When you think of the Victorian
era, what do you imagine? Corsets, carriages, Oliver Twist. How about you as a Victorian
era housewife, trying to make it in the emerging middle class. Don't believe me? Well, let's look at 10 signs
today that you are actually secretly a Victorian housewife. These things just happen. You wake up one day and you're like, Hey,
I really belong in the Victorian era. And that day, might be today for you. So we're going to look at 10 things
you might have in common with women from the late 18 hundreds. And let's dive in. But before that, my name is Ellie Dashwood
and this is my channel where we talk about history writing and classic literature. If you'd like any of those
things, please subscribe. If you don't, I'm sorry. Life's full of these trials. Let's go into sign number
one: you don't exercise. So if you avoid hitting the gym, like it's
the bubonic plague, then you have a lot in common with the Victorian Housewives. Basically during that time
period, there was this idea that a girl's uterus just pretty much
floated around freely in her body. And if she did too much of vigorous
exercise that could compromise the uterus and then make it impossible
for her to have children later. So from a very young age, girls were
encouraged to play very sedately. Don't do anything to wild and
crazy, like do a back flip, that'd destroy your possibility of offspring .
This just led to a lot of, not
really in shape women, of course. And this was actually really fascinating
too, because the medical community at the time knew this wasn't true. they could clearly dissect cadavers
and discover that a woman's uterus was firmly held intact by ligaments .
So this persisted and it knocked
all the girls out of CrossFit. Clearly back then, they
weren't doing that. Of course I don't like going to the gym
because it's hard and I sweat and I get out of breath and that's not very fun. So either way, whether you are worried
about your uterus or you just really don't like working out, together, we're all out
of shape with the Victorian Housewives. Now, if you think, "Hey, guess what? I walk. my Fitbit has all the steps." Then you actually have sign number two
in common with Victorian Housewives. Sign number two: you take walks. With CrossFit being out of the question
for women in the Victorian era. Their number one way of staying
in shape was by walking. And this was something that was
encouraged by everybody: their mothers, their doctors, Elizabeth Bennett. Walking is very beneficial exercise. Oh, indeed it is. And we do see a lot throughout classic
literature and in the proceeding Regency era, which is the era of right before
the Victorian era that they just walked. Right. I mean, walking, walking, walking. So if you really like to get your stroll
on to stay in shape, then you have so much in common with women back in the day. But of course we all know, no matter
how much you walk that might still leave your abs with something to be desired. So sign number three, you're a Victorian
housewife is that your abs are not fab. So today maybe you have a desk job or
you really don't like doing sit-ups. There are a million reasons why
your abs might not be in the ripped status you might like, but the
number one killer of abs in the Victorian era for women were corsets. Now, coresets are not this huge body
mutilating idea that we have today. They were actually very supportive. They were essentially
the bras of the time. Right. And of course, sometimes
bras are uncomfortable. So I'm sure corsets were
kind of uncomfortable. They weren't the plague of humanity that
popular media makes them out to be today. But they did have one side effect. Which was because they were
supporting so much of the core. That means the core muscles
had to work less, which would let the muscles atrophy a bit. So they were kind of weak and
this caused some women to even wear special sleep corsets to bed. Because when they would take their
corset off at night, it would be like, "Wow, I'm super unstable. Can I stand up straight by myself?" Which they probably could, but it
doesn't feel nice to feel unstable. So they needed that extra support. And women started wearing
corsets at a very young age, from seven or eight years ol d. It was just an average part of their life. But it didn't make their abs the best,
in-shape things in the world either. No, we're on the sign number four. Which is that you don't know how to cook. If you always feel like you're waging
a hopeless battle in the kitchen, then your Victorian sisterhood
knows what you're feeling. Because they dealt with
the same exact problem. Does that surprise you a little bit? I know, when I first started learning
about this, it surprised me because you always think of knowing how to cook
as being how to be a housewife 101. And when you do look back at media
from the 1950s and that whole era. It was very much they know how to cook. They know how to clean. This is what a housewife does. But back in the Victorian era, that was
a very different, and the whole reason was because of generational knowledge. Now, if you think about generational
knowledge, that is what one generation knows and they pass it onto the
