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The Victorian era may be heavily represented in pop culture, through stately period dramas, rollicking novels, and gritty television series, but it's also one of the most misunderstood periods in history. From prudish queens to macabre mourners, myths about the Victorian era persist. These myths and inaccuracies oversimplify a ridiculously complex historical era, as well as its inhabitants.
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Whether we're talking stately period films, moody mystery novels, or gritty television series
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the Victorian era is heavily represented in pop culture. Despite that representation, it's still one of the most misunderstood periods in history
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thanks to persistent myths about everything from extreme prudishness to a cold and loveless queen
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So today, we're going to debunk some popular myths about the Victorian era
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Lasting from 1837 until 1901, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's rule
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over the United Kingdom. It was an era in which the United Kingdom headed a vast empire that
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generated both great wealth and great inequality. Honestly, it seems like most periods of British
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history involve great inequality. It's the great wealth part that all those Victoria heads celebrate
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The Victorian era was a time of heightened morality and elaborate clothing
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But at the same time, it was also an era of bawdy jokes, technological innovation
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and amplified debates about human intimacy. Myths about the Victorian era, whether they stem from inaccurate readings of the past
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or popular fiction, tend to interpret the era in very limited terms
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For instance, most of the steampunk genre is shockingly inaccurate. These myths and inaccuracies oversimplify a ridiculously complex historical era
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and its inhabitants. Back in the 1980s, Cyndi Lauper taught the world that girls just want to
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have fun, but she wasn't apparently thinking of Queen Victoria. Victoria was known to be dour
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humorless, and sexless. In other words, a real drag. About as far from a party girl as anyone can
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be, at least according to the myths. In truth, Queen Victoria dearly loved her husband, Prince
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Elbert. Her diary even details her wedding night with great enthusiasm. In fact, their union was
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so passionate that Victoria bore nine children over the course of their 21-year marriage
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Not only did she seem to enjoy physical intimacy, but she also apparently had quite the sense of
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humor. Her grandmother even described her as a comical, precocious clown. So why the myth
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Well, the popular image of Queen Victoria as being stern and morose most likely stems from
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her later years. When her beloved Albert passed unexpectedly in 1861, she was consumed by grief
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and mourned for him the rest of her days, wearing only black clothing until her passing 40 years
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later. So in a sense, the myth has it backwards. She wasn't passionless. She was incredibly
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passionate, but only for her true love. Man, we don't have a joke here. That's just sad
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Her role as the queen of a relatively moralistic nation and as a champion of family values also
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contributed to her association with prudishness. And though she is famously credited with quipping
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we are not amused, in response to a risque story, she later told her granddaughter that she never
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spoke those infamous words. It was apparently a let them eat cake situation
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The famous phrase, everybody knows, Marie Antoinette said, but actually, Marie Antoinette did not say
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We've got to stop misquoting these royals. Popular imaginings of Queen Victoria
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often paint her as being cold or even outright hateful toward her own children, which for some reason
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she had nine of. And it is true that Victoria wasn't what you'd call an overly affectionate mother She enforced high standards for her nine children And her relationships with many of them were shall we say prickly But while she didn enjoy pregnancy and famously thought some infants were unsightly
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she did not hate her children. Rather, she actually found much joy in them
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So why do we think she hated her children? Well, Queen Victoria was forthright
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about the difficulties of raising kids, and the fact that her children's decisions
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sometimes disappointed her, a feeling that probably every parent can relate to at some level
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She is also thought to have suffered from postnatal depression, which would explain her
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less than enthusiastic attitude toward pregnancy. Moreover, like many mothers of the upper classes in the 19th century, Victoria outsourced child
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care and relied on nurses and governesses to raise her offspring. Her supposed lack of affection for her children is more related to assumptions about motherhood
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than her actual recorded feelings. Although, she did have nine kids. One of them must have been her favorite
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Depictions in pop culture have given many the impression that Victorian parents kept their
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children at arm's length and typically relegated them to the sidelines of the family. They would
