Building a Career

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-92
Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Literary Space ◽  
Women’S History

This chapter discusses Dickens’s journalism and fiction of the 1830s and 1840s, and identifies the features of his urban style. It places his writing on tenancy in the context of comic theatre: namely, an influential tradition of lodging-house farce. The chapter surveys a number of plays and identifies the conventions of lodging-house farce, and it explores how Dickens adapts these materials to paint a vivid picture of life in London lodgings. The two-dimensional characters of the farce universe offer Dickens a reference point for theorizing the ‘flattening’ of identity in the city’s rented spaces. Dickens is especially interested in the landlady as a comic trope, social reality, and important figure in women’s history. Both the landlady and her lodgers provide Dickens with a set of tools to contemplate the nature of nineteenth-century authorship and readership: the lodging house, he discovers, is a literary space, and his early writing is witty and metafictional.

An agenda for women’s history in Ireland, 1500–1900: Part II: 1800–1900

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (109) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Luddy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relevant Work ◽  
Interpretative Framework ◽  
Women’S History

What is exciting about looking at women’s history in nineteenth-century Ireland is the great wealth of material which is available for study and research. Yet very little relevant work has been published. The reasons for this neglect are manifold, and include a basic indifference on the part of most academics to the role played by women in Irish history, which has resulted in the general exclusion of women from historical discourse. The lack of courses recognising the history of women has further relegated their study to the periphery. In Ireland historians, and particularly historians of women, have yet to establish a narrative and an explanatory and interpretative framework which includes Irish women. Through the work of historians in other countries, we have various conceptual frameworks within which to operate and many hypotheses to test with regard to the situation of women in Ireland. The areas for research are extensive. Here I intend to look generally at a number of aspects of women’s lives which have been investigated to some degree and to suggest sources which can be used to extend these investigations. I also wish to look at other issues which have received no attention but which would add considerably to our understanding, not only of women, but of the complex realities which made up nineteenth-century Irish society.

HANNAH LAWRANCE AND THE CLAIMS OF WOMEN'S HISTORY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN DABBY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Catharine Macaulay ◽  
Condition Of Women ◽  
Women’S History

ABSTRACTThe historian, Hannah Lawrance (1795–1875), played an important role in nineteenth-century public debate about women's education. Like Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, she argued that virtue had no sex and she promoted the broad education of women in order to increase their opportunities for employment. But unlike her bluestocking predecessors, she derived her argument from a scholarly reappraisal of women's history. Whereas the Strickland sisters' Tory Romantic histories celebrated the Tudor and Stuart eras in particular, Lawrance's ‘olden time’ celebrated the medieval period. This is when she located England's civilizational progress, driven by the education of queens and the wider state of women's education, allowing her to evade the potential conflict of a feminine creature in a manly role. Using the condition of women to measure the peaks and troughs of civilization was a familiar approach to historical writing, but Lawrance's radical argument was that women were often responsible for England's progress, rather than passive bystanders. Her emphasis on women's contribution to public life complemented the Whig-nationalist narrative and secured her a high reputation across a range of political periodicals. Above all, it appealed to other liberal reformers such as Thomas Hood, Charles Wentworth Dilke, and Robert Vaughan, who shared Lawrance's commitment to social reform and helped to secure a wide audience for her historical perspective.

Methodist Domesticity and Middle-Class Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century England

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 323-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tosh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dominant Influence ◽  
Women’S History

The history of the family, at least for the nineteenth century, has reached a certain maturity. Though not yet incorporated into mainstream history – that would be too much to expect – it now boasts a considerable specialist literature and some useful general surveys. Undoubtedly the driving force has been the aspiration of women’s history to reconstruct the lives of women in the past. Now that the personal records of women are being studied with such attention, there is a wealth of insights into their experience as daughters, wives, and widows. Jeanne Peterson’s account of the Paget family and their circle in Victorian England is a typical example. For the nineteenth-century women’s historian, there is the added bonus that this was the period when the claims of women to have the dominant influence in the family were taken most seriously – as witness the persistent appeal of the Angel Mother. Hence to research the history of the Victorian family promises results which will feature women as agents, and not merely as victims of patriarchal oppression.

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