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Family life

In spite of the greater emphasis on the individual and the growth of openly shown affection, the end of the eighteenth century also saw a swing back to stricter ideas of family life. In part, the close family resulted from the growth of new attitudes to privacy, perhaps a necessary part of individualism. It was also the result of the removal, over a period beginning in the sixteenth century, of the social and economic support of the wider family and village community, which had made family life so much more public. Except for the very rich, people no longer married for economic reasons, but did so for personal happiness. However, while wives might be companions, they were certainly not equals. As someone wrote in 1800, "the husband and wife are one, and the husband is that one". As the idea of the close family under the "master" of the household became stronger, so the possibility for a wife to find emotional support or practical advice outside the immediate family became more limited. In addition, as the idea of the close family slowly spread down the social order, an increasing number of women found their sole economic and social usefulness ended when their children grew up, a problem that continued into the twentieth century. They were discouraged from going out to work if not economically necessary, and also encouraged to make use of the growing number of people available for domestic service.

This return to authority exercised by the head of the family was largely the result of three things. These were fear of political revolution spreading from France, of social change caused by industrial revolution in Britain, and the influence of the new religious movements of Methodism and Evangelicalism.

One must wonder how much these things reduced the chance of happy family life. Individualism, strict parental behaviour, the regular beating of children (which was still widespread), and the cruel conditions for those boys at boarding school, all worked against it. One should not be surprised that family life often ended when children grew up. As one foreigner noted in 1828, "grown up children and their parents soon become almost strangers". It is impossible to be sure what effect this kind of family life had on children. But no doubt it made young men unfeeling towards their own wives who, with unmarried sisters, were the responsibility of the man of the house. A wife was legally a man's property, until nearly the end of the century.

In spite of a stricter moral atmosphere in Scotland which resulted from the strong influence of the Kirk, Scottish women seem to have continued a stronger tradition of independent attitudes and plain speaking. In 1830 a Scotswoman called for "the perfect equality of her sex to that of man". Another in 1838 wrote, "It is the right of every woman to have a vote ... in her county, and more so now that we have got a woman [Queen Victoria] at the head of government." She had a long time to wait.



 

 

Lecture twenty.The years of self-confidence.

 

The railway. The rise of the middle classes. The growth of towns and cities. Population and politics. Queen and monarchy. Queen and empire. Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

In 1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations inside the Crystal Palace, in London. The exhibition aimed to show the world the greatness of Britain's industry. No other nation could produce as much at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century, France had produced more iron than Britain. By 1850 Britain was producing more iron than the rest of the world together.

Britain had become powerful because it had enough coal, iron and steel for its own enormous industry, and could even export them in large quantities to Europe. With these materials it could produce new heavy industrial goods like iron ships and steam engines. It could also make machinery which produced traditional goods like woollen and cotton cloth in the factories of Lancashire. Britain's cloth was cheap and was exported to India, to other colonies and throughout the Middle East, where it quickly destroyed the local cloth industry, causing great misery. Britain made and owned more than half the world's total shipping. This great industrial empire was supported by a strong banking system developed during the eighteenth century.

 

 


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1075


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