Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

and despair. She does not wander from the home, for it is her duty as a wife and mother to never leave. The
allusion to Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, demonstrates that the angel in the house is a domestic
goddess; consequently, she has the beauty and charm of Venus, but she is confined to the home.
Similarly, John Ruskin’s, Sesame and Lilies demonstrates the Victorian domestic goddess and her
connection to the home. Unlike Patmore, Ruskin emphasizes men and women’s separate spheres and the
duties and behaviors that Victorian society expected them to perform. Ruskin says,
[t] he man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator,
the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for
adventure, for war, and for conquest . . . the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle,
— and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement,
and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. . . . [H]ome is
yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her . . . (30)
Ruskin demonstrates the difference between men and women’s power: men actively create, discover, and
defend while women maintain and mange the home. Men must leave the home in order to fulfill their roles
in society, but women create home wherever they go. They provide comfort and support, and they create a
comfortable environment for their husbands to return to. Ruskin praises the traditional domestic goddess
because she is the main figure that men can trust and depend on. In addition to defining women’s roles in
society, Patmore and Ruskin argue that the angel in the house must be innocent, virtuous, and wise.
In addition to domesticity the angel in the house is also innocent. She is virginal and angelically
good; therefore, she does not suffer from mysterious guilt. Patmore says
[h] ow amiable and innocent
Her pleasure in her power to charm;
How humbly careful to attract,
Though crown’d with all the soul desires,
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