A Victorian Woman's Place
Subtitle: Public Culture in the Nineteeth Century (International Library of Historical Studies)
Publisher: Tauris Academic Studies
Published: April 17, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781845112103
Subjects: British & Irish history: c 1700 to c 1900; Social history; Women's studies; c 1800 to c 1900; History; History - General History; History: World; United Kingdom, Great Britain; History / Great Britain; Europe - Great Britain - General
First sentence: The social role of women in the mid-nineteenth century was surrounded by ambiguity and uncertainty; an ambivalence increasingly acknowledged by historians who have long since abandoned the simplistic notion of the Victorian 'Angel in the House'.
Description: "While the image of bourgeois Victorian women as 'angels in the house' isolated from the world in private domesticity has long been dismissed as an unrealistic ideal, women have remained marginalised in many recent accounts of the public culture of the middle class. Simon Morgan aims to redress the balance. By drawing on a variety of sources including private documents, he argues that women actually played an important role in the formation of the public identity of the Victorian middle class. Through their support for cultural and philanthropic associations and their engagement in political campaigns, women developed a nascent civic identity, which for some informed their later demands for political rights. "Middle Class Women and Victorian Public Culture" offers numerous insights for the reader into the public lives of women in this fascinating period."--Bloomsbury Publishing.