Hi I'm Leena Norms and I'm here in Queen Victoria's bedroom
I'm here with Polly Putnam who is a curator at Historic Royal Palaces
and we're here to talk about Queen Victoria
Now Polly, as a feminist I have a very weird relationship with Queen Victoria in my head
because she's this huge strong female figure in British history
but she's also got all these elements of colonialism
she didn't support the Suffragettes
she didn't like sex very much I hear
so how do you feel thinking about her in that light as a woman of her time
Yes she wasn't an easy woman to talk about
but I think she has quite a lot for us as modern women to learn
she wasn't someone who shied away from being a woman
and I think she used her femininity to become popular
to endear herself to the public
which I think actually for us today is women, I think so often in the workplace
we're told to not be shrill, not make a fuss, not show emotion
I think what Victoria did was actually used her emotion and her grief
really to create a very successful image for herself
So she's a great PR woman, for herself
She is a fantastic PR woman, she is like brand Victoria
she is creating her own personal brand from the off
I guess I also struggle with what she could have done
in the institution that she's in and the power that she had what what she could have
changed and if she wanted to and I guess what I feel is that if she was around
now and she was doing with things that she was doing I'd be really mad
I'd be like you're a one woman, we only have you
why won't you advocate for other people?
how much power do you think she had in that
and how do we reconcile that in our head?
I think as ever what you do is kind of blame the patriarchy around her
so what she knows of the world
what she understands of the world is what people tell her and the people who
are telling her are privileged men
she very much views that the stability of the country
relies on the stability of the monarchy
so she does what she can to literally keep her head, keep her position
So with her home life she has nine children, she really feels
this pull of feeling the duty of having to be a Victorian woman and do all that
Do you think that still is around today?
Because we're sitting in her domestic sphere
we're sitting in the place that she really and was told that she belonged
do you think that's a legacy that's still around and obviously
we talk about abortion rights and I read that she actually after
her seventh child just like Albert please no no more children and he was like no
keeping somebody in that you know pregnant state there's lots of bare as well
Yeah and I think again this is one of the things where
I kind of find Albert a very difficult - I find Victoria easier to empathize with
because she goes through things that women go through
she goes through pregnancy, it's not a lot of fun
she gives birth, also I hear not a lot of fun, got that to come
so all of these things you can empathize with because she gives so much in her diaries
Albert's position where he instantly kind of starts taking advantage of the
fact that Victoria's pregnant and starts taking more of an active political role
starts really kind of, yes this is my chance to be the man man of the house
and I think that is something that's quite interesting that you do
still very much feel today
so I'm quite obviously pregnant at the moment
I tell people that my husband's sharing some of my maternity leave and they're
like really he's so good and it's like well... a little pat of the head
so it's just funny and actually as you literally start embodying all of these -
the most feminine thing you can do is have a child or be pregnant -
once you start embodying that then like you really start seeing that
- misogyny comes through the cracks
but again I think Victoria very much uses it
and doesn't try and fight that femininity
she uses that very much to her advantage
so she is mother to her children she becomes mother to the nation
that kind of thing. When she's grandmother, she becomes grandmother of Europe
so all of these things she uses as well so she deserves credit for that
yeah maternal rule
And is it true as well - and again, that's something that I find hard is that
apparently she wasn't very nice to her children she didn't really like being a
mother but again, why do I expect that of a woman why am I like, well she should
have really enjoyed motherhood, that was forced on her
See again, I think there are over 200 biographies of Queen Victoria
and I think about 20 of them are written by women
so I think they tend to take a letter that she wrote to
her eldest daughter Princess Victoria on her first pregnancy
and it's a very frank letter where she writes pregnancy is pretty rubbish
children when they're tiny babies aren't actually that much fun
and so I think a lot of male biographers are like, why isn't she in love with being pregnant
why isn't she totally into this whole motherhood thing and they
read that instantly as bad mother but then you look at the sort of the
physical evidence that's left, so there are over 400 drawings that Queen
Victoria sketched of her children when they were little. We have an object in
the exhibition at the moment which is a washing apron and again if you look to
her diaries you see that she is there and she's washing her children
I think there's also things like they have a go at Victoria for not breastfeeding and
it's like if you're breastfeeding it's not like they had breast pumps in those days
she still had to kind of get on with queening
so she was out there after Leopold - ten days after she gives birth she's out
there meeting Prime Ministers. Actually not even ten days, more like within five days
It's interesting what you say about how there's not as many female
historians that have really studied Victoria as men have had the
opportunity to kind of write her history for her - do you think that impacts how we see her?
Definitely. This sort of traditional... I think as well
male biographers would feel afraid to say oh we had quite an
emotional queen they's instantly write that as a bad thing
but I think now if you look at the work of Margaret Homans
Lucy Worsley, or sort of things that were trying to do in this exhibition
we're like, no we're okay with that, it means that you're relatable
you're understandable, and certainly the things like the attitude to children
or the fact that male biographers - and again sorry this is stereotyping
they're not interested in things like Queen Victoria's clothes so in the exhibition
you'll see that there are so many embroidered details all over her dresses
there are elements to them - so actually she stopped wearing a corset after Albert died
so actually for most of her reign Victoria effectively didn't wear a bra
Living! She had pockets, lots of pockets in her bodice and in her skirt
so all of these things show Victoria taking control
And she received criticism for weight gain as well, because she was
known as being this very slender girl and slowly gains weight and people
are very angry about it then I read that she actually had a hernia
Yeh, so A, she had a hernia and B, like why not?
she's the most powerful woman in the world
she had nine children, she had the greatest chefs in the world
yeah - why wouldn't you? Why does it matter?
You will not see as many plus-size mannequins anywhere
as you will in our Victoria: Woman and Crown exhibition
Yeah you've really made me think about Queen Victoria
because I think that I always think about her and how I'd respond to her if
she existed now which would be probably in madness
I feel like, Vicky, we have so much to do, why aren't you helping us?
and I think that actually she doesn't act like a modern politician or a modern royal
which is I guess not what I should expect from her and but I think as well
knowing the context of where she was being in these palaces that are like
kind of not the real world, she grew up in not the real world she barely saw the
real world and I think that that's a really important thing to consider and I
think we can learn so much more from her than perhaps
a woman in history that I really admire or a woman in history that I really
don't agree with because I think having this grey area for her is a really good
way for me to learn about my own privilege, what I miss, and I just think
it's so interesting and so important. So thank you so much for
chatting to me and telling me more
Thank you, it's been fun. It has!