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Marriage and the family

1. How did the experiences of marriage (and divorce) differ between elite and working-class men and women?

2. How pervasive was the concept and structure of the middle-class family in the nineteenth century?

3. Were working-class men any less constrained than elite men by discourses on masculinity?

Core Reading

Gleadle, Kathryn. British Women in the Nineteenth Century, chs 3, 6, 9 and 12

Davidoff, Leonore. 'The Family in Britain' in Thompson, F.M.L. (ed), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, Volume 2, pp. 71-129

D'Cruze, Shani. 'Women and the Family' in Purvis (ed), Women's History: Britain, 1850-1945

Roper, Michael and Tosh, John. Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800

Hall, Stuart (ed), Formations of Modernity, ch.4

Marriage and the Family

Anderson, Michael. Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire

Bourke, Joanna. 'Housewifery in Working-Class England, 1860-1914', Past and Present, 143 (1994)

Clark, Anna. The Struggle for the Breeches

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

Davies, M. Llewellyn. Life as We Have Known It

Dyhouse, Carol. Feminism and the Family in England, 1880-1939

Jalland, Patricia. Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914

Shanley, Mary Landon. '"One Must Ride Behind": Married women's Rights and the Divorce Act of 1857', Victorian Studies, 25 (1982)

Lewis, Jane (ed), Labour and Love: Women's Experience of Home and Family

Reeves, Maud Pember. Round About a Pound a Week

Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, ch.13

Rhodes, Rita M. Women and the Family in Post-Famine Ireland, chs. 3, 5

Rose, P. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages

Ross, Ellen. Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870-1918

Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman's Daughter, chs. 2, 3

Wohl, Anthony S. (ed) The Victorian Family: Structures and Stresses

Masculinity

Bailey, P. 'Will the Real Bill Banks Please Stand Up?', Journal of Social History, 12, 3 (1979)

Clark, Anna, The Struggle for the Breeches

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

Lummis, Trevor. 'The Historical Dimension of Fatherhood' in O'Brien and McKee (eds), The Father Figure

Mangan, J.and Walvin, James (eds), Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America

Roberts, D. 'The Paterfamilias of the Victorian Governing Class' in Wohl (ed), The Victorian Family

Tosh, John. 'Authority and Nurture in Middle-Class Fatherhood', Gender and History (1996)

Tosh, John. A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian Britain