Silent Awakening: Female Agency and Societal Moral Contradiction in Victorian Art and Literature

The Victorian era was marked by rapid technological, religious, and societal modernization that impacted the art and literature of the time. Queen Victoria, whose name became an eponym for her sixty-three-year reigning period from 1837 to 1901, was a figure who demonstrated domestic propriety and moral responsibility during this time of rapid change. However, while social morality and familial traditional roles were highly esteemed, marital infidelity began to increase as prostitution rose in rapid numbers. With traditional ideals placing women on fragile angelic pedestals that would shatter with any sexual relations outside marriage, consensual or not, Victorian society was faced with a moral dilemma. This paper offers an artistic view of femininity, as depicted in literature and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood art. It explores how Victorians wrestled with the reality of societal modernization including female oppression and agency. This paper offers a unique highlight of social contradiction: while Victorian society valued moral propriety of all people, the actual upholding of these standards fell largely to women, while it essentially excused male immorality, infidelity, and transgression. It examines Coventry Patmore’s Angel in the House, William Holman Hunt’s painting The Awakening Conscience, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott,” John William Waterhouse’s 1888 painting The Lady of Shalott, and John Everett Millais’ painting Ophelia.