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have kept their kids in shoeboxes, were their shoeboxes big enough. But the reality was quite
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different. Victorians idealized childhood, believing children were innocents who needed to be protected from the corruption of the outside world. Children's literature, for example
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exploded from the middle of the 18th century and into the 19th century, highlighting cultural
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shifts in how Britons perceived children and childhood. That being said, the Victorian
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romanticization of childhood was more of an ideal than a reality. Working-class children in
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particular faced extreme pressures. Unlike their upper-class counterparts, they often labored to
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help support their families and had to confront life's hardships at young ages. So how did the
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myth that Victorians were cold and indifferent toward their kids get started? Well, the care of
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children, especially in middle and upper-class families, was often entrusted to nurses and
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governesses. This reality kept the kids away from their parents and contributed to the myth
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It could also have something to do with all the hardships endured by all those lower-class kids
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Judging by most movies and television shows set in the Victorian era, everyone in England at the
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time was white and looked vaguely like Keira Knightley. But in reality, the United Kingdom
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had been racially diverse for centuries. Rome relied on soldiers from across its vast empire
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to staff forts and outposts in Britannia. And many of those soldiers were not Caucasian
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People from around the world continued to come to the British Isles during the Victorian era, either willingly or unwillingly
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For example, enslaved Africans had been brought to the UK by planters and government officials
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And they didn't simply vanish once slavery was abolished throughout the empire in 1833
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Many former slaves even stayed on working as domestic housekeepers and butlers
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So how did these people get ignored by history? Well, following World War II
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the UK recruited former colonial subjects to immigrate and ease the labor crisis
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Popular memory assumes there was no racial diversity in the country before the arrival of these immigrants, who hailed from places such as Jamaica and India. And while the UK
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certainly became a more diverse country following the Second World War, non-white Victorians were a
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small, but by no means insignificant, part of British history. From reading the works of Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle one would probably think that Victorian England had an opium den on every corner Heck even Sherlock Holmes was known to frequent them
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He really knew how to kick back. Maybe that's why he's such a good detective. And in reality, illicit substances were widely available in Victorian Britain
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as they often had medicinal uses and were found in common medications. Despite this availability, however, the country was not b with opium dens
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Such establishments could be found around the docks of eastern London. But that was an exception rather than the rule
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So why do we believe that Victorians were using drugs like their parents were out of town for the weekend
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Well, dependency-inducing substances became increasingly taboo throughout the 19th century and eventually became associated with depravity and decay
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Popular writers, such as Charles Dickens, seized upon this theme. And their fiction exaggerated the presence of opium dens in Britain
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So it was really a matter of symbolism. Opium dens were everywhere in Victorian fiction
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because writers were trying to make a point about widespread depravity, sort of like how bad guys in Westerns wear black hats
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Some evil cowboys probably wore them, but man, black is bad in the heat
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As we previously mentioned, Prince Albert was Queen Victoria's dearly beloved husband
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Although she was the queen, he was seen as the moral center
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both in the royal family and in the nation, with a personally held belief in strong family values
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He was also, through no fault of his own, named Albert. That's a real hurdle to overcome
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However, a Prince Albert is also the name given to an elaborate male genital piercing
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Yeah, so why is the piercing named after Queen Victoria's husband? Yeah, no one really knows
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Despite the obvious explanation, there is no evidence to support the notion
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that Prince Albert ever had any kind of genital piercing. So why the myth
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Well, some claim Albert used a ring to confine his member while he wore form-fitting trousers
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like he was posing for a Rolling Stones album cover. But the origin of this myth remains unknown
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Popular fiction makes it seem like women of the Victorian era were all prim housewives and dutiful daughters
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who lived their lives in the domestic sphere, busily gunning to be a main character in the next Bronte's sister's novel
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The truth, however, is that Victorian women were heavily involved in the public sphere
