Forbes and Fifth

"Our Happy Domestic Home"

“They say no sovereign was more loved than I am (I am bold enough to say), and that, from our happy domestic home—which gives such good example”.1

- Queen Victoria, October 1844

 

“It is true, we owe her no political allegiance; but the virtues of the Queen of England, while they secure to her the love and loyalty of her subjects, entitle her to the willing fealty of every honorable man in Republican America”.2

- Cornelius Conway Felton, 1854

 

Introduction

Perhaps the most evident aspect of the Anglo-American relationship in popular culture today is the peculiar way in which Americans marvel at the British royal family. Interest in royal weddings and births has become equally as ingrained into American society as in British society, and popular movies, television shows, books, etc. across the United States similarly reflect interest in this topic. Today, this attention is paid to the royals as a result of the perceived glamour, class, and fairytale of the family, but American obsession with the British monarchy spans almost two centuries—beginning with the young Queen Victoria in 1838. Unlike this present-day perception that is reliant on the novelty of a different culture and system, the foundation of American interest in and romanticizing of the British monarchy began as a reflection of similarities between America and Britain: most notably, the transatlantic appeal of a morally upright female in the highest station imaginable.

Queen Victoria’s popularity among Brits is undeniable and for good reason. She was the longest reigning British sovereign up to that point, as well as the head of the largest empire in the history of the world; at its height, her dominion extended into six continents, and Victoria became the namesake of an entire era. What is not so evident, however, is the impetus behind her vast popularity in the United States. This admiration took many forms: for example, popularization of the white wedding dress in American society following the Queen’s marriage to Prince Albert in 1840, or the United States’ somber response to her death in 1901. The headline of The New York Times on the day after Victoria’s death, January 23, 1901, proclaimed, “Washington Flags Lowered: Such a Mark of Respect Had Never Been Before Paid on the Death of a Monarch".3 Why was this grief so sharply felt across America—a country which only a century before had rejected the British monarchy through violence?

The relationship between America and Britain is one without definition; ever-changing and subjective between time periods, groups, and areas, it is a rapport marked by fluidity. Today, they are two distinct cultures with unique customs, dialects, and mores that are a result of decades of separation across a vast ocean. In the early periods of the American state, however, this divide was much less significant. Following the American Revolution, the two polities still shared many characteristics, despite the American denunciation of all things British—a necessary part of independence. From the establishment of British colonies in America to roughly the turn of the 19th century, areas including American judicial systems, popular culture, and sports were highly influenced by the “mother country”.4 In J. H. Plumb’s article, "Britain and America: The Cultural Tradition", he claims that “so long as we maintain a common language we shall always be tied together as siblings are by a common parentage”.5 Moreover, he claims that “in religion…the influence of England is paramount—Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, all descend directly from either the Church of England or its dissenting sects”.6 In this paper, I will argue that Queen Victoria’s popularity in America throughout the 19th century was a result of this sense of commonality—most especially, the Queen’s personification of shared Anglo-American ideals of femininity, faith, and domesticity.

 

The Industrial Revolution and Femininity

The Industrial Revolution in Britain arguably started the domino effect from which American interest in the monarchy stemmed. As steam power, textiles, and factory systems boomed in Britain, these advances in production and industry trickled over to the United States, creating two nations with industrial revolutions which completely altered the fabric of society in each. For the purpose of comparing the cultural and societal dynamics of both Britain and America in this period, one of the most striking similarities is their kindred view of femininity in the 19th century, which was a result of the Industrial Revolution and religious values shared by the two.     

It was this climate of transformation in the workforce that resulted in a change in domestic life. As opportunity in industry increased, the explosion of a new middle-class permanently and drastically transformed the structure of society. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, citizens largely fell into one of only two categories: the lower-class or the aristocracy. Following this change in industry, land and titles were no longer the only means of making a modest living; jobs in factories, shops, and offices made the new middle-class an increasingly influential force in countries touched by the Industrial Revolution.7

As scores of middle-class men entered the workforce, women’s roles were increasingly set in the home. Thus, the era of “separate spheres” was born, wherein the realms of men and women rarely overlapped; a man’s focus was in work, economics, and politics, while women were “sequestered from the so-called evils of commerce and production in homes, where they were to be the guardians of morality and cultivation”.8 In this period, the idea of a “woman’s place” took root, and ideas of female responsibility for education, child-rearing, domesticity, and morality came into being.

