The Girl in His Shadow

Although lower-class women joined the workforce in greater numbers during the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class meant that many women had more free time than ever before. As a result, standards for this class of women were quickly established in order to outline and control their role in society. Conduct books—which were usually written by men—aimed to teach women how to conduct themselves properly according to the new expectations and social conventions of the era. These texts outlined how a woman should fill her leisure time and dictated the details of proper behavior in both public and private spheres. Such publications also described how a woman should manage her household and cautioned her to avoid any speech, behavior, or company that might cause embarrassment to herself or her husband. In 1854, Coventry Patmore published a poem called “The Angel in the House,” in which he describes the devotion of his self-effacing and angelically pure wife and praises her as the ideal woman. This description became the model for all middle- and upper-class women during Queen Victoria’s reign.

Although Audrey Blake’s novel is set in the decade prior to the publication of Patmore’s poem, references to this feminine ideal appear throughout.