All of us have certain ideas about ourselves, and our basic worth as a person. This is called self-image. Your self-image is your picture of yourself. It is your opinion, your value of judgment, and the image of yourself you carry with you out into the world (Fernando 67). The self-image of women has changed over time, particularly in Victorian times compared to our modern day. It is especially interesting to compare the modern steps for "Healthy Ways of Perceiving Yourself" (Fernando 77) to what women actually felt.
In the Victorian Age, women were responsible for domestic duties, and often spent day after day in the home. They were not allowed to be part of the man's world. They were responsible for housework, feeding the family, shopping, cooking, and psychologically and materially sustaining the children, and their husband. "It encompassed a wide range of responsibilities: keeping the household running through the daily round of unfixed but inexorable chores, looking after babies and pre-school children all day and night, being home with the tea ready when they were older, and for the husband after his shift, holding at least acquiescent views on the husband's industrial actionÉAll these things meant subordinating their own needs and identity to those of the other members of the family. The fact that she is sacrificing herself to Ôsignificant others' reinforces the loss of her own significance" (Porter 113). Here, a woman tells about her feelings of work in the home.
Step 6: You are a unique person. The greatest possession you and I have is our individuality, our uniqueness.
"All women are the same. They get married-high ideals. It's going to be lovely to wash the socks, cook the meals and all that for their husbands, but after a few years the novelty wears off. It just becomes a bit of a drudge. Not so much that you mind doing it, but it's the same thing, day in, day out all the time. You get stale yourself" (Porter 116).
Women also had an idea of men's views on the topic.
"They seem to think you're home all day long and it's a life of leisure. They don't realize there's cleaning to be done, and washing, and ironing. I don't like cleaning. I never have, but its got to be done." There was no mention of the satisfaction and virtues of running a home, it was just a drag (Porter 160).
Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle, declared that the sexes were created equal but that men had "usurped a supremacy to themselves" and had tyrannized women using them like "children, fools, or subjects." This process enslaved women and dejected their spirits to the point of stupidity, "whereas in Nature we have as clear an understanding as men" (Eales 33).
Step 7: Don't live by expectations alone. Self-imposed expectations come from us because we want to be perfect, we want to establish an Ôideal image'.
Women were taught that these things were their Godly duty.
"Your place is at home. Your work and mission are there. God can accept no service which is self-imposed while positive duties are neglected" (Gorham 119).
Step 2: Accept yourself as you are. Self-acceptance means a feeling of self-respect, a feeling that I am worthwhile, a feeling that I am OK.
By being forced to live in this confinement, women yearned for independence. As in this story, "The Mother's Chain: or the Broken Link," published in a magazine in the 1890's, a daughter expresses her wishes to leave home and take a job.
"I should like to be independent, to earn my own living; and I am offered a situation as companion to an only child of rich parents, who is to attend classes at Queen's College and I am to share the benefit and help her in her studies; and then if she goes to Newnham or Girton I am to go with her, and I am to have a hundred a-year Mother, think of that!"
Her mother replies, "I think you are making a mistake, Margaret. In my young days, girls of your age were content to remain at home, and make home duties their calling till they married. I should be thankful, when the right time comes, to see youÉmarried; but I do wish you to leave home" (Gorham 109).
Step 8: Be a self-directed person. Don't conform to what is necessary to gain acceptance and approval of other people.
Therefore, it was understood that seeking their own independence should not be their goal. They were taught to believe independence was only for the unfortunate women, and that she should be dependent on a man.
"Woman is so formed as to be dependent on man. The woman who is considered the most fortunate in life has never been independent, having been transferred from parental care and authority to that of a husband." (Gorham 102)
Step 5: Do away with comparison. Wanting to be someone else destroys the good image we have about ourselves.
