Life in Urban Society
In this chapter you will analyze the changes that took place as European society adjusted to the challenges presented by rapid urbanization. You and your group will be responsible for developing a presentation in which you analyze how people dealt with urbanization. Groups will present both in formation from the chapter as well as a special topic from the list below. You must research and organize information and create a presentation for the class.
Presentation Topics
1. Taming the City & The Great Stink
The Great Stink: Students may be surprised to learn that sewage is a rich topic for historical research. As part of the larger inquiry into the history of public health and clean water, and to help students develop research skills, have them locate sources that shed light on the “Great Stink”—when, in the summer of 1858, the stench from untreated sewage was so strong in central London that people fled from Thames banks and Parliament suspended deliberations. Thankfully, the smell spurred unprecedented engineering projects and resulted in London’s elaborate sewage network. News accounts, eye-witness descriptions, illustrations, cartoons, public health records, scientific studies, and even historical fiction (Clare Clark’s The Great Stink [2005]) can help students consider the many angles to take on this topic.
The Great Stink: Students may be surprised to learn that sewage is a rich topic for historical research. As part of the larger inquiry into the history of public health and clean water, and to help students develop research skills, have them locate sources that shed light on the “Great Stink”—when, in the summer of 1858, the stench from untreated sewage was so strong in central London that people fled from Thames banks and Parliament suspended deliberations. Thankfully, the smell spurred unprecedented engineering projects and resulted in London’s elaborate sewage network. News accounts, eye-witness descriptions, illustrations, cartoons, public health records, scientific studies, and even historical fiction (Clare Clark’s The Great Stink [2005]) can help students consider the many angles to take on this topic.
2. Rich and Poor and Those in Between & Interior Design
Interior Design: Household design was a key element of middle-class self-fashioning. Expand students’ understanding of the overstuffed and uncomfortable Victorian home by investigating its relationship to consumerism, social class relations, domesticity, child rearing, and other themes in social, cultural, and economic history. Contrast Germany’s Biedermeier interiors with those of England’s Victorians, or compare the design of London’s semidetached suburban homes with apartment houses in Munich. Have students look closely at the significance of the items in the homes: porcelain and silk from China, paintings and wall-hangings, Bibles and talismans. By the century’s end, the Arts and Crafts movement was promoting more functional design, and designers were marketing to the working classes: William Morris’s colorful and affordable pillows and wallpapers adorned many modest flats and celebrated artisanal values.
Source: Deborah Cohen, Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions (2006).
Interior Design: Household design was a key element of middle-class self-fashioning. Expand students’ understanding of the overstuffed and uncomfortable Victorian home by investigating its relationship to consumerism, social class relations, domesticity, child rearing, and other themes in social, cultural, and economic history. Contrast Germany’s Biedermeier interiors with those of England’s Victorians, or compare the design of London’s semidetached suburban homes with apartment houses in Munich. Have students look closely at the significance of the items in the homes: porcelain and silk from China, paintings and wall-hangings, Bibles and talismans. By the century’s end, the Arts and Crafts movement was promoting more functional design, and designers were marketing to the working classes: William Morris’s colorful and affordable pillows and wallpapers adorned many modest flats and celebrated artisanal values.
Source: Deborah Cohen, Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions (2006).
3. Changing Family Lifestyles & Prescriptive Literature
Prescriptive Literature: The Victorians excelled at giving advice. Samples from the vast library of advice literature can be found on the Web or in document collections like Women, the Family, and Freedom, 1750–1880 edited by Karen Offen and Susan Groag Bell (1983). Have students read excerpts from such classics as Sarah Stickney Ellis’s The Women of England (1839) or Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), which can help them see middle-class women’s roles in more complex ways. As the nineteenth-century equivalent of Martha Stewart’s Living, Beeton’s Household Management might appear to contain little more than household tips, but it also aimed to train middle-class women to think like managers, accountants, and human resource specialists.
Prescriptive Literature: The Victorians excelled at giving advice. Samples from the vast library of advice literature can be found on the Web or in document collections like Women, the Family, and Freedom, 1750–1880 edited by Karen Offen and Susan Groag Bell (1983). Have students read excerpts from such classics as Sarah Stickney Ellis’s The Women of England (1839) or Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), which can help them see middle-class women’s roles in more complex ways. As the nineteenth-century equivalent of Martha Stewart’s Living, Beeton’s Household Management might appear to contain little more than household tips, but it also aimed to train middle-class women to think like managers, accountants, and human resource specialists.
