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Lucy Worsley

Lucy Worsley Quotes

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Famous Lucy Worsley Quotes

“The papers were pleased. "She is kept by the nation as a spectacle," claimed the Penny Satirist, establishing a current of thought that would flow through Victoria's whole reign, "and it is right that she should be seen. In fact, it is her duty to come out and show herself, that we may have value for our money.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“The gradual change, from her [Victoria] dominance to his [Albert], was taking place not just in ballrooms but more widely in British society. The genders became more clearly and hierarchically distinguished as the 1830s gave way to the 1840s. A successful marriage, thought Sarah Ellis, writing in 1843, was founded on one important truth. "It is," she counselled her female readers, "the superiority of your husband as a man." "You may have more talent, with higher attainments," she advised them, "but this has nothing whatever to do with your position as a woman, which is, and must be, inferior to his as a man.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria started to chafe against the immobility and inconvenience of being pregnant again so quickly: "men never think, or at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often." But Albert insisted. Not only was it a royal duty, he could perhaps see that having the babies occupied his wife, weighed her down and allowed him to assume more and more of her responsibilities.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish MonarchyQueen Victorias Diaries
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria came to understand that her depression was a distinct malady that came and went, but which affected her particularly during and after pregnancy. ... Yet Albert made sure the babies kept coming. "It is too hard and dreadful what we have to go through," Victoria complained. Men ought to "do every thing to make up, for what after all they alone are the cause of.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish MonarchyQueen Victorias Diaries
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“In talking so proudly about her "happy domestic home", Victoria was prefiguring the words of John Ruskin, the commentator who'd make the best-known pronouncement on the proper role of a Victorian woman. Home, he thought, was a "woman's true place and power". While a husband had to go to brave the rough world's perils, a wife should remain behind, in a private realm where her "great function is Praise" and her great opportunity the "sweet ordering" of her household.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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