Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865–1914

A pioneering study of Victorian and Edwardian fatherhood, investigating what being, and having, a father meant to working-class people.

Julie-Marie Strange (Author)

9781107084872, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 January 2015

242 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.5 kg

'Excellent. … Strange's nuanced analysis of the emotional intracies of fathering ensures that fathers will certainly be actors in future feminist histories of families.' Ellen Ross, History Workshop Journal

A pioneering study of Victorian and Edwardian fatherhood, investigating what being, and having, a father meant to working-class people. Based on working-class autobiography, the book challenges dominant assumptions about absent or 'feckless' fathers, and reintegrates the paternal figure within the emotional life of families. Locating autobiography within broader social and cultural commentary, Julie-Marie Strange considers material culture, everyday practice, obligation, duty and comedy as sites for the development and expression of complex emotional lives. Emphasising the importance of separating men as husbands from men as fathers, Strange explores how emotional ties were formed between fathers and their children, the models of fatherhood available to working-class men, and the ways in which fathers interacted with children inside and outside the home. She explodes the myth that working-class interiorities are inaccessible or unrecoverable, and locates life stories in the context of other sources, including social surveys, visual culture and popular fiction.

Introduction: O father, where art thou?
1. Love and toil: fatherhood, providing and attachment
2. Love and want: unemployment, failure and the fragile father
3. Man and home: the interpersonal dynamics of fathers at home
4. Front stage values, back stage lives: family togetherness, respectability and 'real' fathers
5. Funny talk: laughter, family and fathering
6. The fond father: protection, authority, reconciliation
Conclusion: discovering fatherhood
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]