The Tragi-Comedy of Victorian Fatherhood

A new study of Victorian middle-class fatherhood using the private diaries and letters of influential public men.

Valerie Sanders (Author)

9780521884785, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 April 2009

264 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.56 kg

' … [an] excellent book …' The Brown Book: Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Examining Victorian middle-class fatherhood from the fathers' own perspective, Valerie Sanders dismantles the persistent stereotype of the nineteenth-century paterfamilias by focusing on the intimate family lives of influential public men. Beginning with Prince Albert as a high-profile patriarchal role-model, and comparing the parallel case histories of prominent Victorians such as Dickens, Darwin, Huxley and Gladstone, the book explores the strains on men in public life as they managed their private relationship with their children and found a language for the expression of their pleasure, grief and anxiety as fathers. In a context of cultural uncertainty about the legal rights and moral responsibilities of fatherhood, the study draws on a wealth of unpublished journals and letters to show how conscientious Victorian fathers in effect invented a meaningful domestic role for themselves which has been little understood.

Introduction: looking for the Victorian father
1. The failure of fatherhood at mid-century: four case histories
2. Theatrical fatherhood: Dickens and Macready
3. 'How?' and 'Why?': Kingsley as educating father
4. Matthew and Son (and Father): the Arnolds
5. 'A fine degree of paternal fervour': scientifc fathering
6. Death comes for the Archbishop (and Prime Minister)
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literature & literary studies [D]