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Lucy Worsley

Lucy Worsley Quotes

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Famous Lucy Worsley Quotes

“[Florence Nightingale's] sister's condition was all too common among many a well-off spinster, 'condemned to spend her days in a meaningless round of trivial occupations, which ate away at her vital strength.' Parthenope's illness, Florence thought, was simply caused by boredom, 'by the conventional life of the present phase of civilisation, which fritters away all that is spiritual in women.' Watching Parthenope lose her sanity, her strength, even the ability to walk, had left Florence aghast. She observed that all around her women were 'going mad for the want of something to do'. She was determined to avoid this fate for herself.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“There is no denying that these women had hard lives, but care needs to be taken with these articles about them because they were written in a Victorian genre known as 'slumming', a semi-salacious relishment of the misfortunes of lower-class people.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“While Alice had played her part in watching, waiting and attending on her father, Victoria herself hadn't been much use. ... Alice wasn't a trained nurse, but ... tradition and convention insisted in any case that a daughter was better than the most professional nurse available. (Tradition and convention were wrong about this, as Victoria herself later admitted.)”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria, who lacked a father, had long sought mentors or alternative fathers in Uncle Leopold, Melbourne and then in Albert himself. Yet she couldn't get him to listen to her. It was in any case, a vain hope. A Victorian man was failing in his masculinity if he failed to control his wife, and Albert could never quite control a wife who was also a queen. So they were doomed to clash.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“What can appear to us twenty-first century people to be an unhealthy fascination with death and mourning in Victorian culture may in fact have been a source of powerful mental resilience. They were 'in touch' with birth and death. Today grieving and mourning are perceived as weakness, almost sickness, to be conquered and overcome. It might be better to accept bereavement, as the Victorians did, as an integral part of life.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria's former governess Laddle perceptively noticed that the queen's grief would be worse because 'she has no friend to turn to'. 'The worst, far the worst,' Laddle continued, 'is yet to come - the numberless, incessant wishes to "ask the Prince," to "Send for the Prince", the never-failing joy, fresh every time, when he answered her call ... he greatest delight was in OBEYING him.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“A species of madness' had come upon her, [Dr Clark] claimed ... but these fears were greatly amplified by the fact that Victoria was approaching that time of life when Victorian women in general were believed to lose control of themselves: the menopause. ... Menopausal women, contemporary doctors hinted, would become sex maniacs.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Before the twentieth century, to be a widow was perhaps to be in the most potent of a woman's life stages. For the first time, a widow was answerable to no one. For the first time, she could own property. For all women other than the queen, a woman's worldly goods, and even her children, had up to that point been not hers but her father's or husband's.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Even at rock bottom, when her doctors had thought she would go mad with grief, Victoria had spoken of endurance. She was 'determined', she wrote, that as a widow 'no one person, may he be ever so good ... is to lead, or guide, or dictate to me'.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Historian Dorothy Thompson has pointed out the double standard at work here. A king's having a mistress was regrettable, but ultimately acceptable. The possibility, though, of a female ruler having a sexual relationship outside of marriage, causes dismay and prurient ridicule.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria's courtiers generally shared the views of her administrators and colonial staff in India, which were that Indians were decidedly inferior to Europeans. Victoria, however, perhaps having less cause to worry about her status being challenged, was less prone to this, 'There is no hatred to a brown skin - none,' she wrote, even in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“This bonnet, worn with resolution, had caused some upset. Her government had asked its queen to appear more ... queenly. 'The symbol that unties this vast Empire is a Crown not a bonnet,' complained Lord Roseberry. But Victoria stoutly refused, and 'the bonnet triumphed'.”

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Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Many people envied her position as the winner of the Baby Race and the wearer of the crown. But when she discovered she was to be queen, Victoria already knew that it was the breaking, not the making, of her life. 'I cried much,' she said. Her mother had prepared her for the lonely royal trap in which bother of their lives would be lived, a trap that tightly clasped so many Victorian women but which squeezed and nipped at a queen perhaps most damagingly of all. 'You cannot escape your own feelings,' Victoire told Victoria, all those years ago, 'you cannot escape ... from the situation you are born in'. You cannot escape. It was true. You cannot escape.”

HistoryFeminismQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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