Key concepts (Rossetti and Ibsen)

Industrialisation had opened new opportunities for everyone. 

Norwegian women entered education in 1876. / By 1882, the women that could afford it could go to university. However, female workers (factory hands, teachers or office workers) earned less than men and had little prestige.

In the case of the middle-class, women had to give up work once they got married. Across Europe, a middle-class male’s social status was enhanced by having a wife that stayed at home.

The Actresses’ Franchise League was formed in 1908.

• This was two years after Ibsen’s death.
• Most women in the profession were involved.
• They supported all groups that sought female suffrage.
• They especially supported the Women’s Social and Political Union and its policy of direct and dramatic action.
• They felt that they owed their political education to Ibsen.
• By 1914, there were 900 members.

Like most men at this time, Torvald believed in separate spheres;

- This was the idea that the sexes were spiritually and biologically different. 
- Men were designed for the cut and thrust of work.
- Women were designed for childcare.

Rossetti also believed that the sexes belonged to two separate spheres.

This concept was a popular Victorian image of the ideal woman = women were expected to be devoted and submissive to their husbands.

An angel was: - Passive / - Powerless / - Meek / - Charming / - Graceful / - Sympathetic

- Self-sacrificing / - Pious / - Pure / - Etc.

The phrase comes from the title of a popular poem that was written by Coventry Patmore, in which he portrayed his angelic wife as the model for all women. He believed his wife, Emily, was the perfect Victorian wife.

He wrote the poem about her and it became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century. 
It continued to be influential in the twentieth century.

According to Virginia Woolf, the repressive ideal created by the poem was so powerful that, “Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."