From this, popular tropes emerged which emphasized the gender norms of the 19th century in both Britain and America. One, the “Cult of Domesticity”, divided “true womanhood” into four characteristics: “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity”.9 Another more exclusively British trope of the century was the “Angel in the House”, a sweeping illustration of separate spheres based upon its namesake, a poem by Coventry Patmore. The poem speaks to Victorian views of femininity and its inherent inferiority and piousness as compared to masculinity.10 The characteristics of the ideal woman—piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity—found true personification in Queen Victoria, leading to her immense popularity among American citizens and British subjects alike.

It is important to note that this new ideology did not extend to all spheres of life. Class systems and hierarchies ruled in the 19th century, and the “Cult of Domesticity” was largely a middle and upper-class phenomenon.11 Lower class families often had to rely on women for financial support in whatever way they could, and immigrants, slaves, and other underprivileged or persecuted groups did not have the luxury of a sheltered life within the home.  Moreover, the ideology of “separate spheres” remained limited to white Christians. As these middle-class groups made up a significant part of society at the time, their preferences and behavior proved formative for society in the Victorian era.

 

Victoria, Independent

Queen Victoria, sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and later, Empress of India, seems the antithesis of domesticity as the most powerful woman—if not person—in the world for the better part of a century, being almost universally beloved with a legacy which outshone her contemporaries. Her legacy was not one born of feminism, however. Following her marriage to Prince Albert, Victoria was the absolute personification of the “Cult of Domesticity” in every sense of the phrase.

Prior to her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840, Victoria’s popularity among Brits and Americans was tepid at best. Upon her coronation in 1838, she was widely celebrated, likely due to the novelty of a young female taking the British throne, but in the years before her coronation and up to her wedding, this popularity waned both at home and abroad. The Queen was embroiled in a variety of scandals, and Americans had little reason to engage with royal goings-on across the Atlantic. Additionally, the elements which often captivate Americans today—the beauty and glamour of British royalty—were decidedly absent in the new Queen; barely five feet tall, American Fanny Appleton, wife of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, posited, “[A]las! for England’s future queen, whatever else, beauty is not her dower— a short, thick commonplace, stupid-looking girl, dressed simply in white with a wreath of roses, without even a good complexion!”.12 Many Americans would also disparage her small stature and plump figure, reflecting their disinterest in the small, plain woman who sat on the British throne. American indifference continued as Victoria remained a powerful, single woman—the converse of the ideal, domestic wife. Until her marriage, Victoria was relatively independent and held more power than any other woman in her kingdom. Incongruous with popular sentiment of the period, she was terrified to have children, and sometimes critical of marriage. She is quoted as saying:

All marriage is such a lottery — the happiness is always an exchange — though it may be a very happy one — still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband’s slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl — and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to — which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage.13

Moreover, many of her contemporaries made the comparison to another single British Queen: Elizabeth I. American correspondence in London under Colonel Joseph White declared that “the little Queen is playing Elizabeth already…she manifests an astonishing aplomb”.14 This headstrong, independent sovereign held no interest for a nation who put submissive, domestic women on a pedestal, and the British felt the same. Victoria’s popularity would not flourish until she marked herself as the quintessence of femininity to American and British audiences: a wife.

 

“We Women Are Not Made for Governing”: Victoria and Domesticity

All of these sentiments changed when Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, her first cousin. Their marriage has become famed for its genuine passion and devotion, and it was their unity that truly launched Victoria’s image as the archetypal 19th century woman. The wedding itself prompted much of this image. The Queen’s vows brought to the forefront her status as a submissive wife, rather than powerful sovereign; “when the archbishop asked the Queen if she would like to remove the word ‘obey’ from the marriage service, she insisted it remain”.15 In just one statement, Victoria delineated what would become her legacy, stating that she wished “to be married as a woman and not as a Queen”.16 This resonated across the Atlantic; an American news report in the Morning Herald specifically took care to include that the Queen “repeated the words love, honor, and obey in a very audible manner”.17

