Tennyson’s evocative image of Victorian men and women at the heart of his poem The Princess (1847) is striking largely because of its familiarity. The poet is building on a well-crafted popular image of the mid-century woman. It is a domestic image of female faith and goodness dutifully rendered for the betterment of society and popularised quintessentially by the domestic ideologue Sarah Ellis. ‘There is an honest pride which every true heart has a right to feel and England’s pride should be in the inviolable sanctity of her household hearths. When these are deserted, the sentence of her degradation will be sealed.’2 For Ellis the foundation of the nation’s religious morality lies in the home under the guardianship of female piety. There is no question that gender, spirituality and the home form a powerful thematic triumvirate in her writings as they do in many nineteenth-century sermons, magazines, poems and literary depictions. It is this same thematic triumvirate which re-emerges in historical reconstructions of British culture from 1800 onwards. It is ironic, therefore, given the close association between women, religion and

the home in image and imagination, that these themes are rarely studied in an integrated scholarly manner. The study of modern religion, the study of gender, and the study of the family remain discrete and at times dichotomised areas of enquiry each with their own research methods, agendas and theoretical approaches. This scholarly disassociation has inhibited understanding of the complex interplay between these themes. Furthermore, it has left the thematic triumvirate operating as a powerful ‘still life image’3 which is largely assumed but unexplored, and reiterated but critically unqualified. This chapter traces the contours of these distinct scholarly debates as they have developed over the last three or four decades. Considering in turn the social history of religion, the history of gender, and

the study of the modern family, it examines how differing methodologies, ideological concerns and scholarly agendas have tended to isolate the study of gender from that of religion and that of gender and religion from the familial context. In so doing this chapter seeks to highlight points of tension and points of resonance, suggesting possible bridges which could be built between historiographical fields to facilitate an integrated approach that can help bring the static picture to life.