Literary Context

• Coventry Patmore's 'Angel of the House' is an extended poem about the importance of the domestic sphere. "Man must be pleased, but him to please is woman's pleasure."
• In November 1854, John Ruskin wrote to Coventry Patmore, saying "I think it will at all events it ought to become one of the most popular books in the language... doing good wherever read."
• William Hunt's 'The Awakening Conscience' depicts fallen women more closely as not a prostitute, but an innocent woman who has been seduced in her own home.
• John Ruskin's 'Sesame and Lilies' argued that "women's intellect is not for invention or creation , but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision."
• Mary Wollstonecraft's 'The Wrongs of Woman' said that woman is locked up first by her husband, then by her house and then by a mental institution.
• Charles Darwin's granddaughter's 'Period Piece' said that she had "never made a pot of tea... been out in the dark alone... travelled on a train without a maid... or sewn on a button."