Woman's Mission and Sin

George Elgar Hicks - Woman's Mission: Companion of Manhood, 1863

This painting does well in sending a message of the creator's perception of a woman's role in the society he lived in. It advocates submission and sacrifice, a woman must sacrifice all she is and has in order to serve man's every demand. The painting is a middle panel of a triptych, the other two being: 'Guide of Childhood' and 'Comfort of Old Age', which are both since lost.

Victorian standards for women required them to be: Loving mothers, devoted wives and dutiful daughters. These prevailing views of an ideal woman's role in the victorian home reinforce the desired, idealised image of the woman as pure and submissive. To show she is a dutiful wife in every way, hicks uses details such as the torn envelope lying on the floor at his feet. Urgency in opening the letter is suggested while his hand covering his face speaks of his shock and grief. The husband has just received news of the death of someone close to him as is made clear through a discarded, black edged envelope lying on the floor and the letter in his hand. We are also able to tell that she is able to run an efficient and comfortable home:

1. The table is neatly laid for breakfast

2. There are fresh flowers in the vase on the mantelpiece

3. She is attractive and well groomed

Her prime concern is for her husband's welfare and well being.

Von Stuck - Die Sunde ( sin ), 1908

Von Stuck's painting refers to Eve in the garden of Eden. Lingering in the shadows, a naked woman aggressively and tempting returns the viewer's gaze, a snake coiled around her torso and neck so that it frames her breasts and reinforces her seductiveness. The use of rich, dark greens also perpetuates her threat as it is often associated with poison and jealousy. However green is also a symbol of the natural world, showing how something as dangerous and tempting as Eve and the devil around her neck is just as natural as trees in the Garden of Eden. Artists looked to well-known historical, mythical and biblical femme fatales to warn of the dangers of succumbing to a woman's sexual allure.

Femme fatale is a french term meaning fatal woman. A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose erotic allure and charms leads men into compromising, dangerous, destructive situations and even death. The erotic and sensual depictions of femme fatales create powerful seductresses, threatening the lives of men, thus contradicting the image of the virtuous and chaste woman.

Fin de siècle, the french term for turn of the century means the closing of one era and onset of another. Fin de siècle refers to the end of the 19th century, which was thought to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. This was an age of tremendous change; Art, politics, science and society were revolutionised by the emergence of new theories and challenges to tradition. Arguably the most radical and far-reaching change of all concerned the role of women and the increasing number of opportunities becoming available to them in a male-dominated world. The new woman was a feminist ideal of an independence which challenged long-held assumptions about a woman's role in the workplace, the home and in romantic relationships, that emerged during this period of revolution. Widespread social changes began to alter the status of women in victorian society, women who worked helped to breakdown the stereotype of women as weak domestic creatures who must submit to her husband's or father's will. The new woman was seen as a threat by many men, but arguments against the new woman didn't always follow the obvious routes. Some men found the idea of women making their own way in the world both sensible and desirable. While many women, such as the novelist Mary Augusta Ward, were passionately against female emancipation and the threat it posed to the status quo of marriage and motherhood.

Wether viewed as: A free-spirited, independent, intelligent career-minded ideal.

Or: As a sexually degenerate, abnormal, mannish, chain-smoking, child-hating bore.

The new woman was here to stay. Admired or despised, she remained a force for change throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.