| Victorian | |||
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| 1837–1901 | |||
 Queen Victoria and family, 1846, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter | |||
| Monarch(s) | Queen Victoria | ||
Chronology
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| Women in society |
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Critical scholars have pointed to the status of women in the Victorian era as an illustration of the striking discrepancy of the United Kingdom's national power and wealth when compared to its social conditions.[citation needed] The era is named after Queen Victoria. Women did not have the right to vote or sue, and married women had limited property ownership. At the same time, women labored within the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the Industrial Revolution. Feminist ideas spread among the educated middle classes, discriminatory laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian era.[1]
In the Victorian era, women were seen, by the middle classes at least, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype formed firm expectations for women to provide their families with a clean home, prepare meals, and raise their children. Women's rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, their physical property excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married.[2]