greater. Until 1870, more than 50% of all employed men were farmers. And while a farmer's wife certainly isn't working outside the home, the same could be said of the farmer himself! That's still a lot of working women on both sides of the pond (and in Victorian Britain, working "women" were defined, for census purposes, as females over age 10). But the number of women in domestic service tells us something even more important. If, in 1851, 25% of British working women were in domestic service, then 75% were doing something else. In other words, women were working in factories, shops, schools, hospitals, and many other places, most of which weren't very nice. Until the Coal Mines Act of 1842, women and children crawled, often half-naked, through the hot, dark tunnels of coal mines, pulling ore carts. Once the Act prohibited women from working in the mines, the "pit brow lassies" took over a great many above-ground jobs at the mines, and shocked the nation by insisting on wearing trousers for workplace safety. Likewise, in America, if roughly 50% of women in paid employment were domestic servants, the other 50% had to be working in other types of jobs. (In fact, in 1870, there were over 500 female doctors in America, and over 64,000 women who ran cotton mills!) A Victorian Shop-Girl Girl's Own Paper, 1880 A big problem in the statement above is the use of the term "could not." There's a difference between "couldn't" and "didn't." "Didn't" implies a choice. As a Victorian woman, I might technically be able to work outside the home, but for various reasons (most having to do with my social standing), I might choose not to, even if that meant serious financial hardship. "Couldn't," however, implies that I am not allowed to seek outside employment, whether I want (or need) to or not. Now, we already know that "couldn't certainly doesn't apply to thousands of middle-class, working-class, and servant-class women in the 19th century. Does it apply to the remainder? That's a complicated question, involving a great many variables, but the short answer is that "could not" is not the right phrase. No laws prohibited women, of any class, from working, on either side of the pond. The issue was almost entirely a social one, a matter of public (and private) opinion. Put simply, if you were an upper-class woman (a lady or a "gentlewoman"), working could jeopardize your social standing (and your marital chances), and in the 19th century, this was more important than we can possibly imagine today. At the same time, even by the 1860's, many women and men recognized that employment for women of all classes was becoming increasingly necessary. England often had a surplus of marriageable women - or rather, a shortage of men, largely due to the fact that, between 1800 and 1899, Britain was involved in no fewer than 33 wars and colonial conflicts. (And let's not forget that America's Civil War left approximately 200,000 widows, and also significantly reduced the number of males on the marriage market.) This meant that a great many British women of the higher classes could not rely on marriage to secure their future. If one couldn't rely upon the support of a husband, one had to rely on the (often begrudging) support of relatives, find some sort of work, accept parish charity (the workhouse), or starve. In 1860, the magazine Leisure Hour pointed out: "Shall women work or not in other than domestic employments?" This question being now summarily answered by the imperious, "They must!" words need not be wasted, nor elaborate arguments urged, in opposition to ascertained facts. At present, about three-fourths of our single women, two-thirds of our widowed, and one-seventh of our married women, are thrown upon their own resources for a livelihood, besides those who assist in the occupations of their male relatives. It is no less well known that there is an increasing surplus of nearly a million of women in the country over the other sex, who, unless as emigrants, have thus no chance of being married. The article lists a host of occupations that were currently considered acceptable for women, and goes on to recommend several new venues of work, including work in reformatories, prisons, workhouses and hospitals! A Flower-Seller Sunday Magazine, 1897 That was in 1860 – just a bit over halfway through the 19th century. By the 1880's, British women had access to thousands of jobs in factories, shops, schools, hospitals, and many other areas. By this time, the stigma of being a "working women" was also decreasing. It still existed, of course, and the higher one's social status, the less approval one would find for working outside the home, and the more limited the range of "acceptable" job options. However, the upper classes formed a very small percentage of the population as a whole, and women of the middle and working classes were not only able to work but were expected to do so. Poverty and the inability to support oneself was generally regarded not as a natural consequence of a variety of social ills, but as a personal moral failure; the workhouse was not a refuge, but a punishment. The reality is that working-class women, and women of just about any "lower" social class, have worked outside the home for centuries. And, for centuries, upper-class women were far less able to do so. What changed in the Victorian era was not whether or not "women" could work. What changed, slowly, was the social stigma – which existed long before the 19th century – that made it very difficult for upper-class women to work. The 19th century wasn't a period when "women couldn't work." It was a period during which job opportunities for women of all classes expanded dramatically and exponentially. For more images of Victorian women at work, visit Working Women of the 19th Century: A Gallery, compiled specifically for this post. Find Out More: Female Employment (Leisure Hour, 1860) "19th Century Women's Feminism: Overview, Women's Rights & Expectations," https://study.com/academy/lesson/feminism-in-the-19th-century-womens-rights-roles-and-limits.html Timeline of the British Army 1800-1899 (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_British_Army_1800%E2%80%931899 Women's Work: Making a living in the 19th Century, by Molly Owen https://www.heartsthroughhistory.com/2014/08/07/anne-carrole-3/ See also these sections on VictorianVoices.net: Jobs Suitable for the Gentlewoman Should She Work? Working in the Victorian World (all types of jobs for men and women)

Recent: The Wild World of Victorian Valentines Welcome to the VVN Blog Archives: March 2026 February 2026 Topics: Holidays • Women • Miscellany About • Be Our Guest! Don't Miss Out! Sign up to be notified of upcoming posts! Full Name: Email: Subscribe    Submit