In Bed with the Victorians

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction: Victorian Working-Class Marriage and the Marital Bed

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 1-13

3. Beds of Newlyweds

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 15-33

4. From Marital Bed to Childbed

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 35-50

5. Marital Beds in Marital Strife

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 51-64

6. Beds After Marital Separation

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 65-82

7. Post-marital Beds of the Bereaved

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 83-102

8. Conclusion

   • Vicky Holmes

   Pages 103-107

9. Back Matter

   Pages 109-125

   PDF

This book examines the life-cycle of Victorian working-class marriage through a study of the hitherto hidden marital bed. Using coroners’ inquests to gain intimate access to the working-class home and its inhabitants, this book explores their marital, quasi-marital, and post-marital beds to reveal the material, domestic, and emotional experience of working-class marriage during everyday life and at times of crisis. Drawing on the recent approach of utilising domestic objects to explore interpersonal relationships, the marital bed not only provides a rereading of the experiences of the working-class wife but also brings the much maligned or simply overlooked working-class husband into the picture. Moreover, it also extends our understanding of the various marriage-like arrangements existing throughout this class. Moving through the marital life-cycle, this book provides a greater understanding of marriages from the outset, during childbirth, at times of strife and marital breakdown, and upon the death of a spouse.

• Material culture
• Long nineteenth century
• Domesticity
• Spatial history
• Nocturnal history

“The book offers an entirely new contribution to the history of marriage with its use of new sources and its helpful attention to different phases of working-class married life.” (Helena Michie, Victorian Studies, Vol. 62 (4), 2020)

• Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom

  Vicky Holmes

Vicky Holmes is Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, UK.

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