LORD MACAULAY
THOMAS CARLYLE
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
GEORGE ELIOT
CHARLES DICKENS
MATTHEW ARNOLD
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
REPRESENTATIVE WRITERS OF THE REIGN
I must not forget, in considering the Englishwoman of 1840, her extraordinary cowardice. It was impressed upon her from childhood that she was a poor, weak creature—that she needed protection even in broad daylight. Therefore, when a young lady of fortune went abroad, unless she drove in her carriage she had a hulking footman walking behind her. If she was not a lady of fortune, she was escorted by a maid; she could go nowhere by herself; she saw danger at every corner, and was ready to scream at meeting a strange man in the open street. Nor must we forget her little affectations: she could not help them; they were part of her education. For instance, it was a very common affectation with girls that they could not eat anything at all, such was their extraordinary delicacy and elevation above the common mortal. So they sat at dinner with a morsel upon their plates, which they left untouched. Some girls made up for this privation by a valiant lunch; some habitually lived low, and practised, though in no religious spirit, abstemious austerities. I think, however, that the girl who wished to be thought consumptive, cultivated a hectic bloom, and coughed and fainted, carried affectation perhaps too far.
THOMAS HOOD
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
WILLIAM MORRIS
ROBERT BROWNING
REPRESENTATIVE POETS OF THE REIGN
Such was the woman of 1840: in London, among the richer sort, a gentle doll, often good and affectionate, unselfish and devoted, religious, charitable, tender-hearted; sometimes, through the shutting up of all the channels for intellectual activity, snappish, impatient, and shrewish; in the country, in addition to these qualities, a housewife of the very first order.
Let us turn to the Englishwoman—the young Englishwoman—of 1897.
