Joan Perkin
Biographic Data
| ID | 5375341 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joan Perkin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joan |
| FAMILY NAME | Perkin |
| SIGNATURE | PERKIN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | a Northwestern University USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England
Conclusion
Most women expected to marry: they wanted love and affection; they wanted children; they were sexually and economically vulnerable; they desired respectability and security. The duration of marriage was very uncertain, and it was likely that one or other spouse would die before all the children left home. Class was the basis of extreme differences in lifestyle, life chances and possibilities for independent action in marriage. The upper classes, …
The Angel in the House
The gilded cage of bourgeois marriage was occupied by between a fifth and a quarter of the population. There were infinite gradations of status, expressed not only in religious affiliation, education, forms of leisure, dress, style and location of house, number of servants employed, but also in who spoke to or called on or dined with whom. The middle classes are sometimes described as ‘the servant-keeping class, as if it was impossible for a fami…
The Battle of Jericho
The campaign to reform the laws of marriage was a middle-class movement for the very good reason that middle-class wives had much more to reform. It was like the Battle of Jericho: it needed a determined army and a very loud trumpet to bring the walls of male privilege tumbling down. Middle-class women in Victorian England felt more trapped in the gilded cage of marriage than the majority of women in other social classes. A great lady or a factor…
A Life of One’s Own
Ellis set out to show women ‘the trials of married life’ and how to come to terms with them. Silence enabled a wife to triumph over her husband; when he rebelled against married life being so cramped and confined, the wife should not answer back and he would soon feel he was being cowardly and tyrannical. Middle-class women considered themselves more upright and less corrupt than either the upper class or the working class, and many did philanthr…
The Provoked Wife
A similar relationship was that of Edwin Lutyens and his wife Lady Emily in the late nineteenth century. Wife-beating occurred in aristocratic circles as in all other classes, as so did other forms of ill-treatment. Despite what has been said earlier about aristocratic wives being the most liberated group of women in nineteenth century England, if an aristocratic marriage went sour, and the husband wished to exert his legal rights, he had some po…
Rough and Ready Women
The rough working class were both more and less than the ‘Labouring Poor’ at the base of the social pyramid. To the English middle classes, the marital relationships of the poor were incomprehensible and a source of continual debate. The lower orders were generally unmoved by the agonies over sex that their betters went through. Henry Mayhew described the lives and attitudes to marriage of some roughs. Costermongers, who bought food wholesale and…
The Country Wife
At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the population of England and Wales lived in the countryside: only a quarter lived in towns. By 1851 half lived in each, and by 1900 over three-quarters were town dwellers. In the 1801 Census, one third of families were allocated to agriculture, two thirds to manufactures and commerce. Throughout the century the village community consisted not only of farmers and landless labourers but also of cr…
A Life of Willing Sacrifice in Sight of Autopoiesis
The respectable working class approved of organised religion. The Religious Census of 1851 showed that 40.5 per cent of the population attended a place of worship on the particular Census Sunday. The impact of industrialism on the lives of working people has been much disputed. In the period 1830–50 there was created a legend of the working-class home under early industrialism which is still the basis of ‘golden age’ thinking by both radicals and…
A Family on the Throne
Until the wedding of Victoria and Albert, royal marriage had been the exemplar of marriage a la mode , the fashionable, free and easy marital relations of the aristocracy and gentry, and like theirs was much freer for the husbands than for their wives. The predicament of a royal bride married to an autocratic and inconsiderate husband is startlingly illustrated by the life of the German Princess Caroline, who married her cousin the Prince of Wale…
The Crusade against Marriage
Too many in the middle ranks of society in the Age of Reason before and after the French Revolution the gilded cage of bourgeois marriage was a relic of the dark ages. From around 1813 Robert Owen’s writings and utopian views provided the bedrock for changed attitudes towards all the institutions of society. He addressed his views primarily to the working class, and linked the emancipation of women with that of workers. In the late 1820s the Radi…
One Law for the Rich
The desire and the need for legitimate heirs was a powerful consideration, affecting people’s deepest-held wishes. After 1740, schemes of inheritance often gave precedence to close female kin such as sisters or nieces over remote male cousins. One noticeable effect of giving heiresses more economic independence by putting their separate property under the control of themselves or their trustees, was that they became somewhat less attractive to po…
Women and The Law
Barbara Leigh Smith was moved to write her pamphlet by cases such as that of Caroline Norton, who experienced most of the rigours of the law as it could apply to married women, and who challenged the law because of her own tribulations. While the Common Law gave the whole of a wife’s personal property to her husband, the Courts of Equity, when he proceeded to recover property in right of his wife, obliged him to make a settlement of some portion …
The Glorious Licence of a Wife
Wealthy women could exercise patronage on a wide scale: they controlled church livings, jobs on estates or in factories and mines. Wealthy women also controlled domestic jobs, employing governesses and nursery nurses, butlers, housekeepers, gardeners and grooms in their town and country establishments. The women were presented both before and after marriage, which was seen as a change of status both for men and for women. Political power reflecte…
Another Law for the Poor
Like their upper-class sisters, both the ‘respectables’ and the ‘roughs’ were legally subject to the Common Law with all its disabilities. The law and the courts were things to be avoided wherever possible, and as far as marital relations were concerned only came into play in extremis, when disaster struck in the shape of life-threatening violence, uncovered bigamy, a sick, dead or convicted spouse, or the abyss of poverty. When husbands deserted…
The Struggle for the Breeches
Victorian Women
Grafts
The reform of girls' secondary and higher education in Victorian England
The reform of girls' secondary and higher education in Victorian England: A study of elites and educational change." History of European Ideas, 10(6), pp. 736–737
No prominent works on this page.
