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Lucy Worsley

Lucy Worsley Quotes

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Famous Lucy Worsley Quotes

“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.”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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.)”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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.”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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.”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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.”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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.”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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.”

HistoryFeminismQueensQueen VictoriaEnglish HistoryHerstoryEnglish MonarchyOppression Of WomenAnti Feminist Ideals
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'.”

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