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  • Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England
  • Jessica Steinberg
Vickery, Amanda — Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Princeton: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. 382.

What does a home signify? This is the central question that Amanda Vickery has posed in her new monograph, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Concentrating on the experiences of men and women in the upper and middling sorts, as well as those who were chronically strapped for cash, Vickery analyses the meanings attached to the domestic sphere and the experiences of household residents. In her exceptionally well-researched book (Vickery examined over 60 archives), Vickery examines the pleasures and tribulations of domestic life by evaluating the physical changes to and mental associations of the home. Blending together architectural history, gender history, material history, and economic history, Vickery expertly addresses a variety of topics, including privacy, power, architecture and design, gender roles, status, economic constraints, fashionable tastes, handicrafts, visiting and sociability, and marital relations.

Throughout the work Vickery focuses on two central themes: interpersonal domestic relations, especially those between husbands and wives; and the physical changes to homes, both architecturally and decoratively. In tracing the changes to the physical layout and appearance of homes, Vickery provides a wealth of information about how the rise of sociability, visiting, privacy, architecture and design, and the growing importance of taste influenced the interiors of homes and how [End Page 484] time was spent in the home. Vickery also shares vast insights into domestic relations between different household residents — including husbands and wives, servants and apprentices, lodgers and tenants. Only children's domestic experiences seem to be excluded, and such information about that theme is undoubtedly sparse in the archives.

Vickery begins by looking at how the external perimeter of the house represented an ideological boundary: the house signified privacy, personal space, and domesticity, but it was also a low-trust site of conflict, where locks and keys were almost seen to signify civilization. Status determined the physical division of living space and the extent of privacy awarded to each person living in the house; the family lived on the first floor, while tenants, apprentices, and domestic servants lived in the basement.

One of the most important contributions Vickery makes is to reinsert "men back by the fireside" (p. 2). Refusing to accept that men were indifferent towards their domestic lives simply because they were not verbose about it, Vickery examines what domesticity meant to men in the gentry and middling sorts. Vickery shows that, though men had different domestic experiences than women, in fact, "the balance of burden and benefit in marriage obsessed" many men (p. 62).

Vickery's discussion of men's domestic experiences also leads her to explore a variety of household types that deviated from the traditional, paternalist ideal. This is an important strength of the book. By discussing a myriad of alternative households, Vickery shows that, while spinsters', bachelors', widowers', and servants' lodgings may not have followed the ideal household type, they were by no means out of the ordinary. By examining various sorts of households, Vickery is able to shed light on the domestic lives of those who were made dependent on others due to marital status, gender, or economic circumstances. Vickery shows that both married and unmarried men and women were somewhat dependent on others. While single men had considerably more freedom than single women, without the assistance of a woman, either as a wife or in the form of cooks, washerwomen, landladies, and nurses, men could not survive. Married men were also somewhat dependent on their wives — wives were usually the ones who held the keys to the home and were also responsible for much of its dé cor and appearance, which became particularly important in the age of visiting, politeness, and "taste."

Yet Vickery is careful not to over-exaggerate her arguments, and she makes it clear that both married and single women were more dependent on their families than were men. Though married women may have had more status than spinsters, marriage was not a guarantee of domestic bliss. The domestic lives of single women were most precarious. Spinsters were often the first...

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