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The Victorian Era Of Victorian England

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The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 until 1901 when she died. Although the Victorian era was good for the United Kingdom in many ways, it was also a time where there were great differences in gender equality leaving women with very few rights. Therefore, making it a period when women began to demand equal treatment to men and although their rights would not be equal until the 20th Century, Victorian women started the idea. This essay looks at 5 key areas of Victorian life to show the gender and sexuality issues that existed. First, it will describe the Victorian idea of ‘separate spheres’ for men and women. Second, it will look at education and work to show how difficult it was for women to be …show more content…

In this era, everything revolved around gender and the way other people saw you was always based upon this.

For women it was a very different story, they were expected to be innocent. They were only seen to have a use in domestics so were forced to stay at home to cook, clean and only take an interest in what their husbands wanted, leaving them with no freedom of their own. They, themselves, were not allowed to be educated or know a world outside the home chores. They were also expected to raise their children and prepare them for the life ahead if them, without knowing much about it themselves. From this they gained the nickname ‘angels of their homes’, which sounds a lot more exciting than it really was.

At the start of the Victorian era many children did not go to school and most worked in factories. There were some good boys’ schools around, but only rich families could afford to pay the fees, so even if you were male, the wealth of your family determined whether your life would lead to something worthwhile or not. Girls did not go to school at all at the start of the era, so were left with little, if any, education. Girls from wealthy families could be taught at home by a governess, but only the minority had this luxury. From 1833, this all changed and the English parliament began to provide schools for poor children. The Forster elementary act

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