ABSTRACT
After an examination of some of the more important aspects in the life of the middle-class woman, one begins seriously to question if the Victorian woman, as she has so long been depicted, ever really existed. Certainly, the woman whose life was characterized as leisurely, dependent, prudish, and boring was not the married middle-class woman of the nineteenth century. Whether or not the image applies to upper-class women remains to be investigated, and it is a task worth undertaking in nineteenth-century English social history. The woman portrayed in this study perhaps lacked some of the glamor and romantic flavor of the woman in the image. However her life, viewed in terms of realities, in terms of the problems she encountered, gives the Victorian woman more meaning and substance than ever before. Within the context of the family, her role was not only functional but central and crucial. One could not possibly understand anything about the Victorian family without understanding the woman in the family, who nurtured it, who managed it, who comforted it. In her role as mistress of the house, in her relationship with domestics and most importantly, in her role as mother, the middle-class woman of the nineteenth century defined herself.