Many women who remained committed to the preservation of Victorian values about family life and femininity developed and wholeheartedly supported their own adaptation of those opportunities and ideas expressed by the small minority of late-nineteenth-century feminists who looked upon the new ideas and the new opportunities with favor. One symbol of that successful adaptation was the emergence of the positive image of the modern girl, an image that had a secure place in the girl's stories, magazines and advice books of the last decades of the century.
"For her creators, the positive image of the modern girl combines the best of the old and the new. She can benefit from the new opportunities: she can receive a modern education, and pursue a profession; she can cycle and play tennis; but she will always remain feminine, both in physical manner and in mental outlook. The ideal modern girl of the 1890's, in short, could achieve the energy and independence associated with the Ôwidening sphere', but at the same time, she would retain the charm and selflessness of a sunbeam" (Gorham 57).
In other magazines that informed young women about opportunities in masculine professions such as medicine, the reader would still encounter such statements like; "Girls should be like daisies-nice and white, with an edge of red if you look close; making the ground bright wherever they are" (Gorham 120).
Due to expectations, comparisons, and domestic duties, women didn't have much time to consider themselves to be anything. It can be inferred that they possessed a low self-image since they had no time or direction to form any image at all.
"In my field experiences I found that the reason they are unable to answer what we consider as major questions of cause and effect is that they have never applied their minds to such questions. When we raise such questions with them they are surprised at our lack of understanding" (Fernando 172).
Modern opportunities have created more of a place for women in all aspects of life. However, modern women don't appear to have much higher a self-esteem or self-image than the women of Victorian times. On the other hand, most women today focus on their physical self, rather than the emotional or mental selves deprived of Victorian women.
"The equation of female sexuality with glamour is a major public theme in our own culture. It's there in our fairy stories, the little girl's first lessons in romance: a kitchen girl, she learns, can only win a prince if she has a comprehensive make-over and some glamorous new clothes" (Leroy 262).
In a survey conducted by Glamour magazine; three-quarters of women aged 18-35 reported feeling too fat, while only one quarter of them could be so described, and 45% of the underweight women felt they were too fat. Not too be fat has become a life goal for countless women: the Glamour survey also found that nearly half the women, rather than achieving a career ambition or meeting the love of their life, would choose to lose ten pounds (Leroy 64).
Most of the reason that women are so obsessed with physical perfection and beauty is because of their desire to be appealing, especially to men. Armstrong argues that "the ostensible reason for attempting to make oneself beautiful is first to attract men, then to get or hold a man in marriage or other lasting relationship" (Armstrong 208).
Compared to women, the fact is that men are not supposed to have to show or represent themselves in any way in order to be accepted as men. "They are originally and authentically men in the first place. Men are real. Women are made up."
This idea is still the perception of men compared to women just as in the Victorian age. The only difference is, instead of only men believing in their superiority over women, today both men and women believe in this concept. Just as before, the connotation in Victorian time is emotional and mental, and today the focus is on the physical self.
The idea that women's self-image has not changed over time is true in the sense that the entire self-image hasn't improved. However, if I were forced to choose, personally I would place a higher importance on having a high self-image, emotionally and mentally, rather than physically. Which in turn, does mean that women's self-image as a whole has improved greatly since Victorian times.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Nancy and Leonard Tennenhouse. The Ideology of Conduct: Essays in Literature and the History of Sexuality. New York: Metheun, 1987.
Eales, Jacqueline. Women in Early Modern England, 1500-1700. Pennsylvania: UCL Press, 1998.
Fernando, Peter and Frances Maria Yasas. Woman's Image Making and Shaping. India: Sat Prachar Press, 1985.
Gorham, Deborah. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1982.
Leroy, Margaret. Pleasure: The Truth about Female Sexuality. London: Harper Collins, 1993.
Porter, Marilyn. Home, Work and Class Consciousness. Great Britain: Manchester University Press, 1983.
This page was written by Lisa Gatlin, and is maintained by Melanie Ulrich.
This page was last updated Saturday, 18-May-2002 08:28:11 CDT