‘The proud air of an unwilling slave*’:
Tea, women and domesticity, c.1700-1900

Paper to be given at WAC 2008. (Session: Intimate Encounters: The Historical Archaeology of Domestic Reform), Dublin 29th June – 4th July.
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Abstract:
The study of domestic reform encompasses not only the explicit movements of the nineteenth century, but also more subtle pressure to change habits and attitudes implicit in etiquette books and fictional and non-fictional published accounts of domestic life. These pressures are visible in the material culture associated with the ‘domestic sphere’, and a study of the changes and continuities within such artefactual groups can inform interpretations of the acceptance of, or resistance to, domestic reform.

This paper will draw upon data from museum collections, cookbooks and visual sources to examine the changing nature of the tea ceremony in England. Taking into consideration tensions around leisured women, morality and a perceived increase in greedy consumerism, it will argue that women took active control of tea-taking, using it to challenge prevailing attitudes towards the role of women and to forge social networks founded on commensality within the household environment.

*Gaskell, E (1854) North and South. (This edition (1970) Harmonsworth, Penguin), 120