The reform of girls' secondary and higher education in Victorian England
The reform of girls' secondary and higher education in Victorian England: A study of elites and educational change." History of European Ideas, 10(6), pp. 736–737
Grafts
Victorian Women
The Struggle for the Breeches
Conclusion
Most women expected to marry: they wanted love and affection; they wanted children; they were sexually and economically vulnerable; they desired respectability and security. The duration of marriage was very uncertain, and it was likely that one or other spouse would die before all the children left home. Class was the basis of extreme differences in lifestyle, life chances and possibilities for independent action in marriage. The upper classes, …
The Angel in the House
The gilded cage of bourgeois marriage was occupied by between a fifth and a quarter of the population. There were infinite gradations of status, expressed not only in religious affiliation, education, forms of leisure, dress, style and location of house, number of servants employed, but also in who spoke to or called on or dined with whom. The middle classes are sometimes described as ‘the servant-keeping class, as if it was impossible for a fami…
The Battle of Jericho
The campaign to reform the laws of marriage was a middle-class movement for the very good reason that middle-class wives had much more to reform. It was like the Battle of Jericho: it needed a determined army and a very loud trumpet to bring the walls of male privilege tumbling down. Middle-class women in Victorian England felt more trapped in the gilded cage of marriage than the majority of women in other social classes. A great lady or a factor…
A Life of One’s Own
Ellis set out to show women ‘the trials of married life’ and how to come to terms with them. Silence enabled a wife to triumph over her husband; when he rebelled against married life being so cramped and confined, the wife should not answer back and he would soon feel he was being cowardly and tyrannical. Middle-class women considered themselves more upright and less corrupt than either the upper class or the working class, and many did philanthr…
The Provoked Wife
A similar relationship was that of Edwin Lutyens and his wife Lady Emily in the late nineteenth century. Wife-beating occurred in aristocratic circles as in all other classes, as so did other forms of ill-treatment. Despite what has been said earlier about aristocratic wives being the most liberated group of women in nineteenth century England, if an aristocratic marriage went sour, and the husband wished to exert his legal rights, he had some po…
Rough and Ready Women
The rough working class were both more and less than the ‘Labouring Poor’ at the base of the social pyramid. To the English middle classes, the marital relationships of the poor were incomprehensible and a source of continual debate. The lower orders were generally unmoved by the agonies over sex that their betters went through. Henry Mayhew described the lives and attitudes to marriage of some roughs. Costermongers, who bought food wholesale and…
The Country Wife
At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the population of England and Wales lived in the countryside: only a quarter lived in towns. By 1851 half lived in each, and by 1900 over three-quarters were town dwellers. In the 1801 Census, one third of families were allocated to agriculture, two thirds to manufactures and commerce. Throughout the century the village community consisted not only of farmers and landless labourers but also of cr…
A Life of Willing Sacrifice in Sight of Autopoiesis
The respectable working class approved of organised religion. The Religious Census of 1851 showed that 40.5 per cent of the population attended a place of worship on the particular Census Sunday. The impact of industrialism on the lives of working people has been much disputed. In the period 1830–50 there was created a legend of the working-class home under early industrialism which is still the basis of ‘golden age’ thinking by both radicals and…
A Family on the Throne
Until the wedding of Victoria and Albert, royal marriage had been the exemplar of marriage a la mode , the fashionable, free and easy marital relations of the aristocracy and gentry, and like theirs was much freer for the husbands than for their wives. The predicament of a royal bride married to an autocratic and inconsiderate husband is startlingly illustrated by the life of the German Princess Caroline, who married her cousin the Prince of Wale…
The Crusade against Marriage
Too many in the middle ranks of society in the Age of Reason before and after the French Revolution the gilded cage of bourgeois marriage was a relic of the dark ages. From around 1813 Robert Owen’s writings and utopian views provided the bedrock for changed attitudes towards all the institutions of society. He addressed his views primarily to the working class, and linked the emancipation of women with that of workers. In the late 1820s the Radi…
One Law for the Rich
The desire and the need for legitimate heirs was a powerful consideration, affecting people’s deepest-held wishes. After 1740, schemes of inheritance often gave precedence to close female kin such as sisters or nieces over remote male cousins. One noticeable effect of giving heiresses more economic independence by putting their separate property under the control of themselves or their trustees, was that they became somewhat less attractive to po…
Women and The Law
Barbara Leigh Smith was moved to write her pamphlet by cases such as that of Caroline Norton, who experienced most of the rigours of the law as it could apply to married women, and who challenged the law because of her own tribulations. While the Common Law gave the whole of a wife’s personal property to her husband, the Courts of Equity, when he proceeded to recover property in right of his wife, obliged him to make a settlement of some portion …
The Glorious Licence of a Wife
Wealthy women could exercise patronage on a wide scale: they controlled church livings, jobs on estates or in factories and mines. Wealthy women also controlled domestic jobs, employing governesses and nursery nurses, butlers, housekeepers, gardeners and grooms in their town and country establishments. The women were presented both before and after marriage, which was seen as a change of status both for men and for women. Political power reflecte…
Another Law for the Poor
Like their upper-class sisters, both the ‘respectables’ and the ‘roughs’ were legally subject to the Common Law with all its disabilities. The law and the courts were things to be avoided wherever possible, and as far as marital relations were concerned only came into play in extremis, when disaster struck in the shape of life-threatening violence, uncovered bigamy, a sick, dead or convicted spouse, or the abyss of poverty. When husbands deserted…
Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England
Political science (11 works) · Law (9 works) · History (7 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Gender Studies (3 works)