MUSIC: Habanera by George Bizet
In our modern world,
there's an idea that fills our dreams and desires -
something we've all searched for.
Romantic love.
Ooh!
What's fascinating is that so much of romance
isn't about spontaneous feeling.
All of love's rituals
had to be invented.
Even the way we feel can be traced back to specific historical moments.
Now we reach the Victorian age
when a changing society
drew inspiration from the Middle Ages.
Chivalry was reborn
and there were new roles to play
as manly men paid tribute
to sweet, angelic ladies.
Valentine's cards and flowers
created a new language of love...
..and novels continued to shape our vision of romance,
transforming the way we felt and behaved...
..but then women began to speak their minds,
hidden desires were revealed.
Welcome to the Victorian way of love.
It's sometimes hard to see the softer side of Victorian Britain -
a world of Industry, machinery and hardship...
..but the workshop of the world
didn't only manufacture cloth.
Tales of romance were being woven into ordinary lives,
even in the most unpromising of places -
the factories themselves.
For millions of women,
romance became an escape.
Women like Scottish power-loom weaver, Ellen Johnston...
..part of a tiny tribe of working class WOMEN writers.
Sent out to work at the age of 11
by her villainous stepfather,
Ellen toiled all of her life in factories.
She was twice abandoned by a lover
and her daughter was born out of wedlock.
Ellen's life was as tough as you could imagine
and yet she had an escape.
She lived as if she were the heroine of a romantic novel.
"By reading love adventures," she said,
"my brain was fired with wild imaginations."
Ellen's romantic fantasies
helped her to step outside the difficulties of her young life.
In her autobiography, she wrote,
"I had many characters to imitate
"in the course of the day.
"In the residence of my stepfather,
"I was a weeping willow.
"In the factory, I was pensive and thoughtful."
And soon, Ellen began to turn these daydreams into poetry.
Her work was published under the pseudonym of "the Factory Girl".
This was quite surprising
and so too were some of the poems.
One of them was written in praise of
the surpassing beauty of a young man she fancied.
And Ellen did not take the easy way out,
she refused an offer of marriage
from a middle class man
because he wanted her to stop writing
and she didn't really love him anyway.
For Ellen, romance was more important
than the drudgery of her everyday life.
Ellen may have been unconventional,
but the books that inspired her were not.
One writer, in particular, began her journey -
Walter Scott.
Scott introduced Ellen,
and indeed the whole of Britain,
to a new world of romance
with his own take on medieval tales of love and honour.
He became so famous
that he was regarded
as the 19th century's own equivalent of Shakespeare.
His home, Abbotsford,
represents him perfectly -
a peculiar mix of ancient baronial pile
and middle class domesticity.
And when it came to his most influential book, Ivanhoe,
Scott applied the same approach
to the chivalric romances of old.
Published in 1820,
it was a tale of 12th century knightly adventures...
but with a modern twist.
In the story of Ivanhoe,
the hero has quite a lot in common
with Walter Scott himself.
He's modest and honourable,
and diligent.
He's basically a man of the 19th century,
rather than a knight of old...
and Scott doesn't really approve
of the heroines of the medieval romances
that inspired his work.
"These haughty beauties," he said,
"sometimes conferred upon their lovers
"the rights of a husband
"before any wedding had taken place."
The leading ladies of Scott's own tales of the olden days
never get up to any premarital hanky-panky.
There isn't much in the way of passion.
We're told more about what the women are wearing,
than what they're feeling,
which might explain why ladies liked to dress up
as the heroines of the book...
..particularly for the climactic scene,
where the women in Ivanhoe's life
compete in a kind of virtue face-off.
Rebecca is dark, glamorous and Jewish.
She's also supremely self-sacrificing.
Ivanhoe rescues Rebecca after she's accused of being a sorceress.
She loves him, but she knows that she can never marry him,
because she's a Jew and he's a Christian.
When Rebecca comes to meet her rival,
she begs to see the face of the woman who's won Ivanhoe's heart.
Rowena is a Saxon noblewoman.
She's blonde, she's virtuous and she's loyal.
Some people might think she's a bit boring
but many thought that she was perfect wife material
and, in the story of Ivanhoe, it's goody-goody Rowena who gets the man.
Ivanhoe was a phenomenon,
a guide for behaviour,
and one of the most influential books of the 19th century.
The idea of chivalry it promoted
helped the British to define themselves
just as society was being totally transformed by industry and empire.
When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1839,
chivalry became part of THEIR romance, too.
Albert dressed up as her knight in shining armour.
It was an idea that caught on.
