Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940 and Paternalism and Politics: The Revival of Paternalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain. (Reviews).

Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940. Edited by Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999. xi plus 223 pp.).

Paternalism and Politics: The Revival of Paternalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain. By Kim Lawes (New York: St. Martinis Press, Inc., 2000. x plus 229 pp.).

These texts are united in their departures from earlier social histories, whether practiced by the Annales school or by E. P. Thompson and his followers, which sought to explain culture, language, and politics in terms of the underlying social or material structure. Both are revisionist works. However, whereas Kidd and Nicholls begin their anthology with a discussion of how post-structuralism has led to a reworking of the concept of "class" and reject the possibility of writing a "grand narrative" or discovering "the truth," Lawes is more traditional in both his language and approach. He seeks to provide a corrective to the grand narrative equating early nineteenth-century Britain with the triumph of laissezfaire thinking but never questions the validity of a grand narrative. While the fifteen contributors to the volume of Kidd and Nicholls explore a dizzying army of topics drawn from history, cultural studies, art history, economics, and geography, Lawes' monograph focuses steadfastly on the evolution of the thinking of Michael Sadler on the role of the state in the context of other paternalist thinkers like Coleridge, Southey, Cobbett, Johnstone, Robinson, Hale, and Monck.

Most of the thirteen chapters in the Kidd and Nicholls text have been revised from short conference papers organized around the broad theme of the history of the British middle classes since 1750. This anthology reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of such collections. Topics range from the civic culture of Liverpool in the early nineteenth century to missionary work from 1820-1842, civic portraiture in Manchester from 1838-1850, married women's property legislation in Scotland from 1850-1920, lower-middle-class consumerism and the sales from 1870-1914, and gender, consumer culture and the middle-class male from 1918-1939.

The essays generally rely on a limited number of primary sources to explore narrowly circumscribed themes. For example, Louise Purbrick, author of the essay on portraiture, studies thirty-six portraits of past mayors received by the Manchester Borough Council during the nineteenth century. Jill Greenfield, Sean O'Connell, and Chris Reid, authors of the essay on male consumption, examine a few men's life-style and motoring magazines.

The authors are not just bringing to light fairly obscure primary sources, however. In the process, they frequently raise thought-provoking historiographical questions, elaborating upon or calling into question established theories. Thus Purbrick intersperses discussion of specific portraits with analyses of the different approaches taken to portraits by social historians and art historians. As is appropriate for this volume, her essay develops the idea that portraits reveal less about the individuals portrayed than about their situation in terms of class, rank, and gender. She concludes that these particular portraits were symbolic expressions not of the individual sitters but of the institution that endorsed them. By exploring the tactics used by men's magazines to encourage male consumption, Greenfield, O'Connell, and Reid challenge the notion that after the First World War consumption became something that women undertook on behalf of men. Christopher Hosgood, in his article on lower-middle-class consume rism and sales, disputes the idea that consumerism acted as a vital conservative force and suggests that the semi-annual sales were subversive, turning the world upside down by providing an unrivalled opportunity for social mingling and allowing shoppers actually to touch the merchandise.

In some cases, the chapters are so short that authors present as conclusions what appear to be only plausible hypotheses or they reiterate prevailing theories without demonstrating how their own research supports these theories. There are hints of more ambitious projects to come, as in the case of A. James Hammerton's essay on satires of the lower middle class, 1870--1920. Hammerton contrasts satires of lower-middle-class men with their self-representations in autobiography. However, readers must take Hammerton's word for the contrast; proof lies in his study of lower-middle-class autobiography, based on a survey of over one hundred autobiographies and oral history transcripts, yet to be published.

The anthology is most successful when chapters on similar themes are juxtaposed, as is the case with chapters on art history, city planning, and consumerism. As disparate as the essays are, they do all address the question of identity formation. They identify various vehicles for male middle-class identity formation, including the law, literary and philosophical societies, missionary organizations, buildings, squares, monuments, portraits, busts, and magazines.

In this volume, the definition of class is recast in terms of identity and gender. Identity was often defined in contrast to "the other." Middle-class men, despite their inclination for universalizing their social experience, defined themselves by excluding others: most often women, but also the lower classes and "heathens." The essays reveal that defining one's identity in relation to a dominant group provoked both satisfaction and anxiety, for male middle-class hegemony was often contested, especially after the First World War as geographic and social mobility increased.

Another theme is the contrast between prevailing ideologies and reality. In order to distance themselves from women and the lower classes, middle-class men elevated existing social arrangements into ideal views of the gendered or hierarchical nature of society. Proponents for reform of women's property laws in Scotland argued that clinging to rigid stereotypes of married women was untenable and cited cases where husbands had lost or squandered their wives property. Ultimately the reformers succeeded in overturning these laws. Eventually lower-middle-class masculinity, which had at one time been ridiculed, gained acceptance. Nevertheless, ideologies have amazing endurance, as evidenced in John Lowerson's discussion of operatic amateurs and middle-class musical taste between the two world wars. Lowerson concludes that operettas reinforced British stereotypes of themselves and others, despite the portrayals of the press, radio, and newsreels to the contrary.

Kim Lawes picks up on the theme of the persistence of ideology in his monograph on the revival of paternalism. Rather than accepting characterizations of the nineteenth century as the age in which individualism triumphed, he argues that too much has been imputed to the material changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Citing J.C.D. Clark's critique of E. P. Thompson, he questions the assumption that material changes were sufficient in themselves to transform ingrained belief systems and emphasizes, instead, the slow changes in outlook that occurred in the nineteenth century. The values of the Old Regime were not eclipsed by the Industrial Revolution, nor did political economists and the proponents of laissez-faire economics go unchallenged.

Lawes contends that the aristocratic and patriarchal social outlook continued to shape British society in the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries. He traces the struggle between entrepreneurial and paternalist ideals and concludes that the entrepreneurial ideal triumphed in the early nineteenth century but not without making accommodations to the paternalists' provision of an active social and protective role for the state. Lawes' history of ideas approach is detailed and meticulous, presenting both sides of the arguments between Whigs and Tories about government provisions of compulsory relief for Ireland and factory regulation. Michael Sadler's critiques of Malthus and the laissez-faire theorists are interesting, as is the development of Sadler's thoughts regarding paternalism. Lawes' exposition is revealing. However, his thesis that Sadler was extremely influential remains questionable. In his short-lived parliamentary career, lasting from 1829-1832, Sadler produced no significant legislation. Also, a lthough Lawes is convincing in combating the assumption that paternalists were regressive in outlook, he goes too far in suggesting that their ideas bear striking resemblance to Keynes' and lay the foundation for the post-war capitalist state of the 1960s. The vocabularies of Keynes and the paternalists are very different, revealing disparate world views and ideas of social relations. Thus it seems anachronistic to translate a paternalist's concern for linking wages to the cost of living into the more modern notion of a universal minimum wage.

It is interesting to juxtapose the historiography of the Kidd and Nicholls text with that of Lawes. Lawes' presentation of the conundrum of how Sadler, a linen merchant of Leeds, would champion not the ideals of the entrepreneurial class but those of the aristocratic and leisured classes, fits nicely with Kidd's and Nicholls' introduction, which calls for a reworking of simple notions of class identity. Like the contributors to the anthology, Lawes observes how literary and philosophical societies enabled men of different occupations to intermingle and goes on to demonstrate how the polarity between Whigs and Tories dissolved as the principle of selective intervention by the government gradually supplanted the philosophy of strict non-interventionism.