(Missed part 5?  Read it here.  Or start from the beginning.)

The Gap

Having looked at the First-Century Greco-Roman culture, we now leap forward more than a millennium-and-a-half to the Victorian era.  It isn’t really clear why.  Presumably we are supposed to accept the premise that Christianity swooped in and overturned everything modern egalitarians don’t like about the view of women in Ancient Greece and Rome, and this untainted attitude toward women persisted until it was resurrected during the Renaissance and Reformation (which, by the way, precede the Victorian era by several hundred years).

Or maybe not.  After all, we learned in the last chapter that women’s discontent before the feminist movement is represented to us by Sophocles’ writing.  So maybe Christianity never fixed anything at all and women have just been miserable all this time?

It’s difficult to say what argument she’s making, because on the one hand there’s an implication that everything wrong with views of women in the world came in a direct line from Greco-Roman culture in the first century.  And on the other hand, we’re told this influence had to be re-established.

Newly Old?

“With the rise of Christianity and the fall of Rome, the influence of Greco-Roman culture had waned.  By the end of the Middle Ages, orthodox biblical teaching had also waned.  Two distinct movements brought about drastic changes in western civilization and the church.  The Protestant Reformation, which began in the 1500s, set about to restore what the Bible actually teaches about salvation and faith.  And, starting in the 1300s, the Renaissance…returned to earlier ideas….

“During the Renaissance, scholars began to study older Greco-Roman texts.  The influence of ancient Greece and Rome appeared everywhere….Victorians combined the Greco-Roman philosophy of the Renaissance, the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution, and the evolutionary science of Darwinism.  All of this they added to existing Christian religious and moral beliefs.” (p. 62-63)

Perhaps you can begin to see the confusion of this train of thought — and the oddity of skipping over all of history between the two eras under consideration.

Particularly since, if we follow the logic laid out for us, Christianity stripped away the pagan beliefs about women by…let’s just say A.D. 79-ish, with the Fall of Rome.  And this pagan Greco-Roman belief system was (again, according to the argument laid out for us) not imported again until the Renaissance (1300s+) and, to an increased extent, the Victorian Era (technically 1837+).  Theoretically, then, everything the Church, at least, and culture, possibly, had to say about women from about A.D. 80 to 1300 should be instructive for the “ideal” view of women we’re looking for.

So why did Miller ignore it?  Could it, perhaps, be that it would have undermined her entire argument to include this period, since the view of women in the Church has been largely unchanged throughout virtually all of history?  (More confirmation bias.) 

Darwinism

But let’s lay aside this over-1000-year omission, and move on.  In the Victorian Era, Darwinism was creeping into the culture — and, to a disturbing degree, into the Church.  This is an historical development worth noting, but the author simply views it as providing an additional argument for pagan views of women already held, rather than anything new.  Consequently, ‘though it may be significant in history and even, perhaps, in the Church, it doesn’t seem to play a significant role in the argument Miller is building.

The Unproven Premise(s)

She simply restates the thesis we’re supposed to have accepted unproven: “The Victorian era is a signficant link between Ancient Greece and Roman and our society today.  Some of the greatest damage the Victorians did was through attempting to incorporate the older pagan ideas with Christianity.  After the Victorian era, ancient Greek and Roman beliefs about women and men were taught as if they were biblical.” (p. 65)

To this point, she hasn’t attempted to prove these ideas are unbiblical; that’s just presumed.  She hasn’t effectively proven a connection between ancient Greek and Roman views and Victorian ones; that’s just presumed.  So at this point, wére moving forward on a premise accepted on sheer faith in the author’s veracity.  (There are a number of additional fallacies potentially tangled up in the absence of proof for this premise, like biased generalizations, affirming the consequent, jumping to conclusions, etc.  But it’s sufficient to simply point out the premise is currently unproven.)

What’s Wrong with the Victorian West?

There was certainly some messed-up stuff going on in Victorian England and elsewhere in the West.  There were some strange views of sex, wacky scientific theories, and a very classist system in Europe with some strange ideas about mating.  Anyone who’s ever read historical fiction involving the “Season” in “ton” is aware of that.  But Miller’s complaints about the era are quite a mixed list.

