Dining on Dissolution: Restaurants, the Middle Class, and the Creation of the Family Dinner in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

AbstractThe article discusses Saritā, one of the best-selling Hindi magazines of the 1950s, and the part it played in the establishment of the Hindi ‘middlebrow’ reader. While a rich and vibrant journal culture in Hindi had existed since the nineteenth century, what distinguishes the post-1947 Hindi popular magazine is the emergence of the middle class as a burgeoning consumer. Saritā defied prescriptions of Nehruvian state building, as well as the right-wing discourses of nationalism and national language prevalent in the post-Independence space. In addition, it reconfigured biases towards gendered reading and consumption processes, as well as encouraging increased reader participation. This article argues for Saritā’s role in the creation of a middlebrow reading space in the period immediately following Independence, since it not only packaged what was deemed wholesome and educational for the family as a unit, but also, most significantly, promoted readership in segments, with a focus on each individual's reading desires.

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Families in Canadian History: A Review of Four Recent MonographsFamilies in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe. Peter Gossage. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s, 1999.A Sense of Their Duty: Middle-Class Formation in Victorian Ontario Towns. Andrew Holman. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s, 2000.Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling and the Family in Postwar Canada. Mona Gleason. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.>Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960. Joan Sangster. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Journal of Canadian Studies ◽

10.3138/jcs.37.1.225 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 225-239

Author(s):

Lori Chambers

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Middle Class ◽

Class Formation ◽

Canadian History ◽

University Of Toronto ◽

Oxford University ◽

The Family ◽

The Law ◽

The Ideal ◽

Oxford University Press

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Linda Young. Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. Pp. xi, 245. $65.00

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1086/ahr/109.2.480 ◽

2004 ◽

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

New York ◽

Middle Class ◽

Class Culture ◽

Nineteenth Century America

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Ordering Empire and Democracy, 1902–1921

From Servants of the Empire to Everyday Heroes ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198841180.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 24-67

Author(s):

Tobias Harper

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Middle Class ◽

British Empire ◽

British Society ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

New Order ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

The Creation ◽

Opening Up

This chapter examines the creation of new orders at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was the culmination of a prolonged period of “unprecedented honorific inventiveness” starting in the late nineteenth century. In Britain the new Order of the British Empire was branded the “Order of Britain’s Democracy” in recognition of the fact that it extended far deeper into non-elite classes in British society than any previous honour. Between 1917 and 1921 more than 20,000 people in Britain and throughout the British Empire were added to this new Order. This was an unprecedented number, orders of magnitude larger than honours lists in previous years. While the new Order was successful in reaching a wider, more middle-class audience than the honours system before the war, which was socially narrow, there was a substantial backlash to what was widely perceived by elites to be an excessive (and diluting) opening-up of the “fount of honour.” This backlash was connected to political controversies about the sale of honours that eventually helped bring about Lloyd George’s downfall. This chapter also contains a brief description of all the components of the British honours system at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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