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Sure, women lacked many rights in the Victorian era, such as the right to vote, and they were legally subordinate to men. But women in the working
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classes supported themselves and their families, often through factory labor. Even middle-class
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and upper-class women did not always live within the confines of their home. Victorian women
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engaged in philanthropy, served as missionaries, published books, pursued scientific and technological
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advancements, and petitioned for their own political voice. So why do we think otherwise
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Well, while it is true that gender roles were explicit in the Victorian era
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These were perceived ideals rather than reflections of reality. The Angel in the House, a poem published in the middle of the 19th century
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emphasized the idea that women were domestic beings. This so-called ideal of the housebound woman eventually wrought real-world implications
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Many men and women used the model to justify women's exclusion from official forms of public life
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Hey, it's hard to argue with, you can't vote because of the poem I like. Entire societies have been founded on that kind of logic
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One of the most persistent images of the Victorian era is one of stuffy humorless Lord Fauntleroy sneering at the very idea of mirth But nothing could be further from the truth Victorians
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actually love to laugh. This is evident through the bawdy humor of music halls and the jokes that
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eventually shaped Britain's uniquely dry humor. So why do we think the Victorians had no sense of
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humor? Well, Weird History fans who saw our video about old photographs already know that people
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generally donned grim expressions in 19th century pictures simply because smiling hadn't yet become
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the standard pose. In fact, most people thought it kind of looked silly. We're just getting our
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picture taken. Why would you smile at a time like this? It's not fun. Scholars still haven't reached
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a consensus for the reasoning behind this custom. But several explanations persist, such as early
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cameras' relatively lengthy exposure time, or the belief that professional photographers sought to
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imitate the formal oil painting portraits of the previous century. Whatever the reason, the dour
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expressions in these old photos convinced modern viewers who didn't understand the context that the Victorians simply
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didn't smile or laugh. Victorians practiced some unusual customs during the mourning
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period for lost loved ones, such as preserving loved ones' hair and lockets and rings
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But a popular misconception is that mourners would collect their own tears in glass vials
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Not sure why you'd do that, in case you got thirsty during the service. In any event, tear collection was not a common practice in the Victorian era
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So why do people think it was? Well, the discovery of small glass bottles and graves and tombs has persisted for centuries
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Going all the way back to the Greeks, the growing market for funerary objects has imagined
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these items as tear catchers, which added to their mystique and therefore their salability
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But the truth is, these bottles likely contained oils or perfumes rather than tears
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Because in addition to being a final resting place for one's earthly remains
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graves tend to be kind of smelly. Might as well throw a little brute in that hole to freshen things up
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OK, this one sounds like a joke, because it kind of is. But there is a persistent belief that Victorian-era Britons
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were so repressed that they actually covered the legs on their pianos
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lest someone fall victim to the sexual wiles of the gigantic stringed instrument
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We think of the Victorians as prudish. But in reality, Victorian Britain was anything but
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Brothels cater to any and all preferences and could be found throughout the country
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Moreover, people engaged in intimate behavior both within and outside of their marriage
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Despite this apparent openness, double standards surrounding male and female sexuality were present
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Additionally, intimate activity was policed in various ways. People were discouraged from exploring their desires
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And women were subject to harsh social consequences if they failed to embody the ideal of feminine purity
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In other words, no adventurism in the bedroom. You keep that seaplane tied up at the dock
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But where did these stories about the pianos come from? Well, the myth of Victorian prudishness
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was propagated by modernist writers of the early 20th century, like Virginia Woolf
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These writers sought to critique Victorian understandings of intimacy and desire by depicting
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the seemingly backwards and buttoned-up attitudes of their parents and forebearers. Consequently, the idea that Victorians
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were so averse to sex that they covered up piano legs was likely based on a sarcastic joke
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one that was aimed at Americans, which might be the only time in history that the British have made a joke for Americans
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rather than about Americans
#Social Sciences