What were the major reasons for the suffering of women in Victorian England?

Three of the major reasons for the suffering of women in Victorian England were legal, religious, and ideological constraints. In terms of legal constraints, women were not recognized as having legal status while they were unmarried and living under their father's guardianship and, then again, once they were married. Women whose father had died and who had their own means of support--whether through inheritance or work--and who refused to marry or co-habitate could be considered legally independent.

Otherwise, women held no legal rights. Once married, they held no rights to their property or bodies. All their possessions were legally turned over to their husbands upon marriage. A husband could demand both conjugal and childbearing rights of his wife. Children were the property of the husband and could be taken from the wife or sent away without her consent. Should she choose to leave a violent marriage, she would leave penniless and without her children. If she were caught, she would be returned to her husband who had the right to punish and imprison her. Literature to the point is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, A Dolls' House, Jane Eyre and David Copperfield.

In terms of religious constraints, the New Testament admonition to subordination of women to their husbands was raised to idolatrous standards and the Church of England condoned or, at best, turned its back on mistreatment given wives by their husbands. Additionally, women were typified as weak-minded individuals who were easily swayed by sin, vice and deceit and as the originators of the temptation that tore men from the Biblical Garden of Paradise, Eden; so women were not to be trusted.

This had ramifications in two directions. First, women were not to be trusted in terms of their power to seduce men away from moral conduct. Therefore their dress and deportment must at all times be the extreme of chaste and modest. Clothing of the Victorian period confined women's movement and endangered their health--much as women's clothing does now. Second, they were not to be trusted in the sense that they were not to be exposed to higher ideas such as men could objectively debate and judge as good or bad.

In terms of ideological constraints, women, at their best--when protected from deceit, sin and vice and covered up, thus hiding their seductive powers--were goddesses and angels of the home. They were recognized as the ones who would bear and rear the next generation of men (who would rule and expound untold great ideas) and women (who would bear and rear the next generation of great men and child-bearing women).

Even though women could independently educate themselves to the higher ideas of philosophy, science, and history (if permitted to do so), and even though women were permitted to be midwives and doctors, social pressures of criticism and ostracism were so great that few dared venture where permitted to go. Women of the upper classes restricted themselves to being nurses, writers and governesses. Women of the lower classes labored at menial jobs--domestic service, factory labor, farming--while trying to raise too many children with too little money--very much like women of lower classes do now.