In the beginning of this week’s reading Langland frequently mentions status as a performative task by the middle class women of Victorian England. This argument initially jumped out at me because of the previous reading we did, Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. Both argue that various responsibilities were placed upon women in order to portray a vision of high status to their peers. Veblen spoke of clothing, and Langland appeared to be very interested in the etiquette of women in this period. In both of these discussions of status as performative, I continually wondered whether women in the Victorian era willingly accepted these new responsibilities. Although it must have been gradual in its implementation, this task must have been met by some with confusion or even revulsion.
In thinking of the possibility of discordant Victorian women, Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being comes to mind. In one of the autobiographical essays in that collection, she contemplates the reasons for her past duties as a Victorian woman. She laments the dresses, the parties, the awkwardness, the forced demureness, and the various other trappings that turned her into a trophy several nights a month. Yet, she understands that none of it was for her, it was for her brother who would routinely beg her to come to those stifling functions. Woolf’s brother in many ways proves Langland’s and Veblen’s point that women were relied on to be the face of status. I find it ironic that in a period that was in many ways patriarchal, women were needed in such a way. They acted as pedestals on which their male counterparts stood, in order to elevate them to required social propriety.
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