Art in the Victorian era was primarily focused on the importance of aesthetics and beauty for beauty’s sake. Women quickly became revered for their physical beauty and thus were the inspirations for many works of art. Since women were the source of inspiration, the majority of writers and artists were male, and viewed the female form as something to be admired through poetry and imagery. During this time, a poet named Michael Field became prominent in the literary circle for poems inspired by the female form. Although on the surface it appears that Michael Field was just another male writer, in actuality the name was a pseudonym for two females who were in a relationship together. Edith Emma Cooper and Katherine Harris Bradley chose to write under a male name because at this time, women were oppressed and not taken seriously in the art and literary sphere. In choosing to write under the pseudonym of a male alias, they were able to circumvent public gender criticism, and furthermore allow for the possibility to push beyond what was considered acceptable from female writers.@Lee, Michelle. "Inventing Michael Field: Can Two Women Write like One Man?" Poetry Foundation. 27 January 2010. March 16 2011. Through this, they were able to explore and reinvent perspectives on art which to some extent allowed for their work to be read without bias against their gender.

The physical female body was praised as being the ultimate in beauty, but the mental, emotional and intellectual aspects of women were thusly oppressed. The focus on bodily beauty overshadowed the women themselves and turned their physicality into a commodity. Many women in paintings were portrayed as being “a young girl crying silently, a suffering Madonna, asleeping prostitute...” which are “images of passivity and subservience.” @Byecroft, Breanna. "Representations of the Female Voice in Victorian Poetry." Brown University, 2003. Victorian Web. 17 December 2003. March 16th 2011.Although the focus was on the outward appearance of women, they were not painted in neutral or positive settings or situations. Instead, they were represented in positions of submissiveness and had little power or authority over their selves and bodies. The female image was desired and lusted after, and even idealized and made unrealistic, but was not respected. This meant that the power lied with the male observer who was not only oppressing women’s voices in literature and art, but also degrading their worth by manipulating their physical images. Since males were sexualizing the female form and expressing the importance of beauty, women were seen as objects of sexualized wanting and portrayed as passive, submissive, and weak. In an article exploring how women are portrayed in Victorian art, it is argued that male speakers impose their own voices and opinions upon women, thus silencing women from having their own ideas and also compressing their entire aura into one fixed meaning.@Byecroft, Breanna. "Representations of the Female Voice in Victorian Poetry." Brown University, 2003. Victorian Web. 17 December 2003. March 16th 2011. This objectivist approach towards women was the traditionalist perspective during this era, and Field set out to explore and redefine gender influence in aesthetics. The male perspective is incredibly narrow as its focus is purely on physical aesthetics, whereas Field’s goal was to create a more subjective view that would take into account the complexity of feelings and emotions behind the art form.