NRG are delighted to announce that Professor Emma Griffin from the University of East Anglia will present her paper on ‘Victorian Mothers: perspectives from working-class autobiography’ on Wednesday 5 February at 4p.m in the Casterbridge Suite.
Historians like to imagine that emotions such as maternal love are largely constant across time and space. They argue that mothers in earlier times loved their children in much the same way as we do today, though they accept that love was often expressed in different ways. This paper turns to working-class autobiography to consider these claims and asks how the emotional ties of family life were expressed and sustained in households where space and resources were scarce. It concludes that material deprivation had the power to undermine family relationships in ways that historians have usually been reluctant to admit.
Professor Griffin is joint-editor of the journal History and is the author of ‘Blood Sport, a History of Hunting in Britain’ (Yale, 2007) and ‘A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution’ (Palgrave, 2010). She is a regular contributor to programmes on both television and radio, and acted as a historical consultant for a recent film production of Pride and Prejudice.