ABSTRACT
In this chapter we address the biocultural contexts of health and wellness for girls and young women in the Victorian period. Beginning with a discussion of discourses around education, we analyze the heated debate over whether women’s bodies—their anatomy and physiology, particularly with respect to reproduction—affected their ability to receive an education equal to that of their male peers. We then delve more deeply into the lives of working-class girls and women in the nineteenth century, exploring the impact of factory work and the legislative changes that affected female health and wellness. From a biocultural perspective we consider both direct and indirect measures of health and wellness in industrial England, paying particular attention to the epidemic of rickets and its impact, and what such measures can reveal about the lived experience of being female in the Victorian era. Studying health and disease in the nineteenth century, and the social and environmental conditions that put women of all classes at risk for increased morbidity and mortality, offers a useful set of insights into cultural discourses around the female body. By analyzing the widespread use of corsets and other measures to obtain the ideal silhouette dictated by the fashions of the era, we gain insight into how women were controlled and considered within the social fabric of Victorian society. In conclusion, we investigate later nineteenth-century efforts to reform fashion by altering the restrictive garments worn by most women, examining how such social reforms led to greater social mobility for girls and young women. Our analysis in this chapter paves the way for a discussion in Chapter 4 of marriage, motherhood, and health for women during the childbearing years.50
