1. How does women’s role as consumers contribute to the industrial/industrious revolution?

2. Were women oppressed by the law on property?

3. Do women’s patterns of consumption differ from men’s?

Core reading

Berg, Maxine. ‘Women’s Property in Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, (1993)

Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods, essays by Vickery, Weatherill

Finn, Margot. ‘Women, Consumption and Coverture in England’, Historical Journal (1996)#

Sharpe, Pamela. Adapting to Capitalism. Working Women in the English Economy 1700-1850, ch. 6 and Epilogue

Women as consumers

Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures, ch. 6

Berg, Maxine. ‘Women’s Consumption and the Industrial Classes of Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of Social History, 30, 2 (1996)

Berry, Helen. ‘Prudent Luxury: The Metropolitan Tastes of Judith Baker, Durham Gentlewoman’ in Sweet, Rosemary and Lane, Penelope (eds), Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England

Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, ch. 8

Earle, Peter. The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660-1730, ch. 6

Finn, Margot. ‘Men’s Things: Masculine Possessions in the Consumer Revolution’, Social History, 25, 2 (2000)

Langford, Paul. A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1783, pp. 565-6; pp. 574-587; pp. 600-607

McKendrick, Neil. ‘Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution’ in McKendrick, Neil (ed), Historical Perspectives

Nenadic, Stana. ‘Middle Rank Consumers and Domestic Culture in Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1720-1840’, Past and Present, 145 (1994)

Women and property

Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, chs. 4 and 6

Gillis, John. For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present

Gordon, Eleanor and Nair, Gwyneth. ‘The Economic Role of Middle-Class Women in Victorian Glasgow’, Women’s History Review, 9, 4 (2000)

Hill, Bridget. Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England, chs. 10 and 11

Holcombe, L. Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England, ch.1

Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, chs. 1 and 3