While the portrayals of Western women and non-Western women were quite different in Victorian era art, one theme that seemed to be present in both representations was the role of nurturer. While there are multiple examples of this theme across the artworks, I will focus on two. My example of the Western nurturer is “Feeding the Motherless.” In this image, a woman is feeding a nest of young birds. As they have no mother, she must step in to provide them with motherly love. This not only emphasizes the expectation that women be caring and protective towards the young, but it also shows that this expectation extends past children and applies to all creatures (including animals and husbands).
My non-Western example comes from the image, “Within the Lines Siege of Agra 1857.” In this artwork, a woman is looking at and cradling a baby. The woman is portrayed as non-Western (presumably Indian, as the title suggests) through her tanned skin and the scarf on her head. According to the title of the work, the woman and the child are in Agra during a time of violent conflict. Here, the theme of protection arises again as it seems like she is working to keep herself and the child safe from the dangers outside. The main way that this image differs from “Feeding the Motherless” is the fact that the woman is experiencing a conflict of some kind, furthering the imperialist stereotype that non-Westerners are savage and violent. Yet, despite this, the message of motherhood and nurturing still persists, showing that no matter whether a woman is Western or not, she is expected to act as a caregiver.
Great conclusion that in these Victorian prints, the ideal of Victorian motherhood is projected onto all women, not just English women. The fact that the woman in Agra is distinctively nonviolent, as well, suggests that a woman’s sensitive and nonthreatening nature is a universal trait. We talked a lot as a class about how the prints we looked at promoted a fantastical world, one shaped by Victorian desires and misconceptions alike. These two prints side-by-side as you’ve put them here really emphasize that air of fantasy. The two women are equated to each other in their ideal womanhood, both exhibiting motherly duties. They look down on the animals or children they are mothering in the same fashion, with a downward-tilted head and soft eyes. They each cradle the other subjects of the prints close to their bodies. Even their overall facial expressions are strikingly similar. The differences in how they are portrayed lie in their clothing and their environments, as you point out—where one woman is an oversimplified Victorian beauty standard, while the other is a combination of Victorian images of the “exotic.” But despite the non-Western woman’s harmful stereotype of being constantly plagued by war and violence, and her style of clothing meant to both alienate her from the English woman above and become a spectacle for English people, she is subjected to the same idealistic personality as the Western woman. I wonder if there are many other prints out there that portray women in a different way and alienate them from ideal womanhood, too—whether based on their class, ethnicity, race, or gender nonconformity? The Victorians wanted their art to reflect beauty and their moral values due to thinking it had a positive influence on society, so I imagine any art that was not idealized, but instead blatantly pushing negative categorizations, would be in political drawings like “The Power of Love” that we saw?
It’s interesting that even though the non-Western woman is shown in a moment of maternal tenderness, she’s still framed within a narrative of conflict and danger, which reinforces the colonial idea of the “uncivilized” world needing order. The nurturing role becomes a kind of double-edged sword where it humanizes her, but also limits her to a stereotype. Do you think the Western woman is shown as having more control or moral authority, while the non-Western woman is shown as passive or caught in circumstances beyond her control? One idea you might consider exploring further is how agency differs in these two depictions. In Feeding the Motherless, the woman seems to be performing a voluntary act, while in contrast, the woman in Siege of Agra is reacting to a dangerous situation. This post was super effective in putting these two paintings in conversation, so well done!