Victorian Women Were Indentured Servants and Expected to Breed Until They No Longer Could

Part two of Victorian women, Gibson girls, and Flappers

How the Victorian woman was viewed by her husband - Continued

Though Hollywood loves to portray the Victorian women as the grand dames of the cotillions, very few of them lived that life of Reilly. Most Victorian women were housewives, cooks, and laundry maids washing clothes by hand. They took care of their children and their men. They made all their own clothes, and nursed the sick. They worked long days getting up before daybreak to take care of their chores. In all due respect the men needed them.

According to some scholars the plight of the women in Victorian times was equal to that of the indentured servant. "The marriage contract into which the vast majority of women entered resembled an indenture agreement between master and servant...Under the terms of the marriage contract, a husband promised to support his wife in return for her promise to serve and obey him, and many men objected to their wives working outside the home on the grounds that doing so violated this solemn agreement." Women were to obey their husbands."

Women had very little if they divorced and were more often than not left destitute.

The Comstock Laws

The Comstock Act, March 2, 1837, in the United States made it illegal to send "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" information through the mail. This law also forbade the passing of information on abortion or sex education. This further left the Victorian woman in a position where she was expected to breed until she could no longer bear children whether she wanted them or not.

Many doctors and even President Theodore Roosevelt, found it immoral for a woman to want to control how many children she would give birth to.

The Comstock Laws was also an attempt to prevent "race suicide", if women did not breed then what would happen to white Anglo-Saxon race?

Besides restricting contraceptives, every state banned abortion. Anthony Comstock and his Society influenced the creation of these laws for Suppression of Vice.

To be continued

Montreal's McGill University is an ivy league University and Concordia University specializes in Women's Issues.

Sources:
http://www.victoriaspast.com/LifeofVictorianWoman/LifeofVictorianWoman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Law