MEDIEVAL DRUMBEAT AND FANFARE
Chivalry was the perfect expression
of what it meant to be a Victorian gentleman.
It gave you a set of rules for living.
You could aspire to be
LIKE a medieval knight,
a man of action and honour -
even if you were, for example, a bank clerk.
Medieval knights were supposed to be strong,
but also gentle and polite.
They were supposed to be manly.
They probably had beards
and that was behind the Victorian fondness for facial hair.
Chivalry was basically romance,
but for MEN!
Ooh, hello!
No more soft, swooning lovers -
men were champions.
They paid homage and then went off to do great deeds.
And what about the knight's lady?
Well, obviously, she had to be pretty special
to deserve all this worship.
In an ideal world, she'd wait at home to be rescued.
She was far too pure to experience
anything like sexual desire.
It was her job to heal the knight,
to tend to his wounds
or, perhaps, to inspire him
with the shining example of her virtue.
A chivalrous gentleman
needed to treat his middle class damsel
with great delicacy
if he was to win her heart.
His visits had to be paid,
not to the young lady herself but,
to a respectable guardian
with calling cards left only
within certain visiting hours.
The lives of well-off Victorian young ladies
were very tightly restricted,
but there was one moment when THEY held the balance of power
cos they could decide
whether or not to receive
a gentleman who'd come to call.
You had to make this decision with care,
cos if you received somebody who was disreputable,
your own reputation would suffer.
A "suitable" gentleman might be invited to an informal gathering -
perhaps an afternoon at home with refreshments and music.
Hmm.
Oh, no, Aldwell, tell him I'm not at home, please.
Ah!
"Professor Derek Scott, University of Leeds."
He sounds interesting, he can come in.
And there was one place where romance could blossom -
at the piano.
Derek, what role does music play in courtship?
Well, music was a great way of gaining attention.
The possession of some musical skill,
especially for a young woman
seems to be connected with
her whole moral character.
And it's quite good if you weren't particularly good looking.
You could show yourself off, in other ways, at the piano.
That added, kind of, emotional projection
that music gives
can make most people attractive.
If a man and a woman were going to sing together or play a duet,
presumably this led to wonderful intimacy.
If the man was playing the bass part,
and they tend to, the man's right hand and the woman's left hand...
- They might touch! - Yeah, they're going to clash... - Whoa!
- ..together at times and... - Yes. - ..that's most unfortunate.
Oh, dear, yes.
That's most regrettable, isn't it?
So, what sort of songs would they be singing in the drawing room
when a courtship was underway?
For example, if you're a man and you want to impress, maybe you sing...
..a soldier song.
# Yes, let me, like a soldier, fall
# Upon an open play. #
And the woman will think,
"Wow, there's a butch guy.
"Maybe I can interest him."
And women had their own songs as well.
Songs about the home.
You'd think, "Oh, this is someone that really cares for their home."
Songs about children, songs about flowers,
The Last Rose Of Summer or...
Did the idea of chivalry
have any effect on music?
Oh, certainly.
If it was a man's song
that suggests that,
"I'm not singing this to you
"because I find you gorgeously attractive
"and I'm consumed with desire.
"I'm singing this because
"you seem to be radiating truth and honesty and,
"even when you're an old ruin,
"my love will be like...
"ivy clinging round a castle wall.
"I will still feel passionate about you."
Let's sing that song, that sounds good.
# Thou would still be adored
# As this moment thou art
# Let thy loveliness fade as it will
# And around the dear ruin
# Each wish of my heart
# Would entwine itself verdantly still... #
If a song failed to win her heart,
perhaps you could try the big, new craze - the language of flowers.
Each flower was supposed to represent
a particular idea or emotion,
so Victorian lovers could communicate
without ever saying a word.
The author of this book
thinks that everybody
ought to be able to understand the "language of flowers".
That's because, if you send your girlfriend a bouquet...
"It'll make her far happier
"than the far-fetched expressions
"of even the most tender note."
Ladies like flowers.
They're soft, marshmallowy creatures.
It says here that, "The art of lovemaking is, with women,
"the art of self-defence;
"the more scrupulous and delicate they are,
"the more worthy, are they,
"of the homage rendered to them."
Now, because each individual flower
has its own individual meaning,
you can put them together in bunches
to make quite complex sentences.
For example, if you send her
strawberry, mignonette,
bluebell and tulip -
all in the same bouquet -
you're saying,
"Your perfect goodness, excellent qualities and kindness
"constrain me to declare my regard."
If, on the other hand,
you send violet, jasmine and roses,
you're saying something quite different.
