ABSTRACT
By the 1840s, the ideal role for women in British society was that of a wife. Girls’ education was therefore focused on that goal. While it was acceptable for working-class girls to undertake paid work, especially in domestic service before marriage, the middle-class girl was expected to stay at home helping her mother with light domestic duties and visiting. So dominant was the idea that marriage was the middle-and upperclass woman’s sole goal that single women were seen as failures, a social problem and labelled ‘superfluous women’. The Saturday Review voiced colourfully, if somewhat provocatively, the views of many when it declared:
Married life is a woman’s profession; and to this life her training – that of dependence – is modelled. Of course, by not getting a husband, or losing him, she may find herself without resources. All that can be said of her is, she has failed in business; and no social reform can prevent such failures. The mischance of the distressed governess and the unprovided widow is that of every insolvent tradesman. She is to be pitied; but all the Social Congresses in the world will not prevent the possibility of mischance in the shape of broken-down tradesmen, old maids and widows. Each and all are frequently left without resources; and each and all always will be left without resources; but it would be just as reasonable to demand that every boy should be taught two or three professions because he may fail in one, as it is to argue that all our social habits should be changed just because one woman in fifty – or whatever the statistics are – is a spinster or widow without any resources.1
