Female Education

Compare the school being represented here to Miss Pinkerton's academy in Vanity Fair. What type of school is this? What tone does Punch use to describe it? What exactly is being mocked, if anything? (February 27, 1847)

The Rising Generation

What is the image of youth being presented here, in a series entitled "The Rising Generation" that continued to appear in Punch throughout 1847? How might you contrast this image to the idea of children presented in the "whipping" article? How can we characterize the Victorian child? (January 16, 1847)

Our Female Supernumeraries

While not from 1847 (it's from 3 years later, in January 1850), this cartoon from Punch broaches similar questions to those raised in "The Weaker Sex." Has the debate changed over the course of 3 years? What are the various sides of the debate? Is it, as people have suggested, either feminist or sexist or both? What stereotypes is it using? Does it point to a legitimate social problem?

Welcome!

Welcome to the sometimes bizarre world of the Victorian periodical! The three blog posts below are all samples of the types of reading material to which Victorians were exposed on a daily basis. One is about gender, one about race/racial stereotypes, and one about whipping children (moral, educational, legal?). The images will get larger if you click on them.

Play around a little, get to know the Victorian sense of humor, and think about what it would have been like to read these three texts within the span of an hour or so as you perused the morning's edition of a magazine. Taken together, what do they make you think about? What types of thinking do they encourage or discourage? To whom are they addressed?

Make a comment below or in one of the other posts, or make multiple comments, addressing these questions. There are no right answers here, so it's just about your reactions.

The Weaker Sex in Alarming Strength

What is this letter (probably false) saying about gender in the Victorian period? Why would he be "in dread of a wife"? How does this alter our standard conceptions of Victorian gender stereotypes?

Who Shall Escape Whipping?

What is the tone of this short article in Punch, the
same journal in which Vanity Fair first appeared?
What is it advocating? Does it seem odd to be writing about whipping children in the newspaper?

Battle of the Amazons

What type of event is being advertised here, in a poster from March 1848? What stereotypes are being employed?