The cultural practice of tea drinking played an important part in the Victorian lifestyle. Inside a Victorian house, the roles of husband and wife were clearly established through(un)written rules, and men and women were expected to behave in certain ways. Organizing and conducting a tea drinking party, as well as coordinating the setting of the table for a private family tea gathering, or just for the purpose of having one or two guests over tea, was the task of Victorian wives. Our paper attempts to identify the functions of the Victorian cultural practice of tea drinking. We shall approach the ritual of tea drinking as a sign of the Victorian (male) expectations concerning the image of the ideal Victorian wife by analysing several literary fragments from three Victorian novels: “David Copperfield” (1849) and Dombey and Son (1846-1848) by Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure” (1895).

Practica culturală de luare a ceaiului ocupa un rol important în modul de viaţă a britanicilor din epoca victoriană. Cât despre familia din epoca dată, putem afirma că obligaţiile şi comportamentul soţului şi soţiei erau bine definite fără a fi reglementate de reguli scrise.