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Page 8 of 9

• 1. The icon
• 2. The ideal woman
• 3. At home
• 4. Household management
• 5. The ideology
• 6. Wife and mother
• 7. Social responsibility
• 8. Woman's mission
• 9. Towards a political mission
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Woman's mission

Middle-class women of the Victorian era did leave their homes - and not just to socialise but to visit the homes of the poor. These women used their position of privilege to export expertise in domestic affairs to those regarded as in need of advice, so they might attain the same high standards of household management. The power that middle-class women had achieved in the home was now used by them in order to gain access to another world characterised by, as they saw it, poverty, drink, vice and ignorance.

'They could lecture working-class women on cleanliness ... '

At the same time, entering this world provided the lady philanthropist with a little excitement, maybe even danger, and a means to self-discovery. Moreover, these women's unshakeable belief in their own domestic morality not only informed the form of charity they chose to sponsor - mother and baby homes, kindergartens, temperance campaigns and health and hygiene reform - but also those persons deemed worthy of help and the conditions demanded for the receipt of charity.

So they provided aid to mothers and infants in the name of improving infant and maternal mortality rates, while barring illegitimate children from their crèches. They could lecture working-class women on cleanliness in homes resembling slums, while they relied on servants to keep their own homes up to the required standard.

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Published: 2001-08-09