Browse Exhibits (32 total)

The nineteenth century was a time of technological innovation and imperial expansion in England, but it was also a time of increasing gender divide. New ideas regarding masculinity and femininity influenced various aspects of British society, including the home, fashion, and, the focus of this paper, education. Male education during this time period both shaped and was shaped by these new conceptions of masculinity, as reflected in school practices such as athletics and corporeal punishment. Male education was also influenced by socioeconomic status, as there existed a conviction that certain classes needed a certain type of education. Additionally, though the gender divide in education narrowed over time, one still existed at the end of the century. This exhibit aims to address these influences and differences, using various artifacts from contemporary British museums throughout London and the surrounding areas. 

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were an important formative moment for the understandings of gender that have persisted into our contemporary moment. Whereas previously, the discourse of male hegemonic power characterized women as a less developed but nevertheless continuous form of men, the rise of the frequency and prevalence of scientific investigation in all fields in the eighteenth century led to a medicalized discourse that separated the concepts of “male” and “female.”

In addition to the obvious scientific implications, this had a variety of ramifications in English society. The strict bifurcations of conceptions of male and female was important to the rise of domesticity as an ideology, in which people came to conceive of women as the inherently morally superior guardians of the safe private sphere of the home, and men as the brave bearers of the undesirable task of venturing into the morally compromised public sphere for the sake of generating income. The sense of this strict bifurcation was also important to the clinical discourse of homosexuality pioneered by the likes of Havelock Ellis at the end of the nineteenth century, which characterized homosexuality as an inborn “inversion”—in other words, that a homosexual woman, for example, was physically female but was supposed to bear internal “male” characteristics, such as “male” brain chemistry.

In many ways English society was very clearly aware of these ideas as they emerged and integrated them into systems of morality and desirable conduct. For example, Isabella Beeton’s Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861, exhibits a clear and self-aware sense that it is the duty of the wife as a woman to manage a respectable household primarily for the sake of her husband. However, in other ways, gender became a permeating and structuring reality of English life even in situations that lacked the blatant didacticism of Beeton’s book. An important way of apprehending the power of gendered assumptions is the investigation of the way in which they became so integrally accepted that they guided principles of art, design, and commercialism.

To that end this exhibit explores the ways in which eighteenth and nineteenth century ideologies of gender emerged implicitly in the design and use of spaces and materials, both private and public. None of the objects considered in this exhibit were developed for the explicit purpose of articulating or reinforcing gendered ideology; nevertheless, to varying degrees, all of the objects under consideration are influenced by or exhibit underlying assumptions or expectations about gender. By viewing these objects, you will learn about a variety of ways in which gendered ideology came to be so basically assumed and understood to be true in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that it could be used as a tool for unrelated decorative or artistic ends.

This exhibit examines several documents and books in relation to double lives homosexual men had to turn to in 19th century England, and explores the facade homosexual men had to create in order to fit into societal norms. Men who lived a double life, and had affairs with other men faced death penalties in the earlier years, or prison time. From famous cases like Oscar Wilde's famous works, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which reflect his feelings and showcase the double life he was living in, and can be seen on his Letter written to a young man. A Problem in Modern Ethics, takes another perspective into the idea of homosexuality, and a reflection of his own extramarital affairs with younger men, while living a “heteronormative” life. All of the sources show the feelings towards homosexuality and to an extent show how these men had to defend their identity against a society that was not accepting and completely disapproved homosexuality. The overall theme of the exhibit is the double lives and the extremes that these men in 19th century London would have to resort to in order to live out their desires. They share similar ideologies and sentiments when it comes to the idea of a relationships between men and younger boys, from A Problem in Modern Ethics, which address this issues and brings it to light, in a desperate way to turn it socially acceptable, to Wilde’s book The Picture of Dorian Gray, where one of the motifs of the story is male youth.

Many of these men connected their sexual identity to a need to recapture youth, as these men from Oscar Wild to John Addington Symonds Jr, lived out a double life, in the shadows of society. These men had wives and families which fit into the societal expectations at the time for men of their class. However both of these men, Wilde and Symonds, had extramarital affairs with younger boys. These men would have to go against the expectations that society had set for them, and live a life of secrets filled with social repression and outcast, in order to fulfill their desires. As it can be seen in the letter written by Wilde to a young male, these relationships, although subtle, can be understood and seen as very important in their lives. 

