Group 4 Presentation Summary

      “Women were presented as morally and spiritually superior to men, and given primary responsibility for managing the home, but their lives were tightly restricted in other ways.”  (Chadwick 176) During the 19^th Century upon Queen Victoria’s reign the status of women changed.  New laws were put into place; The Divorce Act of 1857, Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, etc.  Following the Industrial Revolution and the result of the war many men could not support their female counterparts, which forced women to work and explore other options of income. The women/wives of middle and upper class Victorian homes couldn't juggle the managerial and cleaning duties that presented them so the jobs of servant and governess came into play. This then freed up time for bored middle and upper class wives and made servants and governess the subject of art. Some artists such as Lady Hawarden who was an amateur photographer, Anna Blunden who painted The Seamstress (1854), Rebecca Solomon who painted The Governess, and Emily Mary Osborn who painted Nameless and Friendless. 

      But that wasn't the only interest of female artists; Harriet Powers, a freed slave made quilts that represented biblical stories, current events and astronomical phenomena. Mary Cassatt, an American Impressionist painter, involved in the Suffrage Movement focused on the lives of women partaking in work or active at work. Camille Claudel, a sculptor of the anatomy of the human body worked alongside a Master sculptor by the name of Augusta Rodin. She was unpaid, his lover, a model, collaborator and unappreciated which all ended up making her crazy. Edmonia Lewis, another sculptor who was part African American part Chippewa faced many difficulties not only with the art world but with the world in general. She focused on making sculptures of Abolitionist heroes, learned the Neoclassical Style and was considered exotic oddity because she was a black woman.  Julia Margaret Cameron, a British photographer was given a camera as a present and began to take pictures at the age of 48 of famous people of the time; her career only lasted 11 years. 

     An artist by the name of Rosa Bonheur made the paintings of animals her life. As a female cross dresser she challenged the norms of society’s perception of women.  Although she separated herself from the female artist stereotypes a debate in Britain stated “the lives of women as well as animals and it is important for what it reveals about the way that control over the bodies of women and animals was articulated around identification with nature and culture, sexuality and dominance. The same images which expose the helplessness of animals were used to reinforce the subordinate of male power and privilege.” (Chadwick 195)Women have challenged and explored to make great strides of success in history but the Male Gaze always continues to interfere. 

In 1877 a novel named Black Beauty written by Anna Sewell was thought to be a book about an “autobiography of a horse but instead it was about the cruel oppression of all creatures, especially women and the working class.”  (Chadwick 196)