Victoria’s dress, too, has become a renowned part of her legacy. She popularized the white wedding gown, which remains a staple in Western culture today. Historically, there was no precedent or obligation to wear a white wedding gown, and “more often than not, a woman got married in the best dress she already owned”.18 Of course, some did wear white. However, “white dresses did not symbolize virginity or even purity, but rather were costlier and harder to keep clean, and thus communicated the status and wealth of the wearer”.19 After the royal wedding in 1840, however, the connection between white wedding dresses and purity was forged—a result of Victoria’s newly revered image of piousness. Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular magazine in 19th century America, published an article in 1849 claiming that “custom has decided, from the earliest ages, that white is the most fitting hue” for the wedding gown, as it is “an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood”.20 Within only a few years, Victoria herself had created a new norm in the realm of femininity, thanks to a change in public perception of the Queen; she had quickly transformed from a threat towards female submission into its very personification.

In the years after 1840, Victoria further plunged herself into the woman’s sphere by becoming a mother nine times. She was steadily pregnant from 1840-1857, and though Victoria was dispassionate about babies and motherhood, her image relied on wearing a domestic face. After marriage, motherhood was the most important part of a woman’s life in the 19th century; it “anchored her more firmly to the home”, and society “depended upon mothers to raise up a whole generation of Christian statesmen”.21 Mothers were the backbone of Western Christian society and were meant to instill piety and morals in their sons and daughters—and the Queen of England was no stranger to this expectation. Although she privately claimed that it made her “absolutely miserable… to have the first two years of [her] married life utterly spoilt” by childbirth and childrearing, Victoria outwardly advertised the joy of domesticity in the highest station.22 Author Margaret Homans posits that “Victoria is at once an exemplary construct of Victorian ideology and its fantasized author”.23 While Victoria may not have been an enthusiastic mother, she perpetuated domestic values. Even more so, she did what so many could not do in the Victorian Era, a time of poor sanitation and dubious medical practice—she survived childbirth numerous times and produced multiple healthy babies. In this way, she was the picture of motherhood and life in the “woman’s sphere”.

As their family continued to grow, so too did their domestic image. Victoria became increasingly devoted to Albert as their marriage matured, and her once fiery spirit gave way to deference, as she “molded herself around him, like ivy round an oak”.24 Although the most powerful woman in the world, the Queen sank further and further into the societal place consigned to her because of her gender. Victoria came to relish domestic life rather than fear it, and her subjects—as well as foreign onlookers—noticed. The Christian Parlor Magazine, an American publication dedicated to piety and morality in the United States, devoted an entire section to the young Queen, heaping adulation upon her moral and religious righteousness. The article states unequivocally:

The example of the Queen is a beautiful and forcible recommendation of the superior character of domestic enjoyment to any other of a temporal nature. With the whole range of worldly pleasures before her, she enters the little circle of home, and finds her happiness there. Her children and her husband are worth more to her than crown and kingdom and regal pomp.25

 

 

 

Figure 1

The royal family perpetuated this image of happiness in the home both through outward action, as well as through popular imagery. For example, royal portraiture puts Victoria’s “ordinary”, wifely role on display; frequently, she and Albert “assume[d]… the guise of the middle classes, their clothes and most importantly, their rigid gender hierarchy”.26 In Figure 1, titled “To the Queen’s Private Apartments: The Queen and Prince Albert at Home”, the pair cultivate this image as they happily play with their children, and no crowns or symbols of royalty are extant.27 Margaret Homans claims that “the more [the Queen] appears as a bending, yielding wifely figure, the more her subjects grant her the power to model their lives”.28 Based upon the evidence of Victoria’s popularity in America, it became clear that this “model” was not just for her subjects, but for the larger Western Christian world. Without the television programs or social media which connect Americans to the monarchy today, these portraits acted as the best piece of propaganda to show non-Brits the values of the Queen.

Important to note, Victoria was a wife who not only obeyed her husband, but by all accounts, she loved him truly and deeply. More than anything, her tangible devotion to him solidified her popular image among Brits and Americans as the perfect wife. His influence on her completely altered her reign and personality, changing the single queen with reported “aplomb” into a woman who was helpless and dependent. After losing Albert, Victoria was quoted as saying: “when I hear you say I am good or wise or a great Queen, I long to tell you that what I am he has made me, and that without him I should have been unworthy in every way”.29 She was female subordination incarnate, and Christians within and outside of her realm exulted in it—none more than Americans.

