"Marriage" by Josef Ehmer

In this passage, Ehmer discusses the idea of marriage in the 19th century and shows how demographics, the state, and other aspects changed during this time.

Many historians have argued that, beginning in the 18th century and carrying on into the 19th century with Romanticism, there was a shift toward romantic love as a reason for marriage. Young people were generally allowed to choose their marriage partners during this time. In addition, there began to be social disapproval for marriages forced by parents or with economic motivations. This did not mean that husbands and wives were considered equals in the marriage, though. In many occupations, husbands and wives had to work well together in order to achieve economic success. However, after the first half of the nineteenth century this began to shift and husbands were seen as the breadwinners and wives as the homemakers. Despite the idea of romantic marriage during this period, there were still social motivations involved. Forming kinship alliances was considered important in some rural societies and others considered marriage one of the few ways they could increase their social standing.

However, the state did not follow this ideal, and legal provisions argued for marriage to be “a moral and legal order independent of the wills of the two spouses.” Thus, control over marriage shifted from the Church to the state. Divorce was an issue that reveals the attitude of the state and marriage. In most countries in Europe until the mid-1800s, it was near impossible to legally divorce. However, even after divorce was later allowed under certain circumstances, in reality it rarely happened.

In discussing marriage demographics, Ehmer disagrees somewhat with the concept of the Hajnal line. Although the overall trends indicate that Western Europe married later than in the east, there was a great deal of regional variation. In Italy, for example, the marriage age for women could vary between 21 to 27 years, depending on which region you look at. This variation also holds true for celibacy rates across Europe. Marriage patterns did change during the 1800s, but in very different directions for countries. Ehmer believes this variation indicates overall that marriage was considered a choice for Europeans in the nineteenth-century.

"The Middle-Class Household" by John Tosh

In this chapter Tosh discusses the changes in the middle class. There was a shift in the middle-class as it began to expand. The first generation of middle-class were shop and factory owners that lived adjacent to their place of business. Many young people were apprenticed to professions different from that of their parents, and as a result were able to enter higher levels of the middle class. This is part of the reason the middle class expanded so much. On page three Tosh says “But strength of numbers lay with the men of trade and business. It was this entrepreneurial element which increased most rapidly during the first half of the nineteenth century and accounted for the largest number of fresh recruits to the middle class.”
Tosh argues that the “Masculine self-respect certainly demanded that a man provide for his family, and great shame was attached to one who ‘failed’. “(pg 14) Many of the changes that occurred from one generation to the next in the middle class were attempts to prove to society that the man of the house could provide for his family by maintaining a ‘proper’ household. The second generation of middle class began moving away from their places of work. Increasingly home became a place of refuge and not a place of work. If there was work to be done at home it was to be done in a way and place that interference to the rest of the household was minimal.
Another point that Tosh makes is that women were withdrawing from the day to day practices of business. Part of being able to provide was to allow your wife to have a life of luxury. How little your wife was required to be involved in work became yet another social marker. Part of that shift was also the separation of the servants from the household. They were no longer considered part of the family but simply one more way to measure wealth. The more servants you could afford the better off you were. And if you could afford to hire male servants then you were really doing well. Tosh points out that during this period when the middle class expanded so much people became extremely preoccupied with their status in that middle class. It really seems to me that this is when the wide spread attitude of keeping up with the Jones came into play.
This chapter falls into the theme of Family Relationship and Family Economics because Tosh discusses the shift from women being an important part of the working relationship with their husbands to not being involved at all. As the middle class expanded the women's role began to be reduced and the responibility for making decisions and being the breadwinner fell completely on the man.

Interpreting the Western Past with the Women and the Households Left in, 1500-1800 by Mary S. Hartman

In this Chapter from The Household and the Making a History, Mary Hartman states that the late marriage pattern in Northwestern Europe and the fact that brides were nearly as old as grooms when entering into marriage had far reaching consequences and was the motivating factor in the most important developments of the era namely religious upheaval, new systems of political authority, and transformed structures of livelihood.

She argues throughout that she goes against the original view that the strong currents of social change moved from wider society to households but rather she argues from households to the wider society. Concerning the Reformation, more people then ever before were seeking personal reasons for the ways they were supposed to live their lives. "The comparatively independent position of wives as partners in household governance also helped ensure that more women then ever before would have common interest with men, as well as some peculiar interests of their own, in becoming active heretics."(Hartman, p.214) Younger people were making more choices for themselves and had more responsibilities and looking for a towards a supreme being who had a preordained their fate.

She tells us that daily experiences in family life set the stage for political behavior. The late marriage pattern created more choices for young people including whom and when to marry this created families that contained two contributing adult decision makers. This is important because it represents an voluntary contract in which both partners agree to create and maintain the unit and both must contribute by supporting and sustaining members. This shaped the perception of state and politics as a voluntary contact. She also address the industrial reformation and tells up that the lalte marriage pattern created nuclear families that came to rely on alternate means then possesion of land to facilitate a living. This and the women in the work force prior to marriage contributed greatly to the industrial revolution.

