THE RETURN OF QUEEN VICTORIA
Royal’s profile rising in pop culture
Canada is the only country with an official holiday to mark Queen Victoria’s birthday, which occurred 200 years ago this May 24. We’ve been enjoying time off in her name since 1845. But most Canadians, and most people, have been virtually ignoring the 19th-century’s most influential female.
Until recently, that is. Young women around the world are coming to view Victoria, who became queen at age 18, as a near-feminist icon, as someone they would like to be like.
It’s a remarkable rediscovery of the monarch who oversaw the British Empire, which is associated with the things that contemporary culture condemns: Colonialism, inequality and privilege.
Nevertheless, new movies, books and TV series about the most famous woman of her time are holding Victoria up as a model of decisiveness, sexual passion and female strength.
“I meet so many women who love Victoria. And I think the reason they love Victoria is she’s the boss,” says writer Daisy Goodwin, creator of the hit TV series Victoria, one of many recent dramas about the feisty queen, including films such as The Young Victoria and Victoria and Abdul.
“Young girls everywhere are really enjoying Victoria. I think that’s because they identify with Victoria, because she’s a young woman who isn’t perfect, but is powerful,” says Goodwin. “I have a 16-year-old daughter and I’m glad she’s able to watch this show about a woman who calls the shots.”
The thing is: Queen Victoria warrants the revived attention, even if it’s romanticized. She doesn’t deserve to be written off as a Dead White European Female. Despite being associated with oppressive formality, she was a fascinating and romantic woman who, even with her circuitous ascension to the throne, embodied a range of often-paradoxical qualities and beliefs, including about women and men.
Canadians are among those who wouldn’t be hurt by giving Victoria a rethink, even though she never travelled to this country (her eldest son, Prince Edward, the future king, did).
After all, it was Victoria who came up with the name, “British Columbia.” And the province’s second-largest metropolitan region is named after her.
New Westminster was also dubbed “The Royal City” in her honour. A Saskatchewan city and a street in East Vancouver (which I grew up on) are named after the husband she adored, Prince Albert. Modern filmmakers are excited by the couple’s sexual robustness, revealed in Victoria’s private letters.
Victoria became queen in a time of patriarchy in the West, where men and women operated in “separate spheres.” Women were in charge of the home, children and matchmaking, while men were expected to toil in industrial jobs and lead in business and politics.
Going against the grain, Victoria was determined to be a hands-on monarch. She shaped policy, culture and the military. She had an impact not only on Britain, but the empire, which included Australia, India, Kenya and more. It was the largest ever seen, covering one-quarter of the habitable Earth. She reigned for 63 years.
Yet women today — even if they might fantasize about having the kind of power bestowed upon Victoria by nothing more than a quirk of inheritance — will recognize she was not like a 21st-century feminist.
She admired female novelists and painters and the legendary nurse Florence Nightingale. And women gained improved divorce, property and child custody rights during her reign. But she opposed complete professional, legal and educational equality for women, privately calling it “this mad, wicked folly.”
Victoria viewed her immense power as “anomalous.” Yet she acknowledged her example had strengthened the case of Western suffragettes, who were far ahead of women around the globe.
Victoria believed she was given great power by virtue of “Providence,” trusting she “had real good will to do what is fit and right.”
While the Victorian era is often dismissed as rigid and stifling, it came with what even the skeptical American writer Mark Twain called “moral advancement.”
“Two hundred crimes once subject to capital punishment had been swept from England’s statute books” under Queen Victoria, Walter Arnstein writes in his excellent book. Greater law-making powers were extended to the people during her time. The average workday went from a killing 12 hours to eight.
Women were given access to “a hundred breadwinning occupations,” said Twain, including in medicine and the law. The modern newspaper became available to the common person. Sanitation and surgery cut the death rate in half, including during childbirth.
The British Empire under Victoria experienced social and technological change never seen before, inspired partly by her forward-thinking, liberal-minded husband. Victoria’s reign, Arnstein says, saw the establishment of “the railway and steamship, the telegraph and telephone, the sewing machine and the electric light, the typewriter and the camera.”
And even though there is no doubt that Victoria saw British culture as better than what existed in much of the rest of the world, the queen would only support its advance if it promoted the end of slavery.
Victoria also celebrated religious and ethnic diversity, despite being head of the Protestant Church of England.
She had no interest in suppressing the religious practices of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Roman Catholics who came under the sway of the Empire. She learned to write Hindustani and, in later life, had a Muslim from India, Mohammed Abdul Karim, as a close adviser.
Many in the 21st century have perfected the condescending habit of stereotyping people from history, especially if they’re linked with Europe or colonialism. But it’s short-sighted to just dismiss figures from the past, no matter where they lived, even if we’re sure to find them blemished.
It’s worth enjoying that, with the help of new TV series, books and movies, we are recognizing things about Queen Victoria that were kind of cool. We are experiencing a mini-revival of a woman who, despite her unprecedented privilege and colonialism, is worthy not of off-hand damnation, but of attention, and even respect.
There might be some who would want to tear down the statues of Queen Victoria that dot the Commonwealth, or to simply largely erase her name from this May long weekend in Canada.
But popular culture is helping us realize that by probing the difficult greys of history we may become a bit more wise and possibly even humble.