So too did the Queen boost her image in America and Britain through her support of certain social and political movements. Causes which she heartily supported included “education when allied to religion” and the “sorrows of widows and children”.30 An advocate for women in the home, she was concurrently a “vehement opponent of every movement that had for its ultimate object the higher education and development of women.”31 A contradiction in every sense of the word, Victoria was a highly-educated woman with great power who disavowed the pursuit of similar status amongst her fellow women. In perhaps the most obvious example of her incongruous place in society, she despised the growing suffragist movement in Britain, positing:

I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights,” with all its attendant horrors. … Were women to “unsex” themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.32

 

In accordance to her own status as sovereign, Victoria believed that she was an exception to the rule, stating that, “"I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign” and that “we women are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations”.33 This sentiment of female disinterest in politics and power was equally popular in America as well, and women’s publications, such as the Godey’s Lady’s Book, went so far as to include a petition against women’s suffrage in the United States, claiming that “Holy Scripture inculcates a different, and for us higher, sphere apart from public life”.34 Queen Victoria thus promulgated an image of domesticity both through her actions within the house and through her behavior in the public sphere. This was an image which reflected the ideals of the time, both in Britain and America.

 

Grief, War, and the Creation of a Legacy

By 1860, the Queen had come to fully rely on Albert in all things. The Prince Consort had moved from the Queen’s confidant to her master— “king in all but name”.35 At the same time, their popularity among Americans was at an all-time high. George Templeton Strong commented in 1858: “there is a deep and almost universal feeling of respect and regard for Great Britain and for Her Britannic Majesty. The old anti-British patriotism of twenty years ago is nearly extinc”.36 However, the dawn of the 1860s was to bring two life-altering events which Brits and Americans could not have predicted: the American Civil War and the untimely death of the Prince Consort.

Conflict in America that had been brewing for years naturally drew attention from across the Atlantic. The Queen and Prince Consort were desirable allies for both the United and Confederate States of America, and the United Kingdom relied heavily on American commerce—particularly the cotton production of the South. At the same time, many Brits were strong abolitionists, including the royal family.37 This interesting dichotomy led to questions about with whom the United Kingdom would side; in the end, it was diplomatic intervention by Queen Victoria and Albert that kept Britain out of the conflict in its earliest stages.38 Known as the Trent Affair, a watershed moment occurred in the diplomatic relations between Britain and the United States in 1861, as the United States seized a ship carrying Confederate envoys, though Britain had declared neutrality.39 Stories say that Prince Albert happened upon a letter ready to be sent to America regarding the incident but reformed the incendiary language and thus avoided a conflict which might have spiraled into a British entrance into the American Civil War.40

On December 14, 1861, Victoria’s attention turned elsewhere as she faced the greatest loss imaginable—the death of Prince Albert. The grief felt by Victoria is renowned today: “All the world is sad and dark and empty—mourning is the only thing that gives me satisfaction”, lamented the Queen on December 25, 1861.41 Naturally, this was an emotional—rather than factual—statement, but it perfectly illustrates Victoria’s devastation, which characterized the latter half of her life and earned her the nickname, “Widow of Windsor”.42 Victoria’s grief led her to stray from the usual behavior of a wife in mourning; her devotion to Albert’s memory was ceaseless. She chose to dress only in black, laid out her husband’s clothes each day, and slept with Albert’s coat each night for the rest of her life.43 Around the world, sympathy for her epic loss arrived. Even in a divided America, “ship’s flags flew at half-mast; British societies held commemorative events; clergymen delivered sermons on the significance of his family life; and church bells tolled”.44 The world was very aware of Victoria’s reliance on her husband, and the Queen’s desolation at his death was both evident and woeful. She mourned:

But oh! To be cut off in the prime of life—to see our pure, happy, quiet, domestic life, which alone enabled me to bear my much disliked position CUT OFF at forty-two— when I had hoped with such instinctive certainty that God never would part us, and would let us grown old together… is too awful, too cruel.45

Suddenly, Victoria was faced with a life she had no familiarity with—one without her “happy, quiet, domestic life” and husband to guide her.

 

 

Figure 2

As Victoria surrendered herself to a lifetime of grief, she lost significant popularity among her countrymen and around the world, as many found the longevity of her seclusion and depression to be gaudy, dramatic, and self-serving. In Figure 2, a British cartoon depicts Victoria as Queen Hermione from Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, the virtuous Queen who died of grief and became a statue. The cartoon’s caption reads: “Tis Time! Descend: Be Stone No More!”46 Desire for her reentrance into public life is manifested in this piece, but she would not do so for decades.