Hartman argues that Households and work structures accompanying woman's late marriage had an enormous effect on gender arrangements and attitudes, one that literally shaped societal relations, structures, and developments" (Hartman, p.224) The uses a wide range of evidence from a study of the professions and work of the middle class to the traditions of village festivals to sermons. He evidence does seems to support her theory.

'The Nursery of Virtue': Domestic Ideology and the Middle Class. by Davidoff and Hall

This article also explains how the ideals of Middle-class domesticity were both perpetuated and reflected in 19th century British literature, focusing on the changing language (from religious to secular) of the “woman’s place and woman’s mission” debate that occurred during the first half of the 19th century. Davidoff and Hall begin their article by recounting the “Queen Caroline affair” which established the ideals of British motherhood which continued through the Victorian Era. From the affair, moralists concluded that the monarchy must exemplify the gender traits idealized at the time—that of the courageous man coming to the rescue of the “helpless female.” This respectful treatment of its women was widely believed to be “the mark of England’s advanced stage of civilization,” with “domestic virtue” the “brightest ornament of that civilization.”
The spread of overall literacy likewise spread these domestic ideals through the middle class. The main focus of the article is the variety of writers—famous, local, male, female, gentry, middle class—who focus on domesticity and its separate ideals of masculinity and femininity. The famous authors most read and loved by the middle class—described as an “unorthodox combination”(Cowper, Hemans, Barbauld, Nathanial Cotton, Scott, Barton, the Taylor sisters, and Byron)—explain the contradictory elements in the middle-class value system. Over the course of the 19th century, authors wrote about ideal gender roles first with religious and then simply moral influence.

Mary Jo Maynes, Class Cultures and Image of Proper Family Life

In this chapter, Maynes provides much information and evidence for the changes within European families in the 19^th century. She argues that clashes resulted between post-Enlightenment ideals and images of “proper” family life held by the bourgeois and conflicting evidence of what actually happened in families. She uses cultural evidence regarding parent-child relations, age and gender roles, and sexual behavior.

Maynes states that mother-child relations and close supervision of children were important to the new family model, but that in actuality, few European women could be essentially stay-at-home moms. Mother and children’s labor was needed for most families to survive.

Another increasing ideal was that of two spheres, public and private. Maynes writes that gender roles became more polarized as a result. Urban growth contributed to class and gender segregation. Market and residential areas as well as class-segregated neighborhoods arose. In practice, most of the migrants coming to crowded urban areas had no option of moving to the suburbs. The new ideal family life was mainly indoors, but every-day realities required lower-class families to be in public, on the streets. Poor women were never able to remain inside their homes, even if new ideals of domesticity expected it.

The increased ideal separation of private and public matters can be seen in courtship as well. New ideas about family life supported marrying for love and not money. However, in reality arranged marriages based on economic needs and expectations continued.

This reading could belong under categories of gender or family relationships/family economics, but I think categories of difference would fit best. This reading covers many different elements of families, but focuses on the changes of family life – real and ideal, rural and urban, in different regions of Europe. This reading is significant in our study of European families because it shows how although family-life ideals changed extensively in the 19^th Century, evidence of actual family life reveals a different story.

Reconstructing the social after the Terror by Suzanne Desan

This article discusses the reforms that occurred during the Reign of Terror in France during the French Revolution. These reforms affected families drastically. Divorce was embraced. Inheritance was no longer given to a specific person, but was being fought over by the siblings or relatives. The status of illegitimate children. A main concern for Frenchmen of this time was the ownership of property, which also caused problems within families.

The French were fighting among themselves at the expense of family relationships. Desan states that, "Reformulation of the Republic was fundamentally intertwined with a new emerging vision of the relationship between the family, law, and state." The petitioners or opposing side of all these reforms argued that social order was based on families being unified. The family was being separated during this time of political upheaval and the petitioners took it upon themselves to reunite the family and in so doing they would bring back social order of the state.

Ultimately, these reforms were kept to a minimal. The law was given less power over the family.

Moral Panic and Hollan's Libertine Youth of the 1650's and 1660's, Benjamin Roberts and Leendert F. Groenendijk

The look at the Dutch moral panic is informative. The author’s thesis is that the Dutch moralists were incorrect in accusing the Dutch youth of decadency. The authors are able to show that the youth were decadent. They show that the moralists had a political agenda. They even show that the youth weren’t beyond Dutch societal limits.

While the thesis is informative, I dislike the bias of the authors. This bias is most in evidence in how the authors judge the morals by today’s standards. For example, the moralists slandered women for indecency, and accused them of nudity. The authors defend the women by explaining “most likely, the only nudity these women were guilty of was wearing sleeves shortened to the elbow.” In another instance the authors are explain how moralists hated long hair on men. They give examples of the older generation having long hair when they were young, and explain this double standard by supposing the “aged men…were probably jealous of [the] young men.” Both of these conclusions suffer from two weaknesses. First, a “most likely,” and a “probably” screams improper research. These assumptions may be correct, but there is no evidence. Second, the authors do not address how the culture would have seen sleeves to the elbow, or how whether thinning hair was disdained. In both of these examples the authors assume that what seems plausible by today’s standards was true of the standards of 1650’s Amsterdam.