VICTORIAN WOMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 144, 20 June 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

VICTORIAN WOMEN

BRILLIANT BRAINS. THEIR WORK FOR THE WORLD. (By “MID-VIC.”) The Victorian Age was one of the most remarkable periods in English history; and those who try to belittle it are either very young, or very ignorant. Much nonsense has been written about it of late, by people who evidently know very little about the subject. A careful study of Queen Victoria’s reign will reveal a positive galaxy of brilliant men and women, no matter in what direction one may look. To hear some ill-informed people talk, one would think the women oi tha generation were helpless fools! Whereas few women of the present day have excelled them in pioneer work, anc in initiating schemes of world wide benefit, and it is all the more to their credit, because they weie breaking new grounu. and often confronted with contemptuous opposition. Victorian women organised nursing as a highly-skilled profession, ’varsity education, and medical training for women. They produced some daring explorers, such as Mrs Isabella Bishop, Florence Kingsley. As poetesses, Mrs Browning, Chnstin-. Rossetti, and even Jean Ingelow, have no serious rivals to-day. 1 don’t think that the most self-satis-fied of modern women novelists ■would openly claim to be superior, from a literary standpoint, to George Eliot or Charlotte Bronte; while I doubt if any of th popular novels by women writers now living, have the circulation of “East Lynne,” or “Lady Audley’s Secret.” They only wish they had! Work Among the Poor. It was a Victorian woman—the wife of the first General Booth who did more than anyone else to develop women’s work among the poor, and the downtrodden outcasts, not only in England, but a work which has spread the whole world over. And Victorian women f-ced the fevers of the Congo, the savagery of such places as uncivilised Fiji, Uganda, and the New Hebrides, in order to better the lives of the natives. It is easy* enough io enter most lands, as a missionary, in these days; it was a very different proposition fifty or sixty years ago.

Judging by the specimens that have come down to us, the Victorian women must have been experts in every branch of needlecraft. And one lias only to read the cookery books of that date to realise that they kept good tables, with well-stocked store cupboards, and could provide the most elaborate meals at a time when cold storage was not in vogue, and it was not the custom to live on tins! It is always a marvel to me how they ever got through the work seeing that the washing was done at home in all well conducted households. Why, they would have been horrified at the thought of their personal wear and fine linen being mixed up with no-one-knows-what other type of washing! And think of the white petticoats, and frilled skirts and muslin dresses; the starched window curtains, that had to lie so many feet on the ground! Then there was the dressmaking! A Victorian lady would have exclaimed, much like the old countrywoman who first saw a “ready-made" offered for sale, ‘ ‘But who on earth would wear them?" IDid I hear someone say the word “Swoon?" Whether they really i swooned or not, I cannot say; but at any rate, the women of that day weren’t all afflicted with nerves, and appendicitis hadn’t been invented. 1 don’t fancy they could have swooned very often, however; there wouldn't have been time, seeing that most of them had large families—though they didn’t consider twelve children anything very wonderful. My grandmother had thirteen children, and my great-aunt had fourteen. Yet no one bestowed medals on them for such achievements! The real truth is—we are not sufficiently removed from the Victorian Age to be able to discern its greatness and see it in its proper perspective. But the time is not far off, when it will be regarded as a golden age of universal development—as it really was. Already we are hunting for Victorian brackets, and whatnots, and wax Howers, and wool work, and it is onlv another step to horsehair sofas! Onlv, the greatness of Victoria’s reign Jay in items far other than its drawing room ornaments. The men and women had brains, and they considered it their bounden duty to use them. We of to-day have greater comforts an d conveniences, better educational facilities, easier travelling and a wider outlook in consequence. Let us at least have the courtesy to be grateful to them for these blessings! In any case, it won’t be long before another generation will bo saying: “What a comical lot those Georgc-the-Fifthians were! Do just look at these photos!"