It was not until the end of her remarkably extensive reign that she came out of seclusion and became a semi-mythical figure: Americans and Brits alike came to appreciate the steadfastness of the Queen in an era of constant change, where globalization and industrialization ruled. The image that Victoria spent a life cultivating—of motherhood, devotion to her husband, and virtue—was celebrated across the world at her Golden and Diamond Jubilees, commemorating fifty and sixty years on the throne, respectively. In 1896, she became the longest-reigning monarch in the history of Great Britain, and her loyal admirers in the United States rejoiced in her long lifetime of personifying the ideals which they held so dearly; according to historian, Frank Prochaska, “the jubilee was widely seen as a triumph of womanhood” in America, and American religious figures were some of her most enthusiastic spectators.47 One jubilee sermon given in New York City proclaimed that “Victoria enjoyed universal respect and love not alone because she has been a good Queen, but because she has been a womanly Queen and Christian”.48

Her spotless record of piety, womanhood, and submission continued to nurture her popularity in the United States up to her death on January 22, 1901. At the impressive age of eighty-one, having reigned for sixty-three years, she brought with her the end of an era. Eighteen American presidents and the American Civil War had come and gone, while she had remained firmly positioned on the throne. When news of her death reached American shores, President McKinley is said to have exclaimed, “Why, gentlemen, she began to reign before we were born!”.49

The American reaction to her death was tremendously indicative of her popularity there, as well as her influence upon the values and morals of U.S. citizens. Although she was elderly and her death came as no great surprise, grief was universal and many tears were shed for the monarch of America’s one-time adversary. Ceremonies in Victoria’s honor emerged across the United States: Congress adjourned, the flag was lowered to half-mast, the Union Jack flew in store windows, and Trinity Church in New York City turned away over six-thousand mourners “for lack of room” at their Sunday service devoted to the late Queen.50 Her eminence as mother, wife, and woman stirred grief from abroad and domesticity was the fulcrum of the boundless sermons and epitaphs which accompanied her death. Henry C. Potter, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, commented that “people who had never been to England and never expect to go felt the same personal devotion to her”.51 Author of the 1901 book The Beautiful Life and Illustrious Reign of Queen Victoria, John Ruskin, was a citizen of the U.K. living in America. He stated that:

These tributes show that the world esteems lofty womanhood more than regal power, and personal virtue more than political influence. And no Queen in modern or in ancient days better deserved such a tribute. In her influence upon manners and morals she held world-wide sway over the hearts of men and women. Her purity and integrity of character commended her to her subjects and they acknowledged the force of these traits and manifested their appreciation by such an outpouring of sympathy as no other English sovereign ever received In devotion to her domestic duties, in the bringing up of her family, in the enforcement of morality without prudery, in devotion to religion without bigotry, in personal courtesy to every-one, in simplicity of tastes, habits and dress, in all gentle dignity and sweet graciousness, the influence of her character was greater than the influence of her position. She set an example to all women of exalted, useful, Christian womanhood which is a grander record than that of queenly power or royal state.52

 

On January 23, 1901, Arthur Balfour declared before the House of Commons, “She passed away, I believe, without a single enemy in the world, for even those who love not England love her”.53 The affection felt towards the long-time Queen was genuine and profound; American Secretary of State William M. Evarts once firmly asserted: “Had Queen Victoria been on the throne, instead of George III, or if we had postponed our rebellion until Queen Victoria reigned, it would not have been necessary”.54

Victoria’s reign remains the stuff of legend; her legacy, one of epic proportions; and her personality, the epitome of femininity—a true “Angel in the House”. It was through her public image that she solidified her popularity amongst the citizens of a nation who needed not submit to her rule; the American people found in the British Queen the very personification of the ideals that they held in highest esteem. Queen Victoria was the most powerful woman in the world for the better part of a century, but she “preferred always to be queenly among women rather than queenly among queens”.55 Queen Victoria was the spark which lit the flame for American obsession with the British monarchy, not through shock and awe, but through the embodiment of the social and religious ideals most closely held by her spectators across the Atlantic. This bond between Americans and the monarchy, borne of similarity, has morphed into one of difference in the present day, but remains one of fervent curiosity—and it all began with a young British queen who preferred the familial hearth to the world’s most powerful throne.


