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Methodist Domesticity and Middle-Class Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

John Tosh
John Tosh*
Affiliation:
University of North London
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Extract

The history of the family, at least for the nineteenth century, has reached a certain maturity. Though not yet incorporated into mainstream history – that would be too much to expect – it now boasts a considerable specialist literature and some useful general surveys. Undoubtedly the driving force has been the aspiration of women’s history to reconstruct the lives of women in the past. Now that the personal records of women are being studied with such attention, there is a wealth of insights into their experience as daughters, wives, and widows. Jeanne Peterson’s account of the Paget family and their circle in Victorian England is a typical example. For the nineteenth-century women’s historian, there is the added bonus that this was the period when the claims of women to have the dominant influence in the family were taken most seriously – as witness the persistent appeal of the Angel Mother. Hence to research the history of the Victorian family promises results which will feature women as agents, and not merely as victims of patriarchal oppression.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 34: Gender and Christian Religion , 1998 , pp. 323 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1998

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Footnotes

1

As a newcomer to Methodist studies, I am particularly grateful for help received from Clyde Binfield, Margaret Jones, and John Walsh. For permission to make use of papers in their possession, I am grateful to Manchester Central Reference Library, Bradford University Library, and Mr David Stovin.

References

2 See for example Gillis, John, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages since 1600 (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, and O’Day, Rosemary, The Family and Family Relationships, 1300–1900 (London, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Peterson, M Jeanne, Family, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen (Bloomington, IN, 1989)Google Scholar.

4 Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

5 Hammerton, A. James, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 126–34.

7 Ibid, pp. 180–5, 340–2; Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship, pp. 75–8, 88–90.

8 Tosh, John, ‘What should historians do with masculinity? Reflections on nineteenth- century Britain’, HWJ, 38 (1994), pp. 179–202 Google Scholar; Roper, Michael and Tosh, John, ‘Historians and the politics of masculinity’, in Roper, Michael and Tosh, John, eds, Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London, 1991), pp. 1–24.Google Scholar

9 Manchester Central Reference Library [hereafter MCRL], Pritchard papers, M375/1/4: Joshua Pritchard to Mary Pritchard, 31 Aug. 1835.

10 MCRL, M375/1/4: Joshua Pritchard to Mary Pritchard, various letters 1835–7, passim.

11 MCRL, M375A/4: Joshua Pritchard to Mary Pritchard, 15 Aug. 1835.

12 MCRL, M375/1/4: Joshua Pritchard to Mary Pritchard, 26 June 1836.

13 MCRL M375/1/3: Joshua Pritchard, diary for 10 May 1821.

14 MCRL, M375/1/3: Joshua Pritchard, ‘Observations on the deportment of Mary Ann’ (1820-4).

15 A moving Victorian example is the family of Edward and Mary Benson. See Newsome, David, Godliness and Good Learning: Four Studies on a Victorian Ideal (London, 1961), ch. 3.Google Scholar

16 MCRL, M375/1/4: Joshua Pritchard to Mary Pritchard, 15 Aug. 1835, 18 Sept. 1836.

17 Abelove, Henry, The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists (Stanford, CA, 1990), pp. 99, 108.Google Scholar

18 Jennings, Elizabeth, ‘Sir Isaac Holden (1807-1897)’ (Bradford University PhD. thesis, 1982)Google Scholar; Tosh, John, ‘From Keighley to St-Denis: separation and intimacy in Victorian bourgeois marriage’, HWJ, 40 (1995). pp. 193–206.Google Scholar

19 Tosh, ‘From Keighley to St-Denis’.

20 Hardy, R. S., Commerce and Christianity: Memorials of Jonas Sugden of Oakworth House (London, 1857), pp. 15, 20.Google Scholar

21 Koditschek, Theodore, Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford 1750–1830 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 253, 255.Google Scholar

22 Jennings, Elizabeth, ‘Sir Isaac Holden, Bart (1807-97); his place in the Wesleyan connexion’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 43 (1982), pp. 117–26, 150–9.Google Scholar

23 Wesleyan Conference Office, A Class Book (London, nd), p. 5.

24 Bradford University Library [hereafter BUL], Holden/21: Isaac Holden to Sarah Holden, 20 Dec. 1850; BUL, Holden/23: same to same, 13 June 1852.

25 BUL, Holden/21: Isaac Holden to Sarah Holden, 20 Dec. 1850; BUL, Holden/23: same to same, 13 June 1852; BUL, Holden/44: Sarah Holden to Isaac Holden, undated (early Nov. 1851); Tosh, ‘From Keighley to St-Denis’; Abelove, Evangelist of Desire, pp. 49–58.

26 A Class-Book Containing Directions for Class-Leaders (London, nd); BUL, Holden/21: Sarah Holden to Isaac Holden, 4 Dec. 1850; BUL, Holden/52: Sarah Sugden to Isaac Holden, 6 Oct. 1849.

27 Hodgson, John, Textile Manufacture and Other Industries in Keighley (Keighley, 1879), p. 116.Google Scholar

28 BUL, Holden/32: Isaac Holden to Sarah Holden, 23 April 1861; BUL, Holden/22: same to same, 10 Jan. 1851; BUL, Holden/21: Isaac Holden to Sarah Holden, 20 Dec. 1850.

