Gender Standards

• Victorian society was male-oriented, and according to Dr. Frances Cohen Praver from "Psychology Today," Victorian men and women lived by two sets of rules. Women, who were still viewed as little more than property, were expected to be simultaneously passionless and yet sexually submissive to their husbands, while men were allowed to engage in sexual acts with other partners to satisfy their needs.
  
  

Social Class

• According to Megara Bell from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, many upper-class women were outraged by prostitution, but most prostitutes came from the lower classes. Young, poor, single women often had no other way to provide for themselves in a male-oriented society.
  
  

Victorian Feminist Movement

• In the late 1800s, women of all social classes joined together in outrage over the Contagious Diseases Act, a law that allowed police officers to have suspected prostitutes forcibly checked for venereal diseases. The Act's 1886 repeal was a triumph for the blossoming feminist movement, and this success opened the door to a new era for women's rights.