"Your modesty and amiability inspire me with the warmest affection."
So I love the idea of Victorian ladies
going, rather desperately, through the book thinking,
"Oh, I hope he made a mistake,
"because he seems to have sent me...
"painful reflections."
Despite the potential for error,
one thing was for sure -
romance was selling books.
Floriography - note the sciencey name -
became something of an industry.
The commercial possibilities of Valentine's day
were also being explored,
partly due to the arrival,
in 1840, of the Penny Post.
Tender expressions of love
were now available ready-made,
complete with poem,
and assembled, quite possibly,
by burly blokes in factories.
These are all Valentine's cards
from the workshop of Jonathan King,
who ran his business next door
to his stationery shop in Islington.
Now, in the 18th century,
you probably would have made your own Valentine's card
but, by the 19th century,
you could go to a shop
and you get a sense that the stakes were raised
because your lady friend would judge you on how much money you'd spent.
Here's a lovely, simple, little card.
Love amongst the roses,
a sweet looking girl,
but if you received that AND this,
you might think that this gentleman loved you more
because he'd obviously spent a lot more money on the gold,
the lace, the cut-out of the lady
and the silver mirror in the middle of it all.
Now, if you think this is a bit too saccharine and feminine,
here's a curious phenomenon -
the vinegar valentine.
You would send one of these,
as an anti-Valentine's card,
to, maybe, a girlfriend who'd dumped you.
Here's an overdressed,
horrible-looking lady and it says,
"False, false, false, false."
She's got false hair, false cheeks -
too much make-up - and a false bosom.
But the best card of all is this.
This... This is the mother
of all Valentine's cards -
and this was made by Jonathan King, himself,
for his lady love
and, as you open it up, you discover...
there are flowers,
a poem,
there are all these, sort of, lacy, ribbony layers to it
with shells,
and gold and silver.
You can imagine her opening all this up and thinking,
"That must be the end of it, there cannot be any more."
But there is...
because, on the back of it, is a secret hidden compartment...
..and if you open up this one,
you discover
a hidden paper chest of drawers
and each of the drawers contains a womanly virtue.
We've got good humour,
here's humility - very important...
You should employ innocence
and if she works her way through,
she would have discovered a gold ring.
This Valentine was probably
his proposal to her.
They did get married
the very next year.
They had 15 children together
and they named one of them Valentine.
Valentine's cards helped to reinforce
an ideal of Victorian womanhood -
pure, delicate and selfless.
Woman's mission, as this painting by George Elgar Hicks would have it,
was to serve as the companion of manhood -
a source of quiet comfort
for the careworn husband...
but the ideal didn't always translate well into reality.
I've come to the home of one fascinating
and famously bickering
Victorian couple - Jane and Thomas Carlyle.
When they moved here in 1834,
Thomas Carlyle was a poor writer,
soon to become famous for his works of history,
philosophy and social comment.
Jane was the elegant - and clever -
daughter of a doctor.
As a young woman, Jane read romances
and she decided never to get married.
"The perfect mortal," she wrote,
"exists only in the romance of my imagination."
Hearing about people getting engaged,
"brought on her asthma," she said.
But over five years, Thomas Carlyle wooed her with his letters.
He was like her tutor bringing her on.
Eventually she said, "Yes, I am going to marry him.
"He has a towering intellect to command me,
"and a spirit of fire,
"to be my guiding star."
In other words, a bit of a bossy boots.
They were a freethinking couple in their romance...
..but once they were married,
they adopted the roles that
contemporaries prescribed.
He - at his writing,
she - keeping the house quiet and tending to his needs.
Author AN Wilson has agreed to help me understand their relationship
with the help of some Victorian conduct manuals.
This is incredibly unromantic.
It says here, "Married women, it must be gratifying to receive,
"from a husband, just so much attention
"as indicates a consciousness of your presence."
THEY LAUGH
- Oh, dear. - So, you must be very grateful
if he even recognises you've come into the room
or that you're sitting inside of the room.
And that's enough.
How typical would you say that Thomas and Jane Carlyle's marriage was?
Well, they were very strong characters.
It was an unusual marriage in lots of respects.
It was childless and I think, probably, deliberately childless.
Certainly on his part.
They got on extremely badly.
- I mean, legendarily badly. - Oh, dear.
When they were apart, they realised that they did, deep down,
really love one another, so it's a heartbreaking marriage, actually.
Do you think that Thomas Carlyle
expected his wife, Jane, to do all the things
that Victorian gentlemen expected their wives to do?
Certainly.
