Jessica Mann
Upstairs, Downstairs
The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed
By Judith Flanders
HarperCollins 512pp £20
'I DON'T WANT to know who was who's mistress and why so-and-so devastated such a province ... What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, Did They Do Anything for Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting.. . ?' This apparently comical plea from H G Wells's Tono-Bungay is quoted to support Judith Flanders's belief that 'some of the most telling things about any age, any people are the details that show how we live allat home, where we live, what we do all day when we're not doing whatever it is that history is recording.' In this book she describes these details whilst providing an enchanting panorama of middle-class life in a Victorian town house.
A guided tour from room to room starts in the bedroom. Flanders endearingly notes, 'it has been suggested that I am more interested in S-bend than I am in sex. For the purposes of social history this is so'. So instead of Victorian attitudes to sex, she describes the mercfilly obsolete rituals of childbed and deathbed, or the bedroom's frequent transformation into a sickroom - many women spent their lives either nursing an invalid or (perhaps in sell-defence)
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk