ABSTRACT
In the mid eighteenth century the family unit was the pre-eminent social (and in large measure economic) unit of English society. It was, in the words of Roy Porter, ‘the elemental unit of living and dying, reproduction and socialization, education and business, love and hate’. 1 This was no less true a century later. It is tempting to imagine that the family, like so many other human organizations, was utterly transformed by the seismic changes in economic and urban life, more particularly by the coming of industrialization. It is equally tempting – and no less misleading – to accept as widespread and typical the image of mid Victorian domestic harmony and bliss, so assiduously disseminated by the idealogues (male and female) of bourgeois life. None the less, the mid Victorian family reigned supreme – whatever its imperfections, tensions and shortcomings. It did not, however, please Karl Marx – despite the heroic efforts of his own family to keep him in the style to which he grew accustomed.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois, family based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. 2
