Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life - Softcover

Hammerton, A. James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415133688 ISBN 13: 9780415133685

Publisher: Routledge, 1995

Synopsis

`original, imaginative and challenging...brings concerns together about gender, the family, and wider currents in British social, cultural and even political experience in the second half of the 19th century.' - Leonore Davidoff

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Cruelty and Companionship is an account of the intimate but darker side of marriage in Victorian and Edwardian England. Hammerton draws upon previously unpublished material from the records of the divorce court and magistrates' courts to challenge many popular views about family patterns. His findings open a rare window on the sexual politics of everyday life and the routine tensions which conditioned marriage in middle- and working-class families. Using contemporary evidence ranging from prescriptive texts and public debate to autobiography and fiction, Hammerton examines the intense public scrutiny which accompanied the routine exposure of marital breakdown, and charts a growing critique of men's behavior in marriage which increasingly demanded regulation and reform. The resulting critical discourse, ranging from paternalist to feminist, casts new light on the origins and trajectory of nineteenth-century feminism, legal change, and our understanding of the changing expression of masculinity. Cruelty and Companionship will appeal to students and teachers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century social history and gender studies. It should also interest students of family sociology and social work, and general readers interested in family relationships, domestic violence and women.

About the Author:

A. James Hammerton is affiliated with La Trobe University, Australia

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0415133688
• ISBN 13: 9780415133685
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 236