Unlike the earlier romantic 19th century novels of Jane Austen whose characters such as Elizabeth Bennett lived happily ever after, Victorian novelist George Eliot, broke the tradition of the standard romantic novel by representing women in unhappy relationships and the reality and problems of the woman’s role in life and their place in society, this is particularly evident in her realist novel Middlemarch.

Another example of the way women were represented in the mid-Victorian period is in poetry such as Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ who is bound by the web she weaved within the confines of ‘Four gray walls and four gray towers’, (p755, line 15, Romantic Period Verse), but once s

The man prefers the wife to stay at home and be a good mother, to be ‘tender and delicate’ (para 14). It is a safe haven for the man; an escape from the horrors of the world outside the home; greed and murder are some of the examples Ruskin gives.

The subject of the song, the downfall of a woman has been written to make it sound amusing by the choice of words and the language used such as ‘nibs’, (verse 3) and ‘But the corpse got up and sang’, (verse 9). The woman in this song has been represented as the unfortunate ‘victim’, (verse 1) of a patriarchal society where the male used, abused and abandoned her. Although she was poor she did not turn to prostitution for money, she was an ‘honest’ and chaste girl, who was loved and then abandoned by wealthy men.

The examples of literature discussed then, shows that this period in the 19th century saw the representation of women as generally dominated by a patriarchal society, in which was considered to be a period of ‘prudishness and high moral tone’, (p1092, Reader’s Digest Word Power Dictionary).

Some topics in this essay:
Sesame Lilies, Poor Honest, Song Solomon, Henry Mayhew, Dolls House, John Ruskin’s, Ruskin Ruskin’s, , Age Topic, George Eliot, women represented, mid-victorian period, forms literature, sesame lilies, wife stay home, prostitution money, mid victorian, woman song, victorian period, husband sons, john ruskin’s lecture, woman’s role life, representation women dominated, women behave,