Constructing a suburban identity: youth, femininity and modernity in late-Victorian Merseyside

Abstract

permission to use the material in this paper. We have attempted to locate any surviving members of the Lee family, but we have not been able to trace any descendants on Merseyside. Thanks also to the anonymous referees who provided constructive comments on an earlier version of this article. 2Word count 9255 (excluding title page, key words, abstract, acknowledgements and list of references). Biographical notesColin Pooley"s research focuses on the social geography of Britain and continental Europe since the eighteenth century, especially aspects of migration, mobility, housing, health and urban change.Siân Pooley researches the social and cultural history of nineteenth-and twentiethcentury Britain, especially family, gender, childhood and welfare. 3 CONSTRUCTING A SUBURBAN IDENTITY: YOUTH, FEMININITY AND MODERNITY IN LATE-VICTORIAN MERSEYSIDE AbstractSuburban growth was one of the main characteristics of late-nineteenth-century British towns, and a suburban life style rapidly became the aspiration of a high proportion of urban dwellers. This paper explores the experience of one young woman growing up in a late-Victorian suburb, and assesses the ways in which she negotiated the structures of this emerging "modern" environment, so as to construct her own identity and behaviour.Evidence is drawn from one very detailed diary covering the period 1884 to 1892, and attention is focused on three aspects of everyday life: public and social space; domestic routine; and friendships and relationships. The conventional view of middle-class suburban domesticity is challenged by evidence from this diary, which suggests that it was the public and social life of the suburb that was of particular importance to young women. While older married women"s experiences were centred upon maintaining a respectable home, the provincial suburban environment offered to young single women considerable opportunities for independent mobility and action, which were restricted by relatively few familial constraints. The diarist did not fundamentally challenge the culture of middle-class suburbia, but instead was able to manipulate many social expectations to her own advantage. As a site of on-going development and malleable norms, latenineteenth-century suburbia offered its young elite residents opportunities for a certain degree of social, cultural and spatial autonomy that was understood to be essential to the life of the nascent community.4

What Betty did: charting everyday activity over the life course

“…Diaries, autobiographies and life histories can also provide valuable details of everyday activities. The character and purpose of self-writing has changed over time, and personal accounts of various kinds have been used quite extensively in historical research (Delap, 2011;Ezell, 2016;Griffin, 2013;Humphries, 2010;Moran, 2015;Pooley, 2017;Pooley & Pooley, 2010;Smyth, 2008). However, it is rare for surviving personal diaries to span a long enough time period to cover a full life course, and the limitations of diary evidence are well known: their survival is sporadic; few diaries survive for the poorest members of society; women (especially young women) were more likely to write diaries than were men; and there is no way of knowing what was omitted from a personal record (Fothergill, 1974;Hewitt, 2006;Nussbaum, 1988;Sherman, 2005;Summerfield, 2019).…”

The City within the City: A Glimpse of Elite Formation in Deptford, London and Dadaocheng, Taipei

“…At the very heart of this diverse new community was a real need to develop new spaces to accommodate them. 30 Deptford, on the southeastern embankment of the River Thames, became one such place.…”

Feminist historical geographies: doing and being

“…Scholars have examined home as a site for reproductive labour and the construction of gendered identities especially for women (Llewellyn, 2004;Lloyd and Johnson, 2004;Tasca, 2004;Jerram, 2006;Pooley and Pooley, 2010), as well as interrogated domestic space as a site where those identities might intersect with imperial power relations and colonial and hybrid identities (Wyse, 2002;Gowans, 2003;Blunt, 1999Blunt, , 2005b. Alert to both new insights from feminist geopolitics (on which see Massaro and Williams, 2013;Dixon, 2015) and what might be broadly thought of as the emergence of 'critical geographies of home' (Brickell, 2012), scholars have recently offered critical new readings of home as a site of unease, struggle, conflict and resistance (Gowans, 2001;see too Creswell's (1994) study of the making and meaning of home at the Greenham Common women's peace camp).…”