4. Science and Thought & Images of Urban Living
Images of Urban Living: Like their literary counterparts, artists in the realist tradition did not flinch from the pain, pathos, and peculiarities of everyday life in cities. Introduce students to the illustrations and woodcuts of the French artists Gustave Doré and Honoré Daumier, or in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861). Similar to Darwin’s fascination with variations among animal species, Mayhew was a student of London’s poor, and he approached his work with an ethnographic sensibility. Also good for stimulating classroom discussion are the early short films that capture the movement and interplay of people on city streets. The views of open-air markets in London’s East End in Journeys through Victorian London (produced and distributed by the Museum of London) reveal how crowded, grimy, and male-dominated those spaces were. See also the website of the British Film Institute (http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/).
Images of Urban Living: Like their literary counterparts, artists in the realist tradition did not flinch from the pain, pathos, and peculiarities of everyday life in cities. Introduce students to the illustrations and woodcuts of the French artists Gustave Doré and Honoré Daumier, or in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861). Similar to Darwin’s fascination with variations among animal species, Mayhew was a student of London’s poor, and he approached his work with an ethnographic sensibility. Also good for stimulating classroom discussion are the early short films that capture the movement and interplay of people on city streets. The views of open-air markets in London’s East End in Journeys through Victorian London (produced and distributed by the Museum of London) reveal how crowded, grimy, and male-dominated those spaces were. See also the website of the British Film Institute (http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/).
5. The New Woman and the New Man
By the 1880s and 1890s, a new generation of Europeans embraced markedly different gender roles and sexual identities than their early- and mid-nineteenth-century counterparts. To investigate what historical circumstances made these men and women different, ask students to choose an individual and research his or her background (class, education, religion), life choices (marital status, employment), and the issues about which he or she was passionate. As students share their research with the class, draw some conclusions about the factors that shaped these activists’ identities (singleness, education, religious outlook, etc.). Possible individuals include:
By the 1880s and 1890s, a new generation of Europeans embraced markedly different gender roles and sexual identities than their early- and mid-nineteenth-century counterparts. To investigate what historical circumstances made these men and women different, ask students to choose an individual and research his or her background (class, education, religion), life choices (marital status, employment), and the issues about which he or she was passionate. As students share their research with the class, draw some conclusions about the factors that shaped these activists’ identities (singleness, education, religious outlook, etc.). Possible individuals include:
England
• Beatrice Webb, Fabian socialist, social reformer • Emily Davies, educational reformer • Octavia Hill, advocate of housing reform • Selina Cooper, labor activist, early suffragist • Annie Besant, birth control advocate, theosophist • Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette, leader of WSPU • Josephine Butler, opposed state-sanctioned prostitution • Millicent Fawcett, suffragist, leader of NUWSS • Havelock Ellis, sexologist (i.e., sex scientist) • Karl Pearson, founder of the Men’s and Women’s Club • Oscar Wilde, playwright • Aubrey Beardsley, artist, cartoonist France • Madame Pelletier, socialist, birth control and abortion advocate • Hubertine Auclert, radical suffrage activist • Marguerite Durand, founder and publisher of a women’s newspaper |
Germany/Austria
• Rosa Luxembourg, socialist organizer • Bertha von Suttner, winner of Nobel Prize • Anita Augsburg, lesbian, advocate of free love • Lida Gustava Heymann, leader of anti-brothel campaign • Ottilie Baader, labor activist • Clara Zetkin, prominent writer and socialist theorist • Helene Stöcker, birth control and abortion advocate • Bertha von Pappenheim, leader of League of Jewish Women Elsewhere • Olive Schreiner (South Africa), writer • Aletta Jacobs (Dutch Republic), doctor and popularizer of the Dutch cap • Ellen Key (Sweden), advocate of singleness • Dr. Maria Montessori (Italy), educational reformer • Marie Curie (Poland/France), Nobel Prize winner for work on radioactivity • Rosa Schwimmer (Hungary), feminist, peace advocate |