BU Research Blog

We are delighted to announce that Professor Emma Griffin from the University of East Anglia will be presenting a paper to the Media School’s Narrative Research Group as part of this semester’s series of talks.  The title of Emma’s paper is ‘Victorian Mothers: perspectives from working-class autobiography’, and the full abstract for Emma’s talk appears below.  The event will take place at 4p.m on 5 Feb in the Casterbridge suite. All welcome.

Abstract:
Historians like to imagine that emotions such as maternal love are largely constant across time and space.  They argue that mothers in earlier times loved their children in much the same way as we do today, though they accept that love was often expressed in different ways.  This paper turns to working-class autobiography to consider these claims.  It asks how the emotional ties of family life were expressed and sustained in households where space and resources were scarce.  It concludes that material deprivation had the power to undermine family relationships in ways that historians have usually been reluctant to admit.