3. History from underneath: women and girls’ experience in the era of industrialisation
Lecture 3 also builds on earlier work, in this case using working-class autobiographies to uncover the experiences of families which lived through the industrial revolution. My 2010 book used proletarian life writing to uncover aspects of work and family life inaccessible through conventional historical sources. But all 600 plus accounts were authored by men and so presented an exclusively male perspective. In the lecture I will draw on women’s stories to provide female reflections on childhood, child labour, schooling, parenting and family life, looking particularly at the ways in which experience was gendered and speculating about its implications for our understanding of the division of labour and the cultural power of gender in post-industrial society.
view more