Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865–1914 by Julie-Marie Strange (review)

In Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865–1914, Julie-Marie Strange confronts the absence of fatherhood in the historiography of the British working class, offering an impressive examination of what having, and being, a father meant in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Utilizing over one hundred working-class autobiographies as source material, Strange explores stories of fathers at work and home. In doing so, she contends that fatherhood had, and has, many diverse and multifaceted meanings and that “Dynamics between fathers and children were situational, dependent on personalities and changed over the life course” (211). Strange argues that duty, obligation, protection, and paternal authority were not markers of the detached father but provided key sites for affective relations. This study therefore represents a significant intervention in the histories of fatherhood, family, and gender.

This book builds upon studies on fathers and masculinity by, amongst others, Lynn Abrams, John Tosh, Tim Fisher, Laura King, Claudia Nelson, Megan Doolittle, and Trev Lynn Broughton and Helen Rogers. Strange further challenges “historical models of ‘family’ that privilege mothers and children” (214) and demonstrates that fathers were paramount to family dynamics and are worthy of further historical interrogation. Choosing to use autobiography, as opposed to social, legal and political records, enables Strange to uniquely explore authorial intention and style, establishing how, and why, meaning changed throughout the life cycle. Stories of fathers were often imbued with political meaning, augmented when authors’ careers were based in politics, trade unions, or welfare. As such, family provided both a real and imagined space in which political opinions were formed and “inequalities were rehearsed and resisted” (12). Firmly situated in a theoretical framework of class, Strange concludes that families provided a key site for the construction of the adult self and understanding fatherhood is therefore imperative to understanding selfhood.

This argument is sustained over six chapters, organized thematically, each challenging clichés of working-class histories. Acknowledging that fathers spent most of their time at work, the first two chapters explore the ways father-child relationships were mediated through waged-labor, focusing on employment and unemployment, respectively. Questioning the respectable breadwinner cliché, chapter one challenges the assumption that fathers were excluded as affective agents because their toil took them away from the home. Instead, adult children invested intimate meanings in their father’s toil, and breadwinning was a site for children to articulate what their father meant to them. If “financial provision was the legal, political, social and affective keystone of fatherhood” (80), then a failure to provide threatened fathers’ public and private status. Yet, as chapter two demonstrates, an emphasis on pity and compassion meant that fragility rather than failure often defined unemployed fatherhood. Adult children appropriated other acts of sacrifice or care as fulfilling fatherly obligations, such as “tramping” or even vagrancy, thereby demonstrating the elasticity of father-child relations.

Paternal obligation is also the focus of chapter six, namely provision, protection, and authority. These obligations were highly gendered, upholding patriarchal power in the law and were not akin to maternal nurturing. Instead, fulfilling them indicated that fathers cared about children, rather than for them. However, like waged-labor, authors imbued these commitments with individual significance, transforming obligation into transcendental acts of devotion, signifying affective attachment and feelings. Conversely, the abuse of authority, or ineffective action, could cause the breakdown of the father-child relationship and be a source of recrimination and regret. Chapter four moves away from obligation and duty by focusing on fathers’ leisure activities. Strange interrogates how authors sought the “authentic” man behind the breadwinner by describing their father through his interests and family-time at special events or holidays. This is not an attempt to find an early prototype of the “fun dad” who spends more time undertaking fun, father-child activities at home. Rather, it demonstrates how authors appropriated activities “as indicators of respectability,” investing fathers with unique and intimate qualities (114).

Chapters three and five use innovative methodologies...