It is ironic that while the nineteenth-century middle class was so concerned with respectability and security, their lives were fraught with uncertainty and change. For the majority of middle-class Victorians, the delicate balance between inadequate incomes and the cost of living precluded any significant investment for the future. The shift in wealth away from land toward earned income meant that family finances were much more precarious than in the past. If the breadwinner died, so did the family's income. The historical view of widows has been narrowly skewed by a focus on the relatively small number of wealthy upper middle-class families; the average middle-class income, including the professional 'middle' group and the lower middle-class composed of clerks and small shopkeepers, was more modest by far than is often assumed. When a modest income was combined with the high costs of living demanded by middle-class status, the majority of middle-class widows were left with inadequate inheritances By the 1880s, significant changes had begun to help widows, but for most of the nineteenth century finances were a serious problem, the family and kin network was unreliable and often selfish, community support through charity was inadequate and self-serving, and there was no official governmental policy toward widows and orphans. The ones who were able to construct multiple strategies, who were able to find piecemeal jobs and combine this with appeals to family and charities, were the women who managed to survive. Perhaps the image we have of middle-class domesticity was something that was constantly aspired to, achieved only with unremitting struggle, and retained precariously / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_26419 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Contributors | Curran, Cynthia Riecke (Author), Pollock, Linda (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
Page generated in 0.001 seconds