Besides a small minority the place of women in society, in the beginning of the 19th century, was at home. Altough their attidutes changed during the progression of the century, the main idea of women belonging to the hearth and to their needles whereas men doing the work and earning money remained.
To avoid difficulties in their lifes most of the women accepted this classification.
The desired qualities of a youg victorian woman were: being innocent, virtuous, biddable, dutiful and ignorant of intellectual opinion.
In addition to that is was of good standing if the woman could as well, sing, play an instrument or speak some French or Ttalian.
The womens duty was to get married, to fullfill the metioned virtues, to give birth to many children, to parent them and as well to make sure that home was a place of comfort for the stressed, working men. They were ment to look good and to keep up a nice atmosphere in the household.In contrast to the men women were not allowed to have a lover and if they had or if they were divorced, they were cut by society and were not even allowed to see their children anymore. The women acted out the social representative part for their husbands and dressed up to show the wealth of their family.
From 1900 onwards, mainly caused by new inventions like telephones, bicycles, railways etc., the women felt the atmopsphere of change and started to stand up for more practical dresses, the rigth to carry out paid jobs, better aducation and even for women votes.
Reference to the book:
Although Olivias life in India obviously was different to the life the Victorian women lived in Great Britain, she too fullfilled a lot of these expectations.
She was mainly there to represent Douglas, who did the working and she accepted it. Her life was even more restrictive as she had no chance to go out on the streets on her own and there were only a few persons she coulds spend time with.Due to the fact that they had a lot of Indian servants and no children Olivia did not have to do the chores, which porbably lead to a lot of boredom.
This boredom might as well have been one of the reasons why Olivia started to got to Khatm behind Douglas back and why she later on, as we know, will elope with the Nawab.
Sources: -the book: Heat and Dust
– website: fashion-era
by: Paula
