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The Respectability of Late Victorian Workers: A Case Study of York, 1867-1914
Author: Charles Walter Masters
Date Of Publication: Dec 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2512-2
Isbn: 1-4438-2512-3
This study of the working classes of York in the late Victorian period places respectability at the heart of the interpretation of working-class culture, drawing attention to its distinctive role within working-class daily life while eschewing a class-based analysis. Through an investigation of workers’ actions, choice-making and personal testimony, and using a wide range of textual and non-textual sources, a picture is produced of what it meant to be respectable in working-class communities and respectability’s role in personal and community identity formation. Not only is the importance of gender-based notions of the male breadwinner and female homemaker explored, but fresh light is cast on how respectability was engaged with and negotiated in everyday contexts.

Respectability is shown to be a dynamic and culturally creative process with workers building their identities within the confines of “structural” constraints, including street and neighbourhood based mores and institutions, but with a measure of self-generated cultural, social and organisational space. Far from respectability being a function of socio-economic differentiation, even the poorest are shown to have aspired to join self-help organisations and become worthy citizens. Crucially, “working-class respectability” is shown to have been moral and Christian in character—underpinned by a form of diffusive Christianity that was robust and vital rather than some kind of legacy cultural and religious phenomenon. Although different attributes of respectability could be prioritised within working-class circles, respectability is seen as a distinctive and essentially pan-class culture centred on a set of universal values which distinguished and defined the respectable citizen and separated him from imagined or real rough “Others.”

This study will appeal to readers interested in social and cultural history, gender studies and material culture. York inhabitants are given their own voice through hitherto unpublished, as well as published, oral and written testimony. Worker and family attitudes are analysed in the everyday contexts of work, home, neighbourhood and leisure, and as part of the wide-ranging discussion, attention is paid to the cultural significance of what working people ate and wore, and what goods they bought to furnish their often very modest homes. The emphasis throughout is on a “grass-roots” analysis, showing clearly how and why respectability answered the needs and aspirations of most ordinary Victorian and Edwardian workers and their families.

Charles Walter Masters completed his doctorate at the University of York in 2010 under the supervision of Professor Edward Royle. Formerly Lead Tutor in Local History in the University’s Continuing Education Department, he now occupies a full-time research role in the Civil Service. He has written articles in national and local history magazines and, in 2009, published a book commenting on the historical value of maps which date back as far as Elizabethan times.

“This rich local study offers a nuanced and accessible history of respectability as a lived, coherent culture. It is an important study because, like the best local histories, it has potentially enormous implications for our understanding of Victorian and Edwardian society construed broadly as a national culture. Using York as a case study, Masters adroitly places his examination of daily life into the broad stream of recent writings about respectability, offering important insights into virtually every aspect of the lives, habits, and outlooks of working people. Drawing on oral testimony, contemporary surveys, archival records, newspapers, and a wealth of secondary literature, he presents a complex and fascinating thematic portrait of the lives and culture of ordinary people and shows how they negotiated the sometimes difficult economic and social world in which they lived.”

—Simon Cordery, Monmouth College, Illinois, USA

Price Uk Gbp: 44.99
Price Us Usd: 67.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

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