This course examines the socio-cultural ideologies that constructed concepts of womanhood and femininity in Victorian Britain. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students will engage with diverse historical sources including literature and visual/material culture. Students will learn how ideologies of gender, race, and class structured Victorian life and continue to inform our contemporary understandings of what it means to be “Victorian.” This course will critically examine concepts such as the sexual double standard, the social and scientific construction of sexual difference, separate spheres, and the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Topics include sexuality and prostitution, domesticity and maternity, work and leisure, social reform and activism, medicine, modernity, and imperialism.
