Albert, Alice, Alfred: Variations of Love in the Victorian Era

Albert, Alice and Alfred – each was a famed object of a different form of love in the Victorian era. Marital love and domestic devotion characterise the relationship between Prince Albert and his wife, Queen Victoria; Alice Liddell, addressee of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, is commonly taken to be his great child love and muse; and, because of his love for Lord Alfred Douglas, playwright and aesthete Oscar Wilde became the famous victim of late-Victorian laws which prohibited the physical expression of homosexual love. Taking these three relationships as case studies, this article will examine the different forms of love they exemplify and the discourses surrounding them. As they are deeply embedded in the Victorian era, they will be preceded by a very brief sketch of the era itself, focusing especially on the role of women and the concept of love at that time.