Some are serious.  Others seem like petty complaints.  While still others seem to be a mix of biblical ideas with excessive claims that may or may not be accurate.  It’s hard to tell when your citations are the writings of a feminist author and you’ve already proven yourself to be less than reliable about context.  Let’s take a look.

“Victorians believed that submission was at the heart of feminine nature because God had made woman to submit.  A true woman was submissive.  If not, she was going against the created order.  As one popular woman’s magazine explained, ‘In whatever situation of life a woman is placed, from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required of her.’

“Authority was a masculine attribute.  Men naturally had authority in all relationships, and especially in the family.  A husband, as the ruler, had the last word in all decisions. ‘In the domestic constitution this superiority vests in the husband: he is the head, the lawgiver, the ruler,’ wrote John Angell James…”in all matters touching the little world in the house, he is to direct, not indeed without taking counsel with his wife, but in all discordancy of view, he, unless he choose to waive his right, is to decide, and to his decision the wife should yield, and yield with grace and cheerfulness.'” (p. 67-68)

What’s happening here is subtle.  Miller is using quotes to lend credibility to her claims, but the quotes don’t prove the claims.  Being expected to have sweetly godly character does not equate to submission being “the heart of feminine nature.” Having a God-given authority as head of the household does not equate to authority being “a masculine attribute.”

Again a few paragraphs later she reiterates, “true womanhood was about submission.  Victorian masculinity was about dominance.” (p. 68)  These things may have been true, but she hasn’t proven it, and she’s put a negative spin on some biblical ideas.

Domestic vs. Public Spheres

Complaints about the domestic vs. the public sphere once again have a ring of truth to them, but consistently twisted just a little.  “The Industrial Revolution disconnected work and home.” There’s a lot of truth to that and, in my opinion, this is well worth investigating further.  But Miller seems to object to mixing common sense with this new paradigm.

“Men left home to work and earn wages.  Women, who were paid less and given fewer opportunities than men, tended to stay home.” (p. 71).  Yes, women tended to stay home.  Men weren’t carrying, birthing, and nursing babies.  It was a matter of practicality and logic that, when work and home were separated, the ones inherently able to care for the small children were the ones who remained in the home.

We also read that some women did work, but not if they were married, because “married women were expected to take care of their own houses and children and leave the paid work to their husbands.” (p. 71)  Besides the aforementioned common-sense point that married women were inclined to have babies, who needed them at home, I have to also point out that this was not a universal truth.  Lower-class women didn’t have the option to not earn a living, and most of the descriptions of women in every historical era overlook these class distinctions.

Women’s contributions to the household were also valued in that day, even if they came in the form of saving money through household economy, rather than bringing in money.

“Contemporary assessments of the value and significance of women’s work reflected these class differences in the quality and quantity of women’s domestic labor. Although elite men — and some elite women, too — sometimes paid casual lip service to the virtues of ‘notable’ housewifery, members of poor and middling households were more likely to recognize the true economic value of women’s work. William Byrd II may have exemplified the attitudes of elite men when he proudly, but somewhat vaguely, reported that his daughters were ‘every Day up to their Elbows in Housewifery, which will qualify them effectually for useful Wives and if they live long enough, for Notable Women.’ By contrast, the tutor John Harrower, an indentured servant, advised the overseer Anthony Frazier to marry because ‘if he was married a great many articles might be made in his house at a verry small expence which run away with a deale of money from him when he went to the store.’ Sarah Trebell of Williamsburg also stressed the economic value of women’s work when she lamented the illness of the wife of her brother, a tenant farmer. ‘I greatly fear his wife will never be able to help him get or save a living,’ Trebell observed, because ‘she mends so slowly.’ While Trebell and Harrower envisioned wives as frugal, industrious helpmeets, Byrd expected his daughters simply to preside over orderly and well-stocked households.”
(Beyond the Household: Women’s Place in the Early South, 1700-1835, by Cynthia A. Kierner, p. 17)

Go to part 7.