ABSTRACT
The home as an ideal is therefore inextricably tied to the notion of comfort. For many middle class homes this meant the absence of noise, freedom from interruption, the safety of a private place and a sