Conversations in cold rooms : women, work, and poverty in nineteenth-century Northumberland
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Conversations in cold rooms : women, work, and poverty in nineteenth-century Northumberland
（Royal Historical Society studies in history new series）
Royal Historical Society , Boydell Press, 1999
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Note
Bibliography: p. 225-236
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A study of poor women in 19c Northumberland, showing how their poverty was exacerbated by their gender and by prevailing attitudes towards women.
In what ways did gender influence the shape of poverty, and of poor women's work, in Victorian England? This book explores the issue in the context of nineteenth-century Northumberland, examining urban and rural conditions for women, poor relief debates and practices, philanthropic activity, working-class cultures, and `protective' intervention in women's employment. The way in which cultural codes were constructed around women, both by those who observedand imagined them and by the women themselves, is investigated, together with other related contemporary discourses. While looking closely at the north-eastern context, the book's broader themes have important implications for debates within feminist history and theory. The author argues throughout that close attention to the links between material conditions and cultural representations of women both illuminates the intricate dynamics of working-class femininity and forces a reappraisal of the gendered nature of poverty itself in Victorian life and imagination.
JANE LONG is currently lecturer in women's studies at the University of Western Australia.
Table of Contents
- Constructing femininity - women, work and poverty
- invading bodies - gender and danger in Newcastle
- "you are forced to do something for a living" - women and white-lead work
- "a fine race of women" - Northumbrian bondagers
- regulating poverty, regulating gender - the administration of poor relief
- being "re-made" and "making do" - working-class women and philanthropy
- conclusion - reading the future.
by "Nielsen BookData"
