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In Bed with the Victorians

The Life-Cycle of Working-Class Marriage

Vicky Holmes author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Springer International Publishing AG

Published:23rd Aug '18

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

In Bed with the Victorians cover

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.

“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)

ISBN: 9783319868523

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 454g

125 pages

Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2017