ABSTRACT
This book addresses the multifaceted history of the domestic sphere in Europe from the Age of Reformation to the emergence of modern society. By focusing on daily practice, interaction and social relations, it shows continuities and social change in European history from an interior perspective.
The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe contains a variety of approaches from different regions that each pose a challenge to commonplace views such as the emergence of confessional cultures, of private life, and of separate spheres of men and women. By analyzing a plethora of manifold sources including diaries, court records, paintings and domestic advice literature, this volume provides an overview of the domestic sphere as a location of work and consumption, conflict and cooperation, emotions and intimacy, and devotion and education. The book sheds light on changing relations between spouses, parents and children, masters and servants or apprentices, and humans and animals or plants, thereby exceeding the notion of the modern nuclear family.
This volume will be of great use to upper-level graduates, postgraduates and experienced scholars interested in the history of family, household, social space, gender, emotions, material culture, work and private life in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe.
Introduction: continuities and transformations in the history of the domestic sphere Part 1: Language and discourse 1. Domestic terminologies: house, household, family 2. Domestic advice literature: an entangled history? Part 2: Legal settings and domestic hierarchies 3. Spouses and the competition for wealth 4. Constructing and challenging dependence: masters and servants Part 3: The domestic sphere as space of work 5. Paid and unpaid work 6. Lower state servants and home office work 7. Scholarly households Part 4: Leisure and sociability 8. Leisure and the household 9. Domestic sociability and the emergence of the bürgertum Part 5: Consumption and material culture 10. Gender and consumption in the household economy 11. Making the material home: consumption, craft and gender Part 6: Domestic conflict and violence 12. Sexual violence and domesticity 13. Managing conflicts and making peace Part 7: Emotions and intimacy 14. A space of emotions 15. Sexuality and intimacy Part 8: Child-rearing and education 16. Parental care and the emergence of a new pedagogical discourse 17. Learning at home: class, religion, gender and family Part 9: Privacy and the emergence of separate spheres? 18. From open house to privacy? Domestic life from the perspective of diaries 19. Gender implications of the separate spheres Part 10: Semi-public spaces 20. The urban Balkan home: the flower garden as a young girl’s place 21. Negotiating intermediate spaces: caretakers, doormen and concierges Part 11: The domestic sphere as a religious space 22. Shaping confessional identities in the urban home 23. Religion and domesticity Part 12: Health and food preparation 24. The domestic culture of health 25. Food preparation and meals in a gendered perspective Part 13: Animals and plants 26. Dogs as domestic animals 27. Houseplants and the invention of indoor gardening Part 14: Images and identity constructs 28. Dutch paintings of interiors and the invention of a bourgeois identity 29. The national house and home in the Polish literature and culture