next generation and then they pass it on to the next generation. I speak English because my mom spoke
English because her mom spoke English. Right. Generational knowledge. Now by the 1950s, knowing how to cook
have become generational knowledge among women, a mother would teach her
daughter how to cook, who would teach her daughter how to cook, but someone
had to originally learn how to cook. So let's rewind to the Victorian era where
a lot of women had no clue how to cook. And there were a couple of
different reasons for this. Number one is you might be so
rich, your family hires a cook. Right. So the servant is cooking. You don't have to know how
to cook and you marry a man. He has a servant as a cook. And we see this, especially
in the upper classes. And that had been how the upper
classes were ran for centuries. We see this in Jane Austen's
Regency Era Pride and Prejudice. What a superbly featured room
and what excellent boil potatoes. Many years since I've had
such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins, should I
compliment the excellence of the cooking? Mr. Collins, we are perfectly
able to keep a cook. Excellent. So if Elizabeth Bennett had
gotten married to a poor man, she would not have known how to cook. Right? It's a good thing she married Darcy. Who I'm sure has a lot
of cooks on his staff. But the bigger issue in the
late Victorian era was of poor girls becoming middle-class. Because in the Victorian era,
the industrial revolution exploded the middle class. There were all these new businesses,
these industries that were taking people from a very poor place to
this much richer, middle class. Obviously they weren't, in the aristocracy
or anything, but they suddenly had money. For what? For food. Because when they were poor,
they didn't have money for food. So they had this very basic
grule that didn't require a lot of cooking skills to create. So when they had all this food,
they didn't know what to do with it. And they weren't rich enough
to hire a cook, either. Because cooks were expensive servants. Servants all had their own price
tag and a good cook was expensive. Where they could get other servants
that were more basic, but they didn't have any cookery skills .
So the ideal would be for a middle-class
housewife to teach herself how to cook and then teach a servant how to cook. And that would be their roundabout
cheaper way to get a cook. But of course, in order to teach
her servant how to cook, she had to learn how to cook first. How do you learn how to cook? Because there was no YouTube videos
and Pinterest hadn't been invented yet. Point number five, you're
constantly searching for advice, for answers to questions you
should probably already know. So if you have been Googling
really basic questions. And are like, "Wow, I'm so glad
there's a wikiHow article on how to write a thank you note. Or how to saute onions." Then you and Victorian Housewives have
so much in common because they spent a lot of time searching for advice on how
to live and survive in the middle-class. Because again, we're talking about a lot
of poor girls who are now in the middle class, which has totally different social
structures and moors and behaviors, and they need to learn those quick. So that they don't look like,
poor girls trying to look rich, they just want to look rich. Right? Yeah. And so what did they do? They turned to books. One in particularly is Mrs. Beaton's Book of Household Management. This book, which is huge. I mean, look this is modern printing
with tiny font and it's still giant. This covers everything from child
rearing to how to manage servants, to how to hire servants to how to cook. To how to get along in the social
sphere of the middle-class? And there were a lot of books like this,
there were a lot of etiquette books. There were a ton of magazines that
were constantly analyzing the upper class, trying to help them imitate it. Basically they were
searching for how to survive. Because again, they lacked
the generational knowledge. So if you're ever like, "I should
know this, but I'm so glad that Google autocomplete shows that
other people are searching the same question" than you and the Victorian
women have so much in common. Number six, you rely on servants
to get through your day. Now to run a household in
Victorian England was so much work. If you ever do read this book, the amount
of stuff it describes them having to do just to clean a very basic thing. I'm like I would die just
from trying to clean anything. But that's why they had servants. Right? And there was all these different
types of servants and all these different types of jobs. Now, I think we often assume in the modern
era, unless you're like really rich, that you don't really have servants. But is that really true? Back in the day they needed help
building fires, sweeping the floors, lighting the gas lights. And we've pretty much replaced that
with technology, our new servants. Now let's get back to more signs that
you're a Victorian era housewife. Sign, number seven, you love health fads. Health fads are a fascinating concept. It's like, how did we ever survive
before we discovered this revolutionary cure to everything, right? We're not talking about basic
