Portrait of the Victorian Housewife

According to Yaffa Claire Draznin's book, Victorian London's Middle-Class Housewife: What She Did All Day, the Victorian housewife was stylish yet "proper".

A Quick Portrait of the Victorian Housewife:

~ 5 ft. tall, or shorter, and full-figured
~ fashionable, with long, curled hair, pinned up
~ properly attired in long dresses and bustle gowns
~ married at age 25, on average
~ mother of six children, on average
~ often an employer of a housemaid (or two) and a cook
~ a savvy consumer

~ a physical laborer who worked her fingers to the bone!

It Was A Dirty Job But Someone Had To Do It

One of the things that Victorian Londoners had to contend with was horse droppings in the streets. Horse-drawn carriages transported people and goods before the advent of motor vehicles at the turn of the century, so there was a lot of horse poop in the streets, tons and tons of it! The average horse produces at least 6 or 7 tons of manure per year--which meant horse droppings everywhere in the streets of Victorian London! According to the book, Victorian London's Middle-Class Housewife: What She Did All Day, by Yaffa Claire Draznin, London streets were constantly swept and cleaned, partly to help Victorian women clad in head-to-toe dresses and skirts, but with all the horses using the streets as their bathroom, housewives struggled to keep their homes clean and sanitary. There was just too much of the stuff outside, all over (impossible to avoid contact with), as well as vast, odoriferous, dung heaps; proper use and disposal was an enormous problem in London during this era. Clothing was largely washed by hand-operated washing machines, and took days to clean, starch, and iron, all of which demanded the housewife's strength and vigor.

What She Did All Day

While out book shopping on this hottest of days, I found Yaffa Claire Draznin's elegant book, Victorian London's Middle-Class Housewife: What She Did All Day, which studies the activities of the housewife of the late 19th century. Draznin provides an in-depth look at how "the real housewives of Victorian London" spent their time in this city in the late 1800's, and became the new consumer class as more modern conveniences were developed. Here you can see the beginnings of today's stay-at-home wife and her influence on society. (Housewife or stay-at-home mother is a misnomer today, though, because most are actually not at home much but have countless activities to attend outside of the home. Personally, I hate the label of housewife and all it evokes--a scattered, overly social woman in frumpy clothing, who spends her days at home watching TV and mixing up casseroles. Instead, I like the image of Joyce Carol Oates, who calls herself a housewife and is also a famous novelist.) With chapters devoted to the business of running a household and several of the roles of London's Victorian housewife--from domestic worker to mother to cook to employer to financial manager to social director to health guardian and so on--Draznin provides a history of late Victorian London, complete with photos and simple, charming illustrations, and gives these women the attention and dignity that they deserve.