ABSTRACT
The role of the married middle-class woman as mistress of the house can be evaluated only on the basis of a clear understanding of the material culture of the class. For a key flaw in contemporary and subsequent impressions about the middle class lies in the complete neglect of the actual economic definition of the middle class in the nineteenth century. This does not mean that values are to be ignored; they will continue to form a substantial part of this study. But the middle class has been defined too long in terms of values alone. 1 This study, in attempting to understand the situation of the middle class, needs to determine how the Victorian woman actually lived, not how we think she should have lived, nor, for the moment, how she thought she should live. If we do not understand her material base we cannot know if the values so often discussed applied to the whole group.
