Basic HTML Version
10
TOwARDs
FCE
Victorian issues
t
he
W
oman
q
ueStion
You are going to read a short essay about woman’s condition in the 19th century. seven
sentences have been removed from the text. Choose from the sentences A-H the one
which fits each gap (1-7). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
The so-called ‘Woman Question’ is part of a major change in the direction of European
society that took place during the 17th-19th centuries. Such a change was both
ideological and social. On the ideological side, the philosophy of the Enlightenment
and its political application – democracy – stated that all human beings, and therefore
also women, were equal and had the same rights.
(1)
_______
and needed women as single
workers – and so, again, in theory made them equal to men in social status and money-
earning power. In reality, although many women now worked with men in workshops
and factories, they were subject to discrimination (poorer jobs and lower wages) and
also had to work at home.
(2)
_______
, let alone higher education.
In the early 19th century the advance of the middle-class in Europe in many ways
worsened woman’s condition.
(3)
_______
because of the rigid code of sexual and social
behaviour gradually imposed by Victorian standards. The view that a woman’s best
qualities were unselfishness, soft-heartedness and submissiveness was best expressed
in Coventry Patmore’s immensely popular poem
The Angel in the House
(1854-62).
Despite single voices of protest, such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s with her
A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman
(1798) – usually considered the first feminist pamphlet – the
Napoleonic civil code sanctioned woman’s legal inferiority with respect to man.
(4)
_______
during the Victorian Age. An influential voice of support for women came from John
Stuart Mill (1806-73), one of the leading philosophers of the age, who spoke in favour of
female emancipation. His
The Subjection of Women
(1869) considered the role of the
husband in history and compared it to that of a tyrant.
At about mid-century things began to change. Some women tried hard to gain access
to colleges and professions: the most famous was Florence Nightingale (1820-1910),
who became a national legend for her work in hospitals.
(5)
_______
through philanthropic
work: from 1850 onwards, this represented a decisive step in the progress of the
feminist movement.
(6)
_______
: the first colleges for women – Queen’s College for Women (1848) and Bedford
College (1849) – were founded and, with the Married Women’s Property Act (1882),
women were allowed by law to own property after they got married (before all their
property went to their husbands).
By the end of Victoria’s reign the situation had improved: women could study and take
a degree at twelve university colleges, and study but not take a degree at Oxford and
Cambridge.
(7)
_______
: they worked not just as governesses or teachers, but also as nurses
and even doctors and journalists. On the social side women were also very active and
began to organize themselves. The first petitions to Parliament asking for women’s
suffrage date back to the 1840s, but women didn’t get the right to vote until 1918.
A
During the Victorian Age two important steps were taken
B
Women started to influence the society they were living in
C
On the social side, the Industrial Revolution destroyed the old family economy
File
5
Reading
text store
t
44
text store
t
53, 54
text store
t
71
001-027_The Victorians.indd 10
16/01/12