Victorian Age

Main Features:

- The Industrial Revolution and Free

Trade

- Social Conflicts

- Social Reforms

- Victorian values: Family,

Respectability, Morality

- Religion

- The Condition of Women : the

DoubleStandard

- Colonial expansion

POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE

VICTORIAN AGE:

- Industrial revolution

- Technological advances

- Economical progress.

but There is lots of

NEGATIVE aspects...

Negative aspects of the

Victorian Age:

- Pollution in the towns

provoked by the factories

- Hygienic conditions

- Epidemics

WOMEN IN

VICTORIAN ERA

The status of Women in the Victorian Era is often seen as an

illustration of the striking discrepancy between England's

national power and wealth and what many, then and now,

consider its appalling social conditions. During the era

symbolized by the reign of British monarch Queen Victoria,

difficulties escalated for women because of the vision of the

"ideal woman" shared by most in the society. The legal rights

of married women were similar to those of children; they

could not vote or sue or even own property. Also, they were

seen as pure and clean. Because of this view, their bodies

were seen as temples which should not be adorned with

jewelry nor used for physical exertion or pleasurable sex. The

role of women was to have children and tend to the house.

They could not hold a job unless it was that of a teacher or a

domestic servant, nor were they allowed to have their own

checking accounts or savings accounts. In the end, they were

to be treated as saints, but saints that had no legal rights.

Then there is the problem of PROSTITUTION.

CLOTES

See also fashion by decades: 1830s - 1840s - 1850s - 1860s - 1870s -

1880s- 1890s

Methods of clothing production and distribution varied enormously over

the course of Victoria's long reign.

In 1837, cloth was manufactured (in the mill towns of northern England,

Scotland, and Ireland) but clothing was generally custom-made by

seamstresses, milliners, tailors, hatters, glovers, corsetiers, and many

other specialized tradespeople, who served a local clientele in small

shops. Families who could not afford to patronize specialists made their

own clothing, or bought and modified used clothing.

By 1907, clothing was increasingly factory-made and sold in large, fixed

price department stores. Custom sewing and home sewing were still

significant, but on the decline.

New machinery and materials changed clothing in many ways.

The introduction of the lock-stitch sewing machine in mid-century

simplified both home and boutique dressmaking, and enabled a fashion

for lavish application of trim that would have been prohibitively time-

consuming if done by hand. Lace machinery made lace at a fraction of the

cost of the old, laborious methods.

New materials from far-flung British colonies gave rise to new types of

clothing (such as rubber making gumboots and mackintoshes possible).

small shoulders and even wider skirts

supported by crinolines or hoops, and

narrowed by way of the bustle to hobble

skirts.

Charles Frederick Worth, the "father of haute

couture" and the prototype of the

fashion designer as the dictator of modes,

was a London draper who relocated to Paris

in the 1840s. His success led to the

dominance of Paris fashion houses as arbiters

of style and the preferred clothiers for upper-

class women in both Britain and America.

Reactions to the elaborate confections of

French fashion led to various calls for reform

on the grounds of both beauty (Artistic and

Aesthetic dress) and health (dress reform).

Arthur Lasenby Liberty challenged the

dominance of French fashion when he showed

English gowns in Paris at the end of the

century.

MEN’S CLOTHING