The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality (lecture)

Free public lecture by Professor Sir Richard Evans FBA. From Gresham College. Available as video, audio, transcript and PowerPoint presentation.

Overview:

'Victorian' came in the twentieth century to stand for sexual repression and social convention. Personal life was governed by complex and rigid rules of behaviour. Like other aspects of Victorian culture this began to break down in the fin-de-siécle. Yet recent research, discussed in this lecture, has undermined this rather simplistic picture and begun to explore some of the contradictions and complexities of Victorian attitudes to marriage and sexuality. The place of women in Victorian culture was by no means as passive or subordinate as conventional images of the era suggest. This lecture is part of the series The Victorians: Culture and Experience in Britain, Europe and the World 1815-1914

Recorded on Monday, 14 February 2011

Date Published: 3 August 2012
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Contributors: Richard Evans
In Collection(s): Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wilde, Questioning Genre, Feminist Approaches to Literature, Political Literature
Cite: The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality (lecture) by Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wilde at https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-victorians-gender-and-sexuality via https://dev.writersinspire.it.ox.ac.uk/content/victorians-gender-sexuality-lecture. Published on 03 August 2012. Accessed on 12 May 2026.
If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality (lecture) (https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-victorians-gender-and-sexuality) by Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wilde, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (3.0).
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