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Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (Women in Culture and Society)
"Family Fortunes is a major groundbreaking study that will become a classic in its field. I was fascinated by the information it provided and the argument it established about the role of gender in the construction of middle-class values, family life, and property relations.
"The book explores how the middle class constructed its own institutions, material culture and valu
...more
"The book explores how the middle class constructed its own institutions, material culture and valu
Paperback, 616 pages
Published
March 21st 2003
by Routledge
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This is one of the best-organized books with one of the most thoroughly explored theses I've read in grad school thus far. This book argues that gender and class always operate together, and that consciousness of class always takes a gendered form; in this case, that middle class men got to live the public life while women were largely forced to exist in the private realm. It examines the often-overlooked roles of middle class women in pre-to-early Victorian England and makes you feel that try a...more
Davidoff's work is an eye-opening study into the lives of the families who transformed the north of England in the late 18th and early 19th century. Focusing on a cluster of risiing non-conformist families of Birmingham, particularly Quakers involved in the potteries, Davidoff and Hall give the reader an intricate portrait of the struggles inherent in British society of the time and their impact on such institutions as education, voting rights, and property. Anyone interested in the industrial N...more
The authors did their research -- a glut of it, at times, when single sentences have more than five footnotes attached. This was one of the earlier works about the division of labour in society for this class/time period, so the scholarship isn't as inclusive as one might hope it would be. Still, the book includes plenty of reference to primary material and recognizes the value of female writing and journaling as historical document.
This is a great book for understanding the actual lives of the Victorian Middle Class and its development. If you want to start to understand how American class system styles developed, start with this text. You will recognize the social habits and patterns we have today.
Jan 19, 2013
D
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
19th-c-history,
library-to-order
Dec 09, 2012
Lindsey
added it
Jun 16, 2012
Catherine Pope
added it
Jun 12, 2012
Lesley-Anne McLeod
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
great-britain-history,
regency-general-history
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