Sara Delamont

Lorna Duffin

This collection of papers draws on insights from social anthropology to illuminate historical material, and presents a set of closely integrated studies on the inter-connections between feminism and medical, social and educational ideas in the nineteenth century. Throughout the book evidence from both the USA and UK shows that feminists had to operate in a restricting and complex social environment in which the concept of "the lady" and the ideal of the saintly mother defined the nineteenth-century woman’s cultural and physical world.

Her Cultural and Physical World

The Nineteenth-Century Woman

Lindsey Charles

This book surveys women and work in English society before its transition to industrial capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The time span of the book from 1300 to 1800 allows comparison of women’s work patterns across various phases of economic and social organisation. It was originally published in 1985. Several important themes are highlighted throughout the individual contributions in the book. The most significant is the association between home and work. Not only was trade and manufacture in the pre-industrial period carried out in close proximity to domestic life, many household activities also overlapped with commercial ones. The second key theme is the importance of the local social and economic environment in shaping the nature and extent of women’s work. The book also demonstrates the similarity between certain aspects of women’s work before and after industrialisation. The industrial revolution may have made sexual divisions of labour more apparent but their origins lie firmly in the pre-industrial period.

Lorna Duffin

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