I mean, he regarded her with awe and reverence,
and he realised what a clever person she was.
This didn't, in any way, stop him expecting her to do all the chores
and take responsibility for absolutely everything.
When she married him, he was a very poor man
and there was no money for all the servants that she'd been used to
so she taught herself how to cook,
how to run a household as
if she was a housemaid.
She didn't do it quietly and meekly, though, did she?
She did not do anything quietly or meekly.
She was a very hot-tempered, difficult person
and he was aware of her doing all these chores.
"The domestic sphere is the woman's sphere,
"the sphere of the man is work and club, land and that sort of thing."
But what's always intriguing about conduct books is that
they present an ideal and
reality rarely matches, doesn't it?
Well, that's absolutely true
but I think these books are
attempting to make us
come to terms with reality -
if we are Victorian, young women -
and one of the realities is that, for much of the time,
the life of a domestic women,
whether in the 19th century or any other century, is extremely boring.
Don't expect life to be like a romantic novel.
Mmm.
On the other hand, obviously, it's rather nice if,
when you first set out to live with somebody,
if you're in love.
But they're recommending a sort of steady, sensible, everyday,
mundane sort of love, aren't they?
They certainly are because, I mean, passion...
Oh! That's bad.
- That's rather dangerous. - It's dodgy.
I mean, I think it's a little dodgy.
- Passion is the enemy of domestic bliss. - Yes.
What was an independent-minded girl to do?
In the end, the chivalrous suitor
expected you to devote yourself to serving him.
Then, in 1847,
a book appeared that proposed
a new kind of romance...
..and introduced a new kind of heroine.
The author, Charlotte Bronte,
had set out to prove to her sisters
that it was possible to write a romantic novel
about a girl who wasn't beautiful.
"I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself,
"who shall be as interesting as any of yours," she said...
and along came Jane Eyre -
"A plain, Quaker-ish governess."
Jane isn't a conventional Victorian heroine
and Rochester is pretty unconventional too.
He's 20 years older than Jane.
He's almost ugly.
He's described as having a "grim mouth"
and he's got a cruel, dark brow.
He also behaves cruelly to Jane.
He plays games with her,
he tricks her into thinking that he's going to marry her beautiful rival
and Rochester says things to Jane
that no conventional Victorian woman should hear.
He tells her about his previous sexual indiscretions.
One commentator concluded
"The hero and heroine are both so singularly unattractive
"that the reader feels they can have no vocation in the novel
"BUT to be brought together."
But most shocking of all is the way that Jane speaks to Rochester.
Jane.
Jane is clever, she's proud, she's combative.
"Do you think I am an automaton?"
She says.
"A machine without feelings?
"Do you think - because I am poor, obscure, plain and little -
"I am soulless and heartless?
"You think wrong!
"It is my spirit that addresses your spirit,
"just as if both had passed through the grave
"and we stood at God's feet -
"equal, as we are!"
Contemporary reviewers were shocked.
Charlotte Bronte used the pseudonym of Currer Bell
and many felt that the author
could not have been a woman.
What woman could create a heroine so outspoken, so unfeminine?
What woman could imagine a plot
where the so-called hero tries to commit bigamy?
But the book was a spectacular success.
Jane Eyre changed the romantic landscape for ever.
A few years after Jane Eyre came out,
another novelist, Mrs Oliphant,
described it as "a declaration of the rights of woman."
She said that the age was past for chivalrous, knightly, reverent love -
all that really did was make the woman look inferior.
"Girls of today," Mrs Oliphant said,
"didn't want to be treated like sensitive lilies or beautiful roses,"
and that this was "the most alarming revolution of modern times."
Jane Eyre introduced a new type of courtship,
one in which women could fight,
could prove their strength
and achieve something like equality.
This new vision of romance,
a battle of the sexes
where the outcome was an alliance of mind and soul,
could be an inspiration...
..but it could also sow discontent,
when real marriages did not match the ideal.
The intimate fantasies
of Victorian wives
have rarely been preserved for posterity -
but there is one startling exception.
Isabella Robinson was a respectable, married lady,
living with her slightly horrible husband, Henry.
He was grumpy with her and she felt he was misusing her money.
The three volumes of her diaries
that go from 1850-1855,
give the details of her growing friendship with a doctor,
Edward Lane.
He was ten years younger than Isabella
and he was married to somebody else.
At first, this was a meeting of minds to Isabella,
they used to have deep intellectual conversations,
but, as time went on, her feelings
developed into something even deeper.
It all came to a head in 1854
when they went out together on a country walk.
