Men's and women's roles became more sharply defined during the Victorian period than arguably at any time in history. In earlier centuries it was usual for women to work alongside husbands and brothers in the family business, but as the nineteenth century progressed, middle-class men increasingly commuted to their place of work – the factory, shop or office – and their wives, daughters and sisters were left at home to oversee domestic duties. The two sexes came to inhabit completely different spheres, meeting together only at breakfast and dinner.
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The ideology that supported this gender separation saw women having different 'natural' characteristics to men. Women's nature was seen as passive while men's was active. Women were considered physically weaker and therefore best suited to staying at home. In addition, they were morally superior to men. It was their duty to provide a counter to the moral taint their menfolk incurred by laboring all day in the public sphere. And their duty to prepare the next generation to continue the same way of life.
Women, such as Alessia Renville in House of Glass, occupied an unhappy position in mid-Victorian society. They were poorly educated and barred from any form of higher education. Society considered it unfeminine to devote time to intellectual pursuits in case it usurped men's 'natural' intellectual superiority. Some doctors reported that too much study had a damaging effect on the ovaries, turning attractive young women into dried-up prunes. Instead of intellectual study, therefore, women were coached in ‘accomplishments’ – painting, music, a smattering of foreign languages perhaps.
The home was their world since they were excluded entirely from public life: barred from universities, from following a profession and from voting in any election. If they were forced to work due to adverse family circumstances, the job would be low status and ill paid. Being a governess was one of the few posts a middle-class girl could take and she would only do so in extreme circumstances, for the salary was meagre and her treatment was often unkind. Working-class women, of course, had a very different experience. They began working around ten years old, often in domestic service, or working as factory operatives or agricultural laborers, and continued to work until they married. If their husband earned enough to support them, they would stop – otherwise they worked all their lives, taking short breaks to give birth.