Bibliography

“American Tributes to Queen Victoria”. New York Times, January 23, 1901, 1.

“Angel in the House”, in The Project Gutenberg EBook, edited by Henry Morley, 2014.  

Baird, Julia. Victoria, The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire, New York: Harper Collins, 2016.

Bartley, Paula. Queen Victoria, London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2016, Accessed November 4, 2018. ProQuest EBook Central, 159.

Brennan, Summer. “A Natural History of the Wedding Dress.” JSTORDaily. https://daily.jstor.org/a-natural-history-of-the-wedding-dress/.

“Editor’s Book Table: Fashion”. Godey's Lady's Book (1848-1854) vol. 39, Aug. 1849. http://pitt.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1....

Fulford, Roger. Dearest Child; Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal, 1858-1861, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965.

Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Homans, Margaret. “’To the Queen's Private Apartments’: Royal Family Portraiture and the Construction of Victoria's Sovereign Obedience”. Victorian Studies 37, no. 1 (1993): 1-41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3829057.

HRH The Royal Duchess of York. Victoria and Albert: A Family Life at Osborne House. New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991.

Hughes, Kathryn. “The Middle Classes: Etiquette and Upward Mobility”. British Library. 4 May 2014. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-middle-classes-e....

Jeune, M. “Victoria and Her Reign”. The North American Review 172, no. 531 (1901): 322-36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105133.

Morning Herald (New York, NY), 09 March 1840. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030312/1840-03-09/ed-1/seq-2/.

Munich, Adrienne Auslander. “Queen Victoria, Empire, and Excess”. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 6, no. 2 (1987): 265-81. doi:10.2307/464272.

Packard, Jerrold M. Farewell in Splendor: The Passing of Queen Victoria and her Age, New York: Penguin Group, 1995.

“Petition of the Undersigned”. Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine (1854-1882), May 1871. http://pitt.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1....

Pickard, Liza. “The Victorian Middle Classes”. British Library. https://www.bl.uk/victorian-britain/articles/the-victorian-middle-classes.

Plumb, J.H. “Britain and America. The Cultural Tradition”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 31, no. 2 (1977): 227-43, http://www.jstor.org/stable/531828.

“Prince Albert”. Royal Collection Trust, The Royal Household, https://www.royal.uk/prince-albert.

Prochaska, Frank. The Eagle and The Crown: Americans and the British Monarchy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Queen Victoria’s letter (1870) in “Gender Ideology and Separate Spheres in the 19th Century”. Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/gender-ideology-and-separate-sph....

Rappaport, Helen. A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011.

Rusk, John. The Beautiful Life and Illustrious Reign of Queen Victoria, Lansing, MI: P.A. Stone & Co, 1901.

“The Trent Affair”. British Library. Accessed November 4, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/uscivilwar/britain/trentaffair/....

“Victoria”. Scientific American 84, no. 5 (1901): 66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26124550.

“Victoria, the Queen”. Christian Parlor Magazine No. 148, May 1844. Google Books.

Weintraub, Stanley. Victorian Yankees at Queen Victoria's Court: American Encounters with Victoria and Albert. University of Delaware Press, 2011. ProQuest EBook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pitt-ebooks/detail.action?docID=741759.

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860”. American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151-74. doi:10.2307/2711179.

Wilson, A.N. Victoria: A Life, New York: Penguin Books, 2015.

 

Images

Dean & Co. To The Queen’s Private Apartments. Lithograph. c. 1843-1847. Royal Collection Trust. https://www.rct.uk/collection/605909/to-the-queens-private-apartments.

Landseer, Sir Edwin. Windsor Castle in modern times; Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Victoria, Princess Royal. Oil on Canvas. c. 1841-1843. Royal Collection Trust. https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/5/collection/406903/windsor-castle....

Tenniel, John. Queen Hermione. Cartoon. 1865. Heritage Images. https://www.heritage-images.com/preview/1150410.


Endnotes

1 Margaret Homans, “’To the Queen's Private Apartments’: Royal Family Portraiture and the Construction of Victoria’s Sovereign Obedience”, Victorian Studies 37, no. 1 (1993): 1-41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3829057, 5.