"We walked on, and seated ourselves in a glade of surpassing beauty.
"The sun shone warmly down upon us.
"I gave myself up to enjoyment.
"He leaned over me and exclaimed, 'if you say that again, I will kiss you.'
"You may believe I made no opposition
"for had I not dreamed of him and of this full many a time before."
SHE SIGHS
What Isabella wrote in her diary
was terribly, terribly romantic...
but when you compare it to contemporary novels,
it was also terribly shocking.
A novel with such an immoral take on adultery
would never have made it into print...
but Isabella's husband, Henry, used her diaries
as evidence in his petition to divorce her.
It was one of the first cases
in London's new divorce court.
Before that, you'd needed an act of parliament to dissolve a marriage.
And so, in 1858, Isabella's diaries
became the talk of the town.
Author Kate Summerscale has studied the case.
Shall we have a look at a bit of the diaries
that ended up being read out in a courtroom like this?
Yes, and not only that,
all the extracts that were read out in court
were published, in full, in just about every newspaper in Britain.
Including The Times, the paper record.
So, here are all the divorce court reports
and then we get on to the Robinson case.
It says, "What followed, I hardly remember.
"Passionate kisses, whispered words, confessions of the past."
"Oh, God!"
"I hoped never to see this hour
"or to have any part of my love returned."
Yes, and this "What followed, I hardly remember"
is very typical of her style in the diary.
A, sort of, coyness when it comes to really describing
what happened between them.
- And that's what happens in fiction, isn't it? - Yes.
The diary was written in a very high-flown, elaborate...
swooning style -
as if drawn from the pages of romantic fiction -
and this caused a real problem for the court
whether to trust passages so written,
whether they could constitute proof of adultery.
It says here, "We adjourned to the next room
"and spent a quarter of an hour in blissful excitement.
"I became nearly helpless with the effects of his presence."
I loved the idea of a lot of very serious judges going,
"Now, what do we think that she means by that?
- "Does that mean...?" - "The effect of his presence." Yes.
"Does that mean yes or does it mean no?"
Dr Philimore, one of the lawyers,
said that "the journal had evidently been written by a woman
"of so flighty, extravagant, excitable, romantic
"and irritable a mind as almost to amount to insanity."
And that's HER lawyer.
That's her lawyer?! Oh, my goodness.
Poor woman.
What's the ending of the whole story, then?
Who were the winners and the losers from it?
Well, in the end,
the judge in the case,
after much deliberation,
adjournments, it was months before they gave a verdict
and he refused Henry Robinson his divorce.
What they eventually ruled was
that Isabella was not mad,
the diary was an essentially truthful document
but because of the coyness and romance
in which she couched her descriptions,
it was impossible to know
if they had actually consummated their affair.
Now, clearly Mrs Robinson's diary
has been affected by novels.
Did it, in turn, affect novels that were to come?
I think so.
I think the divorce court proceedings, in general,
which began in the year of this trial
and Isabella's diary, specifically,
did feed into the sensation fiction
of the 1860s and afterwards -
particularly, the figure of
the brooding, moody,
dissatisfied wife -
the dangerously frustrated woman
starts to become a, kind of, anti-heroine
of the novels of the period.
These new books were page-turners
and came in cheap editions
perfect for long railway journeys,
which is why they were sometimes known as "railway novels".
One book, from 1861, seems to have had a distinct connection
to the case of Isabella Robinson...
both in the heroine's name,
and in the theme of adultery -
East Lynne, by Mrs Henry Wood.
It's about the beautiful Lady Isabel Vane.
She gets seduced by the dashing Sir Francis Levison.
She leaves her children.
She leaves her rather stolid husband
in order to go off to France with Sir Francis.
Her husband divorces her.
Sir Francis abandons her.
Alone and penniless, she gets onto the train
to return to England...
but then things get even worse.
HORN BLARES
Lady Isabel's fate is far worse
than that of Isabella Robinson.
There's no chance that a fictional Victorian adulteress
will go unpunished.
The train crashes...
..but Isabel's terrible journey continues.
Her new baby is killed and she, herself,
is transformed into a shattered, crippled invalid.
She now returns to her former home,
her husband had remarried
and, because of her injuries
and with the help of a pair of blue-tinted spectacles,
she gets a job, in disguise, as her own children's governess.
She experiences tremendous anguish,
she wastes away and she dies.
No-one could have missed Mrs Henry Wood's point.
She bludgeons you over the head with it.
"Lady, wife, mother,"
she addresses her readers,
"should you ever be tempted to abandon your home,
"you will fall into an abyss of horror."
