What was life like for women in the Victorian times?
victorian girls of the upper and middle classes were generally carefully chaperoned and not allowed to be alone with young men. They would meet men at parties and dances and other social occasions. If a young man liked a girl, he might ask for permission to ‘call’ on her at home. They would be allowed to talk together, with a chaperone at a discreet distance. If a young man wanted to ask a girl to marry him, he would ask her father’s permission either before or after asking the girl. This would generally just be a formality though, since it would be unlikely that a man would be allowed to get to know a girl well enough to ask her to marry him unless her parents approved of him in the first place. However, during the later part of the Victorian era increasing numbers of middle class girls were going out to work, as teachers, nurses, librarians, typists, stenographers etc, and there might be more opportunities for them to meet men away from home or social occasions. It would become more