29 BUL, Holden/22: Isaac Holden to Sarah Holden, 10 Jaa 1851. See also Tosh, ‘From Keighley to St-Denis’.

30 Koditschek, Theodor, ‘The triumph of domesticity and the making of middle-class culture’, Contemporary Sociology, 18 (1989), pp. 178–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Cornelius Stovin, journal entries for 9 Sept 1871, 12 July 1872, 22 Aug. 1871, in Jean Stovin, ed., Journals of a Methodist Farmer 1871–1875 (London, 1982), pp. 33, 73–4, 26.

32 Cornelius Stovin, journal, 27 Nov. 1874 and 28 April 1875, ibid., pp. 159, 219; Stovin Papers (private collection): Cornelius Stovin to Elizabeth Stovin, 7 and 9 Nov. 1876 (transcripts).

33 Everitt, Alan, The Pattern of Rural Dissent: The Nineteenth Century (Leicester, 1972), p. 48.Google Scholar

34 Journal for 5 Sept. 1872 and 12 Jan. 1875, in Stovin, Journals, pp. 96, 178.

35 Stovin Papers: Journal, 18 March 1890.

36 Journal, 13 Sept. 1871, in Stovin, Journals, p. 36.

37 Journal, 22 Jan. 1875 and 1 Oct. 1872, in Stovin, Joumab, pp. 181, 104.

38 Cornelius Stovin, journal entries for 20 Dec. 1874 (Stovin Papers), 12 Jan. 1875, 11 Feb. 1875, 14 Nov. 1874, 12 jan. 1875 (Stovin, Journals, pp. 178, 190, 152, 177). Abelove, Evangelist of Desire, pp. 97–8, 101–2; Doreen Rosman, The Evangelicals and Culture (London, 1984), p. 107; Stephen M. Frank, ‘A frolic with father: play and paternal identity in nineteenth- century midwestern and New England homes’, paper presented to Second Carleton Conference on the History of the Family, Ottawa, May 1994.

39 Cornelius Stovin to Elizabeth Stovin, 14 Nov. 1874, in Stovin, Journals, p. 152; Cornelius Stovin, diary, 19 Nov. 1874, ibid., p. 155.

40 Binfield, Clyde, ‘“An optimism of grace”: the spirituality of some Wesleyan kinswomen’, in Binfield, Clyde, ed., Saints Revisioned (Sheffield, 1995), p. 68.Google Scholar

41 Dean, William W., ‘The Methodist class meeting: the significance of its decline’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 43 (1981), p. 43.Google Scholar

42 See for example, Stovin, Journals, pp. 28, 119.

43 Church, Leslie F., The Early Methodist People, 2nd edn (London, 1949), pp. 153–81 Google Scholar; Shaw, Thomas, A History of Cornish Methodism (Truro, 1967), pp. 21–4 Google Scholar; Watson, David L, The Early Methodist Class Meeting (Nashville, TN, 1985), ch. 4–5.Google Scholar For an instructive American parallel, see Gregory A. Schneider, The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism (Bloomington, IN, 1993).

44 Wesley, John, quoted in Greven, Philip J., The Protestant Temperament (New York, 1977), p. 127.Google Scholar

45 Cf.McDannell, Colleen, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900 (Bloomington, IN, 1986), pp. 109, 127, 130–5.Google Scholar

46 James, John Angell, The Family Monitor, Or a Help to Domestic Happiness (Birmingham, 1828), p. 17 Google ScholarPubMed; Grant, Brewin, The Dissenting World: An Autobiography, 2nd edn (London, 1869), p. 12.Google Scholar

47 Nelson, Claudia, Invisible Men: Fatherhood in Victorian Periodicals, 1850–1910 (Athens, GA, 1995)Google Scholar; Tosh, John, ‘Authority and nurture in middle-class fatherhood’, Gender and History, 8 (1996), pp. 48–64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Abelove, Evangelist of Desire, pp. 49–58; Gay, Peter, The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud, 2 vols (New York, 1984-6)Google Scholar.

49 Sangster, Paul, Pity My Simplicity: The Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children, 1738–1800 (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Greven, Protestant Temperament, pp. 32–43, 156–7; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beacher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York, 1976), pp. 153, 260.

50 Isaac Holden to Margaret Holden, 26 Nov. 1856, 10 June 1858 and 14 April 1859, in E. H. Illingworth, ed., The Holden-Bingworth Letters (Bradford, 1927); MCRL, M478/15/1: Joshua Murgatroyd to Thomas Murgatroyd, 2 Aug. 1870.

51 John Angell James, Female Piety (1856), quoted in Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 115.

52 David Newsome, The Parting of Friends (London, 1966), pp. 32–6; Standish Meacham, Henry Thornton of Clapham (Cambridge, MA, 1964), pp. 49–53; J- B. B. Clarke, ed., An Account of the Infancy, Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke, 3 vols (London, 1833), 2, p. 38; Rosman, The Evangelicab and Culture, p. 107; G. E. Sargent, Home Education (London, 1854), pp. 16, 26.

53 Cobbett, William, Advice to Young Men (1830; repr. London, 1926), p. 176 Google Scholar; Stephen, James, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (London, 1849), p. 273.Google Scholar

54 Ellis, Sarah, The Mothers of England (London, 1843), pp. 27, 160, 366 Google Scholar. See also Nelson, Invisible Men, pp. 14–16; Steven Mintz, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture (New York, 1983), pp. 27–39.

55 Quoted in V. A. C. Gatrell, The commercial middle class in Manchester, c. 1820–1857’ (Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1971), pp. 44–5.

56 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 113.