Like most Victorians, Charles Dickens believed that a woman should be 'the angel of the house', devoting her life to housekeeping and child rearing. Many women rebelled, seeking professional training and careers, especially as artists. Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shalott (1842) is often interpreted as a metaphor for the conflict and artists loved illustrating it.  The Lady was cursed and had to stay imprisoned in a tower weaving a tapestry and only look at the outside world through a mirror.  She saw Sir Lancelot riding by, fell in love and rebelled.  She left her tower, climbed into a boat and floated down the river to Camelot, dying before she reached the city. Click The Lady of Shalott to read the poem. 
  

Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 but seems to have fallen in love with younger women throughout his life.  In 1837 Catherine's younger sister Mary Hogarth died suddenly and tragically at age seventeen when she was staying with them.  Dickens reacted hysterically, keeping her clothes and up to two years later occasionally taking them out to look at them and longing to be buried beside her.  From 1842 another younger sister, Georgina Hogarth then aged fourteen, started to live with them.  In 1857 Dickens met a young actress, Ellen Ternan, and started a relationship with her that lasted until his death. In 1858 he insisted on separating from Catherine, after 22 years of marriage and the birth of ten children. She moved into a separate home, initially with her oldest son Charles but later lived alone. Georgina stayed with Dickens in the role of housekeeper.