East Lynne was an instant hit
and stage adaptations followed.
Audiences revelled in the opportunity to have a good weep.
The end is a sentimental tour de force.
On her deathbed, Lady Isabel
reveals her true identity to her former husband
and they are finally reconciled.
Such maudlin stuff was absolutely
to the tastes of the time.
Somehow, death had become part of the romantic idea.
Love beyond death was a big feature of Victorian romance,
particularly as the 19th century wore on
and the cult of mourning deepened.
Sometimes it seems that people were more passionate about the dead
than they were the living.
At least there was the advantage
that no embarrassing questions of sex came up.
It turns out that you could have a pretty hot date at a seance.
Spiritualism had begun in America,
but quickly spread to Victorian Britain.
In an age of science and scepticism,
it offered up proof of Christian belief -
above all, the existence of an afterlife
The promise of reunion with a lost beloved
made seances hugely popular
and soon a new phenomenon
made them more overtly romantic.
Roger, what would happen at a dark seance of the 1870s?
This was the brand-new sensation of Victorian culture
around spiritualism at the time.
You would arrive...
for about 8 o'clock,
it's a dark space,
you would sit at a table very much like this,
and then you'd be introduced to the young girl medium -
15, 16 years old, perhaps -
who would be showing you round,
introduced to you,
then she would be taken into an adjoining room,
what was called a cabinet,
and then, after the lights went completely dark,
you would have this magical appearance through the curtain.
This is the full-scale
emanation of spiritual force.
It's an other-worldly, weird,
strange, kind of, atmosphere that's been built.
And then, the spirit would arrive,
wander round, perhaps introduce herself,
perhaps talk, perhaps not,
perhaps engage physically with the sitters,
touch them, slap them,
gesture, swear at them,
talk to them, comfort them perhaps,
speaking about what life was like in the afterlife,
and then, after that, would vanish again behind the curtain.
Surely that was the medium, herself, dressed up in a sheet?
Depends on your position.
If you fully believe this,
then this was an emanation of spirit matter
from the medium, that was their power.
Do you think that people enjoyed
having this beautiful, young lady
coming up to them, passing closely by them
in the dark, maybe brushing them with their hands.
Absolutely, this was the literal sensation of it
and it was quite common
to feel the bodies of the spirits -
to have a quick squeeze, if you like -
of a sense of what this creature was.
SHE LAUGHS
So, if I was going to squeeze the spirit,
what would I be hoping to feel?
Surely, she'd feel, sort of, mushy.
Actually, what they were feeling
was something...so Victorian.
On this side of the world,
if you were a young woman, then you are constrained in your clothing.
You're wearing a corset and
part of the feeling and checking out here
was whether or not, the spirit was, in fact, wearing a corset.
So, if she's not wearing a corset,
it's proof that she's a real spirit.
Absolutely, this is definitely the afterlife.
- 100%. - Fantastic, cos if she was a real human being,
- she would be wearing a corset. - Obviously.
Now, it seems also that some spiritualist investigators,
like Professor William Crooks, for example,
they fall in love with the spirit, don't they?
- They have a romance with a ghost. - Absolutely.
Yes, so, Professor Crooks was a very respectable scientist,
happily married with ten children
and he set out to try and prove, scientifically,
that this was an actual force -
something that he called "psychic force".
He began to investigate
women mediums like Florence Cook,
this lovely 15-year-old girl,
from Hackney,
who was a famous medium,
able to materialise, fully, this spirit, Katie King.
Do you think that his wife was bothered by this
or did she think, "No, it's fine,
"he may be in love with her, but she's dead?"
I think his wife would probably have seen
that the seance was a kind of ritual,
so it's a sense of getting away from
the conventions of family life
and the conventions of married life.
This is the space where respectable middle-class men
can be hanging out with
working class girls from Hackney.
What did the young women get out of it?
Presumably, they were in charge, it must have been quite fun.
It's a licence, really, to be able to perform however you wanted to -
so, they would be coquettish
and, of course, if they said something foul or filthy, or rude,
it's nothing serious, really,
it's just a passing spirit.
These working class girls were able to break into restricted,
middle class drawing rooms
and middle class men could reassure themselves
that their illicit desires were evidence of a spiritual affinity -
a perfect match which transcended earthly convention.
Usually the classes were utterly separate
and so were their romantic lives.
Working class women often had extraordinary freedom
compared to middle class girls -
they could walk out alone
and spend time with men unchaperoned.
Sex before marriage was common
and, as long as the couple stayed together,
all was well...
but the unfortunate women
who were deserted when pregnant
might petition the Foundling Hospital in London to look after their baby.