discoveries like germ theory or that you shouldn't give babies opium to sleep. We're talking you about the really
big breakthroughs, like fact that coconut oil solves all of mankind,
ills, woes, problems, dry skin, who knows what else it cures? Does anyone really know the
true power of coconut oil? And I noticed another
recent fad is detoxing. Which is fascinating because
the Victorians loved detoxing. Their number one favorite
detox was laxatives. If you went to the bathroom and
it wasn't painful and dehydrating, then was it really good for you? I'm not sure. The Victorians also were not sure. So they just gave everybody laxatives. Old people, babies, everyone in between. Because they were detoxing. They were so ahead of their time guys. But pretty much, it was just like today. There was always the newest
thing and the magazines were always telling them what it was. Sign number eight, which is
you don't read food labels. Now the Victorians had a really
good excuse to not read food labels. They didn't really exist. Those came along in the Edwardian era,
which is the era after the Victorian era. The Victorian era saw a rise
in pre-packaged goods that they had to buy from someone else. Before, if you think about a more
pastoral lifestyle, you were eating the food that's coming from your farm. It's coming from your neighbor's farm. It's coming from that guy
down the street's farm. It's a very fresh, it's very natural. All of a sudden, now you have
people crammed into cities, crammed into factories. And they needed to buy food from
stores that were not very honest. They liked to bleach the milk
and put brick dust in the bread. And they just ate that. Because what else are you going to do? Instead of your neighbor having a farm,
now, he just has a ugly apartment. The Victorian Era was hard, guys. Let's be thankful for all the food
labels by actually trying to read them. Sign number nine. You like to keep your
makeup looking natural. So if you don't like to wear makeup
or you don't want your makeup to stand up and announce itself, then you and
Victoria women have a lot in common. Because not only did they like the
healthy glow look, also, if you wore too much makeup, people thought you
were going for the prostitute look. Which was really fascinating because
apparently the prostitutes at the time also didn't want to wear too much makeup
because then they looked like prostitutes. So the only person wearing a lot of
makeup was the imaginary prostitute, but still nobody wanted to be her. They wanted to look natural and it
was this idea that if you took enough walks and had a kind inner spirit. That was all, you needed
to look beautiful. Let's just all return
to that theory there. Of course, this didn't mean that
they didn't wear any makeup. They actually wore something that was
a very similar to foundation, which is when they would use cold cream, which is
pretty much a lotion that comes in a jar. They put that on their face and
then they'd use powder that was either white or slightly tinted. If you're getting slightly tinted,
that's, getting close to the red light district there though. You put that in neatly on after into
the still wet lotion on your face. And what does that become? Powder plus lotion. That's foundation. Anyway, you definitely did not want
to use Rouge, lipstick or anything that would really pop and be like,
"Hey, I'm here, I'm wearing makeup." So if you also don't like your
makeup to be poppin', then you're back from the Victorian era. Now sign number 10. This one really surprised
me when I learned about it. It's that you shave your legs. Okay. Growing up, I always had this idea
that women started shaving their legs after they stopped wearing
pantyhose and stockings constantly. Right? It's like they took off the stockings
and then they were like, "Hey, my leg. It's covered with hair. I should do something about that." But no, if you look at history,
there were a lot of cultures and a lot of years that shaved because
they didn't like being hairy. That was very true in the Victorian era. The ideal feminine look was one of
hairlessness except for, of course your hair on your head and your eyebrows. Everything else should be hairless. And this came from comparing themselves
to classical statues and paintings. You really look at that. None of the women are ever
really covered in hair are they? So the idea was that being
hairy was very manly and being hairless was very feminine. So they shaved like crazy, which is
fascinating because they also wore long skirts and stockings under it. So the only person who ever saw
it was their husband, or also maybe their maid, if they had
one that helped them get dressed. Still, they were shavin' guys. So, if you also don't like being
hairy, you and the Victorian Housewives have so much in common. So that's it for our 10 signs that you're
secretly a Victorian era housewife. If you've discovered that you
belong 140 years ago, please subscribe to this channel. So you can learn more about the
era you were destined to live in. Also let me know in the comments below
how many and which of these things you have in common with the Victorian era
Housewives and just keep being awesome. Cause you're here and you're awesome. Thanks so much and see you next time.
