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 1800s
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
like any of those things
please subscribe if you don't i'm sorry
life is 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 too wild and crazy
like do a backflip that 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 wasn't
firmly held intact by ligaments still
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 a victorian housewife
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 well
indeed it is
and we do see a lot throughout classic
literature
and in the preceding regency era which
is the era 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 your 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 corsets 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 take their core set off at
night you'll be like wow i'm super
unstable
and 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 old it was
just an average part of their life but
it didn't make their abs the best
and shape things in the world either now
we're on the side 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 drives me because you
always think of
knowing how to cook as being how to be a
housewife one-on-one
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
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 on to the next generation and then
they pass 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 had 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 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 book
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 boiled potatoes
many years since i've had such an
exemplary vegetable
to which of my fair cousins should i
complement 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 am 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
they were taking people from a very poor
place to this much richer middle class
obviously they were not an 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 rule 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 idea 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 the
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 ever 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 have totally
different social structures and mores
and behaviors and they need to learn
those
quick so 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 in
this book which is huge
i mean what does modern printing with
tiny fonts and he's still giant
this covers everything from child
rearing to how to manage servants to how
to hire servants to how
to cook 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 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 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 fats
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 about the really
big breakthroughs
like fact that coconut oil solves all of
mankind's 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 bad 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 it
wasn't really good for you
i'm not sure victorians also we're 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 new listing
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 streets farm
it's very fresh it's very natural all of
a sudden now you had people crammed into
cities crammed into factories
and they needed to buy food from stores
that were not very honest
they like to bleach the milk and put
brick dust in the bread
and they just ate that cause what else
are you gonna do instead of your
neighbor having a farm
now he just has an ugly apartment
victorinero is 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 victorian women have a lot
in common
because not only did they like the
healthy glow look also if you were 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'd look 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 it was all you needed to
look beautiful
just all returned to that airy there of
course this didn't mean that they didn't
wear
any makeup they actually wore something
that was 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 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 are back from the victorian era
now sign
number ten 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
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 being hairless was very feminine
so they
shaved like crazy which is fascinating
because they also wore long skirts and
then 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 shaven 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
10 signs that you're secretly a
victorian era housewife if you
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
because you're here and you're awesome
thanks so much and see you next time