The Angel in the House

Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore was a 19th century poet and critic. He worked as assistant librarian at the British museum and was instrumental in starting up a volunteer movement. In 1854 Angel in the House was published. The poem is an account of his wife Emily, whom Patmore believed to be the perfect Victorian wife. "She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it ... Above all, she was pure." The phrase Angel in the House came to mean any Victorian woman who was a devoted wife and mother, subservient to her husband, and kind to anyone she met.