The hospital investigated each pregnancy
to make sure the mothers were of previously good character,
which means the hospital's archives contain a rare insight
into the lives and loves
of working class Victorian women.
This is the petition of Annie Culver.
She was a maid in a big house near Regent's Park
where she wouldn't have had many opportunities of meeting men.
Her gentleman was a friend of the cook.
They used to meet up in the street
and then, in September,
criminal conversation took place
two or three times in the park.
"When pregnant, I told him
"and he slighted me.
"He told me to drown myself."
Poor Annie.
Luckily for her, the hospital did look after her baby
so she didn't have to worry.
There wasn't much in the way of romance for Annie -
but in these records,
you get a sense of a different set of rules for courtship.
Couples go out together, to the theatre, or to eat,
and public places allowed all sorts of encounters -
as in the case of Charlotte Parker.
She was walking in Regent's Park...
"Where I met with a gentleman
"who offered me an umbrella
"as it began to rain."
They later met up at the Adelphi Theatre
and then, it says here,
that the seduction took place at the Coliseum Coffee House
where she slept with the father three times -
they passed for man and wife.
And this passing for man and wife was Charlotte's problem,
the governors weren't convinced
that she was truly respectable -
they thought that she knew, all too well, what she was doing.
Unfortunately for Charlotte,
that meant the hospital didn't accept her baby.
She may have had greater freedom, but when it all went wrong,
she was required to prove that she, at least,
had thought a wedding was on the cards.
Those who sat in judgment on Charlotte
made sure that middle class values prevailed.
A woman's desires were not to extend
beyond marriage and the home.
In the middle classes,
some adult women played out this obsession
by creating doll's houses.
This one, from 1890,
is a tiny snapshot
of the Victorian domestic ideal.
The men are in their masculine world,
in the billiard room,
while the women are separated off in the parlour, taking tea.
In the dining room, there's a wedding breakfast being prepared
with champagne, and a newly fashionable white wedding cake.
How very romantic!
And yet Amy Miles,
the middle class woman who created this tableau,
was a spinster in her thirties.
For her, the only way she could fulfil her proper feminine role
was in miniature.
The fact was that, for many women,
domestic bliss was out of reach.
Was it right that they were being taught
it was the only thing to make them happy?
Some people were beginning to think women
needed to turn their back on the home completely.
In 1889, a play opened on the London stage
which argued just that -
Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.
In act three, Nora, the heroine,
is in trouble with her husband,
Torvald,
cos he has discovered that she's taken out an illegal loan of money
and is now being blackmailed for it.
He's furious.
"You're not fit," he says,
"to look after our three children."
But then, in comes the maid.
She's got a letter.
It's good news. The blackmailer has returned the incriminating document.
Torvald is very pleased.
He says, "Let's make it up.
"I know you only did it, Nora, because you're a bit stupid,
"and I quite like the way you're dependent upon me, like a child."
SHE MAKES KISSING NOISES
But Nora isn't having this.
"All my life," she says,
"I've been treated like a doll."
She leaves behind her wedding ring,
she leaves behind her keys,
she leaves behind the three children
and she storms out,
slamming the door.
She wants to discover who she really is.
One critic described Nora as
"the most morally repulsive woman ever to appear on the stage,"
but after the performance,
women lingered behind to talk.
The idea that self-fulfilment was more important
than a role as wife and mother
inspired a generation
of proto-feminists,
who became known as "New Women."
A rash of campaigning novels shaped them -
"attacks on men," as this cartoonist has it.
Books like A Superfluous Woman,
The Heavenly Twins, The Yellow Aster...
..replete with debauched husbands,
unfulfilling marriages
and rebellious wives.
They said that things had to change for women.
Whoo!
In the public imagination,
New Women were inextricably linked
to another innovation of the period -
the bicycle.
Suddenly, middle class girls
could get around unaided
and their new, strenuous activity
required less restrictive clothing,
such as bloomers -
shockingly trouserish.
New Women were derided as mannish,
over-intellectual,
child-hating and dull...
but for the women themselves,
there were new opportunities
and new freedoms.
How do you think that the bicycle,
humble though it is, changed society?
More than, almost, anything intended to bring women liberation.
The bicycle changed reality for them
in that it did away with
the chaperonage system.
You couldn't have a maid...
She can't keep up with you, going...
That's right.
Secondly, she said it was the first amusement
women did for their own pleasure rather than for the pleasure of men
and they did it in the outside, in the open air.
What does the New Woman like, apart from bicycling, which she loves?
