“Looking at family life reveals a dark side to Victorian economic progress”

Ellie Cawthorne: Your new book argues that looking at family life and the domestic sphere can offer a different perspective on the broad economic trends of the Victorian era. How so?

Emma Griffin: As historians, we’re really comfortable with thinking about the economy just in terms of numbers. And if you do that, the 19th century can look like a big success story. Historians say “Look, real wages went up in the Victorian era. For the first time in history, working people were really getting richer – what good news!”

But I’ve been trying to offer a different perspective. For a long time, I’ve been studying working-class autobiographies, in which people describe in great detail what life was like inside their family. More than 600 of these autobiographies, ranging from the early 19th century to the Edwardian period, make up the basis of my book. What I found from reading them is that while wages did rise, in reality there could be a big gulf between what a man earned and the wealth as it was felt by the other members of the family.

What we must understand about Victorian family life is that it was dominated by the so-called ‘breadwinner’ ideal. How this model is supposed to work is that a man goes to work, brings back his wages, and gives them all to his wife. She then spends them on rent, clothing and food for the family, and everybody lives a comfortable life.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out, however, that some men did not give over allto have had didn’t necessarily match up with what women and children actually did have. While it’s important to emphasise that not every family broke down, we need to acknowledge that there was a dark side to Victorian economic progress, as families struggled to adapt to this newly industrialised world of higher wages.