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This book examines the life-cycle of Victorian working-class marriage through a study of the hitherto hidden marital bed. Using coroners' inquests to gain intimate access to the working-class home and its inhabitants, this book explores their marital, quasi-marital, and post-marital beds to reveal the material, domestic, and emotional experience of working-class marriage during everyday life and at times of crisis. Drawing on the recent approach of utilising domestic objects to explore interpersonal relationships, the marital bed not only provides a rereading of the experiences of the working-class wife but also brings the much maligned or simply overlooked working-class husband into the picture. Moreover, it also extends our understanding of the various marriage-like arrangements existing throughout this class. Moving through the marital life-cycle, this book provides a greater understanding of marriages from the outset, during childbirth, at times of strife and marital breakdown, and upon the death of a spouse.
List of contents
1 Introduction: Victorian Working-Class Marriage and the Marital Bed.- 2 Beds of Newlyweds.- 3 From Marital Bed to Childbed.- 4 Marital Beds in Marital Strife.- 5 Beds after Marital Separation.- 6 Post-Marital Beds of the Bereaved.- 7 Conclusion.- Bibliography.- Index
About the author
Vicky Holmes is Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Summary
This book examines the life-cycle of Victorian working-class marriage through a study of the hitherto hidden marital bed. Using coroners’ inquests to gain intimate access to the working-class home and its inhabitants, this book explores their marital, quasi-marital, and post-marital beds to reveal the material, domestic, and emotional experience of working-class marriage during everyday life and at times of crisis. Drawing on the recent approach of utilising domestic objects to explore interpersonal relationships, the marital bed not only provides a rereading of the experiences of the working-class wife but also brings the much maligned or simply overlooked working-class husband into the picture. Moreover, it also extends our understanding of the various marriage-like arrangements existing throughout this class. Moving through the marital life-cycle, this book provides a greater understanding of marriages from the outset, during childbirth, at times of strife and marital breakdown, and upon the death of a spouse.
Report
"The book offers an entirely new contribution to the history of marriage with its use of new sources and its helpful attention to different phases of working-class married life." (Helena Michie, Victorian Studies, Vol. 62 (4), 2020)