Depending on who she is,
she could like feminism -
she could be a feminist activist.
She could be an ordinary,
middle class, young woman
who wants to have a little bit of fun and education.
Socialising with her friends,
female and male,
not always being in the hothouse atmosphere of the marriage market.
When I imagine the New Woman,
I picture her wearing bloomers,
she's been to university,
maybe she has premarital sex.
Premarital sex, of course, happened...
more often than, probably, was talked about
but it was still very much a case
of losing your reputation if it came out
unless you were among the avant-garde, the literati,
the intellectuals and, even then,
it could be very problematic.
In one case of Edith Lanchester -
a very prominent case -
a young, socialist woman
who had a working class partner
and declared to her family that she was going to live with him,
and her father and her brothers
had her committed to a lunatic asylum.
Because she was organised politically,
she was released very quickly.
That's incredible.
So, Edith Lanchester was sent to a lunatic asylum for saying that
she was going to live with a man without being married to him.
Yes, and the doctor who signed the certificate felt that
her refusal to marry...
..was enough to prove
that she was prepared to commit social suicide,
which was equivalent to actual suicide.
By the early years of the 20th century,
there was a new generation of educated, liberated young women.
Different types of romance seemed possible.
One book in particular explored this idea.
Its author, HG Wells,
was already famous
as a writer of science fiction -
now he turned to the future of relationships.
Ann Veronica is a portrait of a confident, independent, young woman.
She longs to escape her restrictive,
suburban surroundings
and find adventures on her own.
Along the way, she encounters a number of suitors.
First up is Mr Manning.
He's a real manly man,
look at the manly moustache on him,
and he's very chivalrous.
He says and he does all the right things.
He's a poet, and he writes Ann Veronica a love letter.
Then he offers her a sapphire engagement ring...
Look at that!
..but the trouble is,
she just doesn't fancy him.
In her own words, she chucks him,
and she says "I'm done with the age of chivalry."
So, moving on, we have Mr Ramage.
He's an urbane, married man
in his fifties,
he works in the city
and he says that he's in favour of independence for women.
He lends Ann Veronica £40
to pay for her university biology course,
but there's a catch -
it turns out that he is a villainous philanderer
and what he wants in return for his £40 is, of course,
sexual favours.
Which leaves us with Mr Capes.
He works in the Biology lab
where Ann Veronica is studying
and, on the face of it,
he's not much, really.
He's separated from his wife,
he's been named in somebody else's divorce case
and he's inconsistent -
sometimes he's brilliant,
but at other times he's irritable.
But none of this matters
because it turns out that he and Ann Veronica are made for each other
and she decides that, even though they're not married,
they're going to go off to Switzerland
for an unofficial honeymoon.
A happy ending without a wedding was radical stuff...
but the big scandal around Ann Veronica
was that she was based on a real life woman.
HG Wells was married with two children
but, according to him,
women just wouldn't stop throwing themselves at him.
Amber Reeves, a brilliant young student at Cambridge,
was no exception.
In 1908, HG Wells and Amber Reeves
started having an affair.
He was 41, she was only 20.
Their relationship was deeply intellectual,
but also energetically sexual.
On one trip to the countryside,
they persuaded the sexton of a church
to let them into the belfry,
which they used for...you know what -
and again in the woods on the way home.
HG Wells was cock-a-hoop.
He later wrote of the
"unregretted exhilaration and happiness of that summer."
As well he might,
with a beautiful and adventurous young girl in his power -
but how did things work out for Amber?
Reality for Amber Reeves
didn't quite match the fiction.
When her parents found out,
she demanded that HG made her pregnant,
and they ran away together to France,
but in the end, he went back to his wife...
And Amber, now about to become an unwed mother,
went home and married the first available man -
a chivalrous old friend
approved by her father.
Though Amber thought she could rewrite the rules of romance,
the truth was that a respectable girl
couldn't really get away with bonking in a belfry
without first walking down the aisle.
Since the start of Queen Victoria's reign,
romance had changed immeasurably.
Women had been pure, meek,
domesticated little creatures -
but now many of them were educated, liberated,
ready to connect with men on equal,
intellectual terms...
..but where were the new men to match this ideal?
Well, they didn't exist.
As soon as real life romance
side-stepped convention,
there was scandal
and loss of reputation.
What was all very well in literature didn't yet translate into real life.
In 1909, romance still led to the altar.
Next time, the lid finally comes off
as romance becomes the dream of every 20th century boy and girl...
but this is a new, racy form of romantic love.
For the generations defined by two world wars,
it really was...anything goes.