Review: An interesting, pleasant read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 25, 2012
No, this isn't an extensive look into the Regency period. It is what it claims to be. A room by room explanation about how the women in a household would use the rooms that were most likely to be the rooms they inhabited.The Regency is an interesting period. The Industrial Revolution was just starting. Most people were living a pre-industrial life. Houses didn't have plumbing. You only heated the rooms you were actually living in, so you stayed in a very small number of rooms even in a large house. You didn't buy many things. You bought the supplies to make them. And although women were not supposed to be working, the reality was that they were working inside their homes. Even women with money made most of the clothes that she and her family wore with the help of other female relatives and in some cases servants. She ran the household, and if she wasn't wealthy she got her hands dirty doing that. And if she was wealthy, there were a lot more people involved in her household, so she still had her hands full with management duties.This is a pretty good introduction to the world of Jane Austen's books, from the viewpoint of a woman. You can probably get longer and more intensive books about the era, but this is a beginner's book and it is the right length to do what it was intended to do. An introduction. There is a link to a bibliography that will lead to other sources if you want to follow them.I gave it 5 stars because although it is a short book it is an inexpensive book. Properly priced for something of its length. And because it does what the author planned on doing, and did it rather well.