Week 5 Outline What is the consumer revolution How did consumption fuel the industrial revolution In what ways were consumer habits gendered What were womens property rights in the 18 th and early 19 ID: 707308
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Slide1
Property and Consumption
Week 5Slide2
Outline
What is the consumer revolution?
How did consumption fuel the industrial revolution?
In what ways were consumer habits gendered?
What were women's property rights in the 18
th
and early 19
th
centuries?
How did this impact on women in practice?Slide3
1. What is the Consumer Revolution?Slide4
1720 – variety, quality and quantity of goods increased.
Explosion in consumer demand (McKendrick).
Cross-class development.
Movement from economic prudence to capitalist mass consumption.
Growth in concept of ‘luxury’.Slide5
study of Consumption:
Concentration on demand counters economic historians past emphasis on production.
Recent focus on widening range of commodities – standard and luxuries.
Look for meanings behind goods and habits – objects as social signifier (
Kowaleski
-Wallace).
Challenge origins of consumerism in 19
th
century – 2 consumer revolutions.Slide6
2. How did Consumption Fuel the Industrial Revolution?Slide7
Changing household behaviour = 'industrious revolution’ = industrial revolution (De Vries).
Increasing specialisation
Rural families worked harder/shifted their crop mix towards marketable products/ used child and female labour to expand production of both agricultural and industrial goods
Households reduced leisure time to increase production and income.
Additional income gave purchase power/additional production meant more goods available to purchase.
Goods stimulate demand – changing social attitudes – class emulation and competitionSlide8
Average Adult Male EarningsSlide9
3. In what ways were consumer habits gendered?Slide10
Stereotype Reinforcement:
Contemporaries and historians prejudiced.
Women: obsessed by material goods, lacking self control, parasitic.
Men: producers and breadwinners.
Money equated with male worth, women squandering money seen as emasculating.
Feminists suspicious of commodities: fashion viewed negatively as emblematic of women's decorative dependence.Slide11
The Dandy.
George Brummell
Robert de
Montesquiou
Amann,
Dandyism in the Age of Revolution
(2015)Slide12
‘Shopping is a state of mind not physical compulsion’
Consuming Subject
(
Kowaleski
-Wallace) – deeper meaning to consumption.
Commodities signifies social status.
Identity formation and self expression: Projection, fantasy, desire; image creation.
Women’s bodies reconfigured in relation to consumption: ‘denaturalise the natural’.Slide13
Male and Female Consumption Patterns
Amanda Vickery
Family Unit: diaries, letters and household account books.
Men and women were both skilful consumers but of different sorts of products.
‘While female consumption was repetitive and relatively mundane, male consumption was by contrast occasional and impulsive, or expensive and dynastic.'
Stana
Nenadic
Edinburgh and Glasgow probate inventories.Middle classes: purchase of household objects and luxuries rare not undertaken without considerable planning. 'affectionate consumption’: items which provided owners with reminders of relatives, friends past life. Slide14
L s. d.
His Purse & Apparrell
00 : 07 : 06
one old Bedd Steed
00 : 02 : 06
one old Feather Bedd Pillow & two Happins
00 : 05 : 08
two Paire of Coarse Lin[en] Sheats
00 : 07 : 00
four
paire
of old harden
Sheats
00 : 05 : 00
two
Paire
of old harden
Pillowbers
[pillowcase]
00 : 00 : 08
two old Table Cloaths & five Napkins
00 : 02 : 06
two old Darnick Curtons one old Vallance & Carpett
00 : 01 : 01
one Dozen & halfe of Trenchers
00 : 01 : 00
two little Panns & one pott
00 : 03 : 00
one Skeel Washing Tubb tray & one Bowle00 : 01 : 06Eight little old Pewter Dishes00 : 05 : 08two old Tanketts & one quart pott00 : 01 : 03one Gill pott & a Quarterne Pott00 : 00 : 04one Pewter Cup Salt & pewter Taster00 : 00 : 03one old Latten Candlstick & Six Spoons00 : 00 : 07one old Table & one Furr Dresser kubbert00 : 03 : 04two Joint Stoolls & two Furr Chaires00 : 00 : 09one little hanging Shelfe & small firr box00 : 00 : 06one small looking Glass & an old Pickter00 : 00 : 09three Wood Dishes & an old Salt kitt00 : 00 : 04one old fire Shovell porr & Tongues00 : 00 : 07one Diging Spade & an Ax00 : 01 : 00one how & a small Crow of Iron00 : 01 : 00one old Bible & little Sermon Book00 : 01 : 01£02 : 14 : 10
Inventory of Thomas Carr of Swallwell1692Slide15
Social
Status
Cooking pots
Pewter
Earthenware
Books
Clocks
Pictures
Table Linen
China
Silver
Gentry
84
93
39
39
51
33
60
6
61
Trades of high status
75
95
53
45
34
35
631151Trades of intermediate status77944924252958938Yeomen6995331819435113Trades of low status74964217181550323Husbandmen5789284401602Labourers7989434041840Widows/Spinsters66893318131246437Other trades828850322932611146Unknown70882717141840523Total70933719191342423Lorna Weatherill: Probate inventories reveal consumption predominantly functional not fashionable.(John Brewer & Roy Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods)Slide16
4. What were women's property rights in the 18th and early 19th centuries?Slide17Slide18
5. How did this impact on women in practice?Slide19
Coverture
All personal property belonging to a woman at marriage belonged to her husband absolutely.
Exception was
paraphernalia -
clothing and personal ornaments remained a wife’s possession.
A married woman could enter no contracts in her own name but could enter into contracts in her husband's name as his agent.
Law of agency:
woman could pledge her husband's credit with tradesmen for the supply of necessaries suitable to their station in life. The items normally considered necessaries were food, lodging, clothing, medical attendance and medicines
Law of equity: Trusts established for wealthy women by husband/father.Slide20
Wife Sales
Informal divorce.
Women were property.
Often agreed before hand by husband and wife’s new partner.
Freed a wife and children from following husband to debtors prison or workhouse.
Public announcement to traders and shopkeepers that wife no longer accessing his credit.Slide21
Wills
Evidence of women's property in wills.
Women also bequeathed personal property in their own wills.
Women's goods were often emotionally significant to them: the clothing women left was frequently described in some detail, including colour and type of cloth.
Of women leaving wills in Birmingham and Sheffield around 47% owned land or houses.
In Birmingham nearly three-quarters owned more than one piece of land or property.Slide22
Conclusions
Consumer revolution/industrious revolution brought explosion in the types and range of goods women and men possessed.
2 Consumer revolution: habits and environment.
Research challenges previously accepted gender stereotypes of male producer and female consumer.
While early historians such as Davidoff and Hall focused on fact that married women could own no property, recent research focuses on gulf between legal theory and practice.
1882 Married Women’s Property Act: Married women had same rights over their property as unmarried women. Wives retained property gifted by parents.
1893 Married Women's Property Act: Wives retained property owned before marriage or acquired after marriage by inheritance or earnings.