While Wilde turned to art like writing and poetry to express his true feelings, Symonds turned to academia. In these four objects it is evident their feelings and emotions towards their secret lives. Wilde explains that a man kills that who he loves most, which can be seen throughout these objects. This idea is evident in how these men “kill” the self that have these “obscure” and “dirty” desires, and turn to what society had expected of them. In Wilde’s case it can be even seen as him killing his own career, and this can be seen on The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written after his time in prison. In Symonds’ case publishing this book came with backlash, which “killed” his image in society. 

This exhibit takes you through the double lives these homosexual men had to live in 19th century London. 

Britain’s empire was depicted through men in art and consumer items. Large-scale expansion into India and China developed Britain’s global influence. Londoners consumed goods from India and China when available, and art that illustrated the empire surged over time. The British crown ruled over four-hundred-million people during its height toward the end of the 19th century. However, themes of masculinity dominated empire consumption and depiction. Men were portrayed as the face of the empire. This exhibit is journey through London during imperial expansion. It highlights imagery of men in Britain and the populations it controlled with particular attention toward India and China.

White British men were at the forefront of empire in London. The Great Exhibition was an inaugural celebration of technology and leadership with influences from the full British empire. Joseph Paxton designed the incredible Crystal Palace for temporary placement in London’s Hyde Park. Henry Courtney Selous’ The Opening of the Great Exhibition by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851 is a painting of the Exhibition’s opening. The group in front of the royals is one hundred percent men. Though Queen Victoria was Britain’s leader, men were depicted as the operators of empire in Paxton’s painting. The only women in the painting (besides royals) were blurred and toward the back as onlookers. Consumption of empire was also male dominated. Explorers of the Borough Market would be men alone, or women accompanied by men throughout the 18^th century. It was yet another gendered space of empire.

Imagery of Indian and Chinese culture was shaped through a masculine view as well. Empire artwork boomed alongside consumerism. There was a British rush to paint the empire and enjoy features of it at home. The British depicted India’s native leadership through a masculine lens. Tilly Kettle’s depictions of Indian nabobs are marked by their masculine nature. Jewels and gold show Indian culture, but the nabobs are all men. British production of their portraits highlights the view that foreign societies were also male dominated like England. Furniture made to replicate the Chinese style also fulfilled themes of masculinity with women portrayed as irrelevant or non-participants in Chinese culture. 

Artwork from India shows that native Indians also understood British men to be the leaders of the British Empire. Indian leaders likely interacted with male groups of Britons during meetings or negotiations. Their own perception of the British was altered by the exclusion of women from imperial groups like the East India Company. The famous Tippoo’s Tiger shows a tiger eating a British soldier who was, of course, male. Mysore’s struggle with Britain was an instance of Indian men versus British men. Women were once again left out of the images.

Men were the primary feature of artwork and consumption on multiple fronts of the empire. In London, Britain boasted its male leaders as the pioneers of the global expanse. British depiction of native groups portrayed men as the leaders of Indian and Chinese society as well. And finally, Indian imagery of the British identity resonated with masculine themes as well.

History is often written by the most fortunate of society, leaving forgotten the countless people who work day in and day out to allow that society to function. In similar fashion, the idealized version of femininity presented by upper-class women in London during the Georgian and Victorian periods did not truthfully reflect the realities of everyday life for most women during that time. Although hegemonically some aspects of daily life enjoyed by wealthy women trickled down to influence the lower classes, the lives of women who needed to work to support themselves and their families were completely different from those of the women above them, but are just as important to study. These women faced abject poverty, high rates of pregnancy as well as infant and maternal mortality, disease, ridicule and contempt from their superiors, and lacked any kind of representation in government. Nevertheless, they persisted, and left pieces of their lives that have fortunately been deemed worthy enough to be preserved in museums alongside the crowns and gowns of their rulers. Here is a glimpse into the lives of working women, starting in the late 1700s and ending in the early 1900s, just before the lives of everyday women would be drastically changed by the first World War.