Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England

Summary (from the publisher): Nineteenth-century Britain was then the world's most prosperous nation, yet Victorians would bury meat in earth and wring sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. Such drudgery was routine for the parents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been. Following the daily life of a middle-class Victorian house from room to room; from childbirth in the master bedroom through the kitchen, scullery, dining room, and parlor, all the way to the sickroom; Judith Flanders draws on diaries, advice books, and other sources to resurrect an age so close in time yet so alien to our own. 


Review: I love the history of everyday people and places and this book definitely fit the bill. Flanders progresses through the typical Victorian home and discusses everything from children's diet and everyday clothing to mourning and the price of the average funeral. After reading this, I'm thankful I didn't live in London during Queen Victoria's reign. Women had to wear 40 pounds of clothing, the air was coated in fog and pollution, diets were atrocious and largely filled with bread, and the work never ended. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the detailed descriptions of servants' tasks and the hours of work servants were expected to perform from dawn to the late hours of the evening. Everything sounded like such an ordeal. The Victorian obsession with keeping everything segregated and in its rightful place was also interesting. 


This book reminded me a lot of Bill Bryson's book At Home, except rather than going back to the origin of features in the home, it was centered on Victorian times. I really enjoyed how Flanders uses diaries and popular literature, such as the novels by Charles Dickens, to discuss everyday life during the time period. What better way to see how people were living than by characters they set in the same time and place? In particular, I appreciated the shout out to Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, having just recently read that novel. 


A very informative book that presented the real picture of Victorian life rather than the romanticized image most modern people hold today. 


Stars: 3.5