Status of Women in Late Victorian Society
The writings of John Stuart Mill in ôThe Subjection of Womenö and The Odd Women by George Gissing both demonstrate the status of women in late Victorian society. This status, apparent in the writings of both authors, is one that is subjugated to patriarchal dominance. Mill likens the status of women to a tree or hedge in a garden that is nurtured and pruned by men. Mill makes the claim that real justice in society would make no distinction based on sex. In The Odd Women, Gissing does show women who try to change society to undermine the patriarchy, like Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn. However, in his character of Monica Madden, who tries to change her relationship with men on the personal level, Gissing most shows his similarity to MillÆs assessment of the status of women in Victorian society.
Women living in the Victorian era were relegated to the roles of wife, mother, and housekeeper. The domestic sphere being a womanÆs place and marriage being a ônorm,ö were accepted mores of the era by many men and women. Those women who were outside these boundaries represented the ôodd womenö referred to by Gissing, those women who remained single and required their own source of income. Mill maintains in ôThe Subjection of Womenö that historically women have been kept in an unnatural and controlled state by men that have undermined their true nature and expression. It also limits the development of higher skills in women from inactivity, ôcondemningö women in MillÆs (1989) assessment to a ôdull and hopeless lifeö (p. 216).
Mill argues that women are kept like flowers in the garden, dependent upon men for the resources that enable them to exist, both economically and physically. The principle the regulated the relations between the sexes during the Victorian era is one that, to Mill, was unjust because it changed the natural condition of human beings by positing on men a po...