Victorian mourning was elaborate and ritualized, but mostly limited to the upper classes. Widows had three periods of mourning, with full mourning lasting a year and a day. The rules were complex and many consulted social guides. The trend ended with the death of Queen Victoria and the Edwardian era.
Victorian mourning is often a topic of interest to people because it was extremely elaborate and highly ritualised, and for many people, Victorian mourning represents the epitome of mourning traditions. However, if one is to be strictly precise, the trends that people associate with “Victorian mourning” were generally confined to the upper classes of Victorian society, as lower and middle class people generally could not afford the pomp and ceremony of full mourning. Victorian. Even the classic widow’s weeds, long crepe veils, and other elaborate garments associated with mourning in the Victorian era were generally limited to widows in particular, with other relatives and friends observing less ornate practices in their mourning.
Before delving into the ins and outs of Victorian mourning, it can be helpful to understand the context of Victorian mourning. The Victorian era is named after the British Queen Victoria, who sat on the throne from 1837 to 1901. In 1861, Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, died, and she went into deep mourning, insisting that the entire court observe the elaborate mourning practices until 1864. Victoria herself remained in deep mourning for the rest of her life, setting a trend which the upper classes of Victorian society followed.
In very wealthy families, widows observed an elaborate assortment of funeral traditions. Men, including widowers, generally dressed in somber colors and wore black bracelets, sashes, or gloves to indicate they were in mourning, while other women might indicate their mourning by varying degrees of dress, depending on their relationship to the deceased. In some cases, families displayed their wealth by preparing their servants for full mourning; in other cases, servants simply wore black armbands in solidarity with their employers.
Many Victorians died at home and their bodies were laid out at home and watched over until they were buried. Victorian burials were often quite elaborate for the upper classes, with long processions in horse-drawn black carriages wearing huge black feathers. Among the lower classes, the cost of a funeral could be prohibitive, along with the cost of getting all-new clothes for the mourning season, so people often died their robes in an effort to fit in with upper-class trends and saved up and saved up for funerals and tombstones.
For widows there were three periods of mourning. In the first, full mourning, a widow was expected to forego most social engagements, leaving her home for the funeral and going to church, wearing very simple black clothing that included a long crepe “weeping veil,” a silk crepe type. Women also wore loose sleeves known as weeping, along with black gloves and other minimal accessories. Full mourning was expected to last for a year and a day; most lower-middle-class women could not afford a period of mourning of this length, of course, as they often needed to rejoin the workforce or marry to support themselves.
The second mourning lasted three months. Women could remarry at this point and could wear mourning jewelry such as brooches made of jet, simple earrings and necklaces, and sometimes hair jewelry, jewelry made from the hair of deceased loved ones. The last period of mourning, half mourning, lasted from three to six months; women were allowed to start integrating sombre colors like purple and gray into their wardrobes and could wear as much jewelry as they wanted.
The rules of Victorian mourning were extremely complex and many women consulted social guides to make sure they were doing it right. With the death of Queen Victoria, elaborate mourning traditions also began to fall out of style, and this trend was reinforced by the fun-loving and highly elaborate court of Edward VII, after whom the Edwardian era was named.
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