Family, Love, and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen

Recently, I was given photographs of my great-grandmother Priscilla and her mother Julia. I know some things about them, for example Priscilla was a co-founder of the garden club in Green Bay WI. I have a photocopy of a newspaper clipping taken the day she celebrated 40 years with the club circa 1910. But I want to know more about her daily life. I was pleased to discover Jeanne Peterson's little book on Victorian gentlewomen because I think it describes women like my great-grandmother --except that my grandmother was American and Peterson's Victorian women are British. In the Preface of her book on Victorian Gentlewomen, Jeanne Peterson says the image many of us have of the Victorian gentlewoman is flawed. She says you will find her everywhere- playing tennis, on horseback, caring for her husband and children, and traveling in the Mexican mountains. She says she came to the study of Victorian gentlewoman because she wishes to put to rest the "persistent stereotypes of the Victorian lady that survive, despite all the recent research and writing about women." Peterson says the stereotypes of the Victorian woman persist for three reasons: 1) "We see what we want to see. And it has been a comfort to think of the Victorian era as a golden age when, at least for the upper-middle class, the ideal nuclear family really existed.." 2) The sources we refer to when reading about the Victorian age including John Stuart Mill's 'Essay on the Subjection of Women' and Virginia Woolfe's 'Room of One's Own' which describe the "plight" of the woman in the 19th Century. 3) Students of this period have a tendancy to see the Victorian middle class as a coherent whole when in fact it was comprised of an upper-middle and a lower-middle that lived very different lives. Peterson investigates the lives of several dozen women, all from the upper-middle class. She discovers these women were writers, teachers, physicians, and in the case of a few, scientists. She describes this group as the "achieving class" because it consisted of women like Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightengale, and George Eliot. One of the more interesting members of Peterson's group is the famous entomologist Eleanor Ormerod, who began life as the daughter of a Gloucestershire landed gentleman. Her discovery of an unusual locust led her to the life of a scientist. Ormerod wrote phamphlets and books, taught and lectured, and became one of Britain's leading agricultural entomologists. Although I believe Peterson may have intended to demonstrate something different, the message I received from her book was that some women were able to overcome almost unsurmountable odds and achieve great things in spite of the restrictions of the Victorian era. In every case Peterson examines, wealth, family position, and the assistance of a loving male relative were all critical factors in opening doors otherwise closed. And, for some women, the doors remained closed. Henry and William James' sister Alice, and Virginia Wo