2 Stanley Weintraub, Victorian Yankees at Queen Victoria's Court: American Encounters with Victoria and Albert (University of Delaware Press, 2011), 71.

3 “American Tributes to Queen Victoria”, New York Times (1857-1922), Jan. 23, 1901, 1.

4 J. H. Plumb, “Britain and America. The Cultural Tradition”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 31, no. 2 (1977): 227-43, http://www.jstor.org/stable/531828.

5 Ibid, 228.

6 Ibid, 238.

7 Kathryn Hughes, “The Middle Classes: Etiquette and Upward Mobility”, British Library, May 4, 2014, https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-middle-classes-e....

8 Harvey Green, The Light of the Home (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 7. 

9 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860”, American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151-74, doi:10.2307/2711179, 152.

10 “Angel in the House”, in The Project Gutenberg EBook, edited by Henry Morley, 2014.   

11 Liza Picard, “The Victorian Middle Classes”, British Library, https://www.bl.uk/victorian-britain/articles/the-victorian-middle-classes.

12 Weintraub, 14.

13 Roger Fulford, Dearest Child; Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal, 1858-1861 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 141.

14 Weintraub, 16.

15 Julia Baird, Victoria, The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire (New York: Harper Collins, 2016), 140.

16 Helen Rappaport, A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 17.

17 Morning Herald (New York, NY), Mar. 9, 1840, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030312/1840-03-09/ed-1/seq-2/.

18 Summer Brennan, “A Natural History of the Wedding Dress”, JSTORDaily, https://daily.jstor.org/a-natural-history-of-the-wedding-dress/.

19 Ibid.

20 “Editor’s Book Table: Fashion”, Godey's Lady's Book (1848-1854) vol. 39, (Aug., 1849), http://pitt.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1..., 151.

21 Welter, 171.

22 A. N. Wilson, Victoria: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 107.

23 Homans, 6.

24 H.R.H. The Duchess of York, Victoria and Albert: A Family Life at Osborne House (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991), 19.

25 “Victoria, the Queen”, Christian Parlor Magazine no. 148, May 1844, Google Books, 267.

26 Homans, 181.

27 Dean & Co, To The Queen’s Private Apartments, Lithograph, c. 1843-1847, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/605909/to-the-queens-private-apartments.

28 Homans, 177.

29 M. Jeune, “Victoria and Her Reign”, The North American Review 172, no. 531 (1901): 322-36, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105133, 329.

30 Ibid, 335.

31 Jeune, 333.

32 Queen Victoria’s letter (1870) in “Gender Ideology and Separate Spheres in the 19th Century”, Victoria and Albert Museum, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/gender-ideology-and-separate-sph....

33 Adrienne Auslander Munich, “Queen Victoria, Empire, and Excess”, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 6, no. 2 (1987): 265-81, doi:10.2307/464272, 267.

34 “The Petition of the Undersigned”, Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine (1854-1882), May 1871, http://pitt.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1..., 474.

35 Rappaport, 8.

36 Weintraub, 83.

37 “Prince Albert”, Royal Collection Trust, The Royal Household, https://www.royal.uk/prince-albert.

38 Frank Prochaska, The Eagle and The Crown: Americans and the British Monarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 84.

39 “The Trent Affair”, British Library, https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/uscivilwar/britain/trentaffair/....

40 Prochaska, The Eagle and The Crown: Americans and the British Monarchy, 84. 

41 Rappaport, 122.

42 Rappaport, 122.

43 Paula Bartley, Queen Victoria (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), accessed November 4, 2018, ProQuest EBook Central, 159.

44 Prochaska, 84.  

45 Rappaport, 103.  

46 John Tenniel, Queen Hermione, Cartoon, 1865, Heritage Images, https://www.heritage-images.com/preview/1150410.

47 Prochaska, 102.  

48 Ibid, 102.

49 Weintraub, 172.

50 Jerrold M. Packard, Farewell in Splendor: The Passing of Queen Victoria and Her Age (New York: Penguin Group, 1995), 258.

51 John Rusk, The Beautiful Life and Illustrious Reign of Queen Victoria (Lansing, MI: P.A. Stone & Co., 1901), 390.

52 Rusk, 393

53 Ibid, 384

54 Prochaska, 82.

55 “Victoria”, Scientific American 84, no. 5 (1901): 66, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26124550.

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Volume 14, Spring 2019