[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Race, sex and the Victorians
By the time Victoria came to the throne in 1837, there had been a British presence in India for some 80 years. But Victoria's reign was to bring a whole new attitude towards the residents of the Empire.
As Victorian values took hold even in this far-flung outpost, white colonists distanced themselves from the natives whose countries they colonised, who came to be seen as an inferior species. Nowhere was this clearer than in matters of sex.
For a start, polite English society was appalled by what it saw as the immorality of the Indian way of life. Victorian prudery could not come to terms with a religion which revered and even glorified the sexuality of its gods.
An impossible romance
A love affair between the wife of a high-ranking member of the British governing class in India Alice Hume and an Indian Giridhari Mehter was doomed from the outset for a number of reasons.
New religious fervour
In the early part of the 19th century, a new, hard-line evangelical Christianity was sweeping the Empire just as it was sweeping England. Many missionaries denounced the Indian religion as 'stained with every vice'.
Even the great anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce said: 'The eradication of the Hindu faith is to me a more important ambition than the abolition of slavery.'
Scientists invented reasons why the Indians were racially inferior to the white colonists.
In this climate, any sexual relationship between a white person and an Indian would have been seen as an abomination.
A bloody episode
An incident during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 captured the horrified imagination of the British. Following a long, drawn-out siege, several hundred British men, women and children were killed.
The rumour - later proved false - that the women had been raped enraged the British most, both in India and at home. It reinforced a cherished conviction: that the 'demonic' brown man was a perpetual threat to the 'angelic' white woman.
A woman's role
The social order in England was founded on the respectable family, based on the ideal created by Victoria and Albert. It was a woman's duty to maintain this ideal, especially overseas. A woman in India was the embodiment of England overseas, and was charged with setting an example of her country's codes and standards of behaviour.
She was also her husband's representative. She was expected to maintain the upright respectability at home that he carried with him into the work of the Empire.
Thirdly, whatever the Victorians got up to behind closed doors, the outward facade had to be one of absolute respectability. If a woman were rumoured to be having an affair, she could lose everything: her good name; her children; her place in society.
There was a good reason for this: an illegitimate child might inherit rank and fortune to which he or she was not entitled. This idea was even more shocking if there was a chance the child could be of mixed race.
Access advice
For web users with disabilities.
Graphic version
Includes layout and images.