The W G Hoskins Lecture 1993
‘Companionate Marriage: Some Oral History Evidence’ presented by Dr. Elizabeth Roberts
The fourth Hoskins lecture
22 May 1993
The large crowd of Friends attending the fourth W.G. Hoskins Lecture in May were treated to a rich and lively presentation delivered by Dr Elizabeth Roberts, Director and Research Fellow at the Centre for North-west Regional Studies at Lancaster University, who chose as her title ‘Companionate marriage: some oral history evidence’. Dr Roberts is the author of A Woman’s Place: an Oral History of Working Class Women, 1890-1940 (1984) and Women’s Work, 1840-1940 (1988) and is a well-known and exhilarating exponent of oral history. For this lecture Dr Roberts used oral evidence to question the ideal of the companionate marriage in the period between 1900 and 1970. Dr Roberts defined the term ‘companionate marriage’ very loosely as ‘teamwork’, ‘marriage for sharing’ ‘partnership’. Her studies have been mainly concentrated in North-west England, especially Lancaster, Barrow and Preston. The respondents were working-class wives, mothers and daughters, as well as husbands and sons. Those presented on tape varied in age, the eldest being born in 1885, through to the youngest born in 1944. Their voices told their own story, often demonstrating the mismatch between experience and academic theory, as well as the combination of humour and tragedy which makes up human lives.
From her findings Dr Roberts suggested that the great majority of working-class women before the First World War wielded significant authority within the home. Women, who exerted moral power and economic control over their husbands’ earnings, also had influence outside the home, although the males’ dominance there was far more significant. Oral evidence suggests that although it was not invisible at earlier dates there was greater companionship in marriage in the inter-war period resulting from an increase in the opportunities for leisure time and shared activities. As social attitudes changed and stigmas were reduced, it was not uncommon for working-class women to frequent the pub with their husbands or visit the cinema, which had been established just before the First World War. Despite these shared leisure pursuits, however, the norm was still a marriage distinguished by clearly defined gender roles.
Dr Roberts had not revealed any oral evidence to suggest that in the 1950’s full-time working wives and mothers exerted more power and influence within their marriage than did their part-time or unpaid contemporaries although women’s employment did affect marital relationships; in such situations the husband was more likely to help with domestic chores and role segregation became more blurred. After the war changing social attitudes to the ownership of money lessened women’s control within the home as there developed a seemingly greater influence on individual rights coupled with a growth in real wages between 1945 and 1970. During this period it was common for a husband’s income to be perceived as his own rather than the family’s and significant financial decisions became the husband’s prerogative. Dr Roberts’s lecture demonstrated the importance of oral history in the study of domestic history, and interest in the method was evident in the questions which followed and continued over the usual excellent tea at Marc Fitch House.
From an original report by Lara Phelan.