Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780û1850

by Davidoff dec'd; Leonore

• ISBN13: 9780415290654
• ISBN10: 0415290651
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-03-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

First published to wide critical acclaim in 1987, i Family Fortunes /i has become a seminal text in class and gender history. It has cast new light on the perception of middle-class society and gender relations between 1780 and 1850. br This revised edition contains a substantial new introduction, placing the original survey in its historiographical context. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall evaluate the readings their text has received and broaden their study by taking into account recent developments and shifts in the field. They apply current perceptions of history to their original project, and see new motives and meanings emerge that reinforce their argument.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	xiii
Prologue	13	(23)
Introducing James Luckcock of Birmingham
What was the English middle class?
Concepts and methods
Setting the scene	36	(35)
Places: The town
Birmingham
The countryside
Essex and Suffolk People: The family shop
the Cadburys of Birmingham
The family pen
the Taylors of Essex
Part One RELIGION AND IDEOLOGY	71	(122)
Introduction	73	(3)
`The one thing needful': religion and the middle class	76	(31)
Church and chapel activity
The Evangelical revival and serious Christianity
Church against Dissent
The religious community
`Ye are all one in Christ Jesus': men, women and religion	107	(42)
Doctrines on manliness
Doctrines on femininity
The ministry
The minister's wife
John Angell James: `bishop' of Birmingham
Church organization: women voting and women speaking
Laymen and women
`The nursery of virtue': domestic ideology and the middle class	149	(44)
The Queen Caroline affair
Middle-class readers and writers
William Cowper and Hannah More
Local writers on separate spheres
Domestic ideologies of the 1830s and 1840s
Part Two ECONOMIC STRUCTURE AND OPPORTUNITY	193	(124)
Introduction	195	(3)
`A modest competency': men, women and property	198	(31)
Enterprise organization
Land and capital
Enterprise finance
Providing for dependants
The interdependence of enterprise, family and friends
The role of marriage in the enterprise
Training for the enterprise
Retirement from the enterprise
`A man must act': men and the enterprise	229	(43)
Middle-class men and occupations
The search for a `sound commercial education'
Commerce and trade
Banks and banking
Manufacture
Farming
The professions
The salaried
`The hidden investment': women and the enterprise	272	(45)
Women and property
Women's contribution to the enterprise
The education of women and its effects
Women as teachers
Women as innkeepers
Women in trade
The marginal place of women in the economy
Women, men and occupation identity
How did women survive?
Part Three EVERYDAY LIFE: GENDER IN ACTION	317	(133)
Introduction
`Our family is a little world': family structure and relationships	321	(36)
The role of marriage in family formation
Fatherhood
Motherhood
Children
Brothers and sisters
The role of wider kin	321	(36)
`My own fireside': the creation of the middle-class home	357	(40)
What was a home?
The separation of home from work
The meaning of the garden
The lay-out of the home
Running the home
The question of servants
`Lofty pine and clinging vine': living with gender in the middle class	397	(19)
Manner and gentility
Changing attitudes to sexuality
Mobility and gender
Gender and the social occasion
Gender as appearance
`Improving times': men, women and the public sphere	416	(34)
James Bisset of Birmingham
Voluntary associations
Philanthropic societies
Leisure and pleasure
Men, women and citizenship
Epilogue	450	(5)
Appendices Three poems by local authors -- 2 Sources for the local study -- 3 Tables	455	(15)
Notes and references	470	(72)
Select bibliography	542	(18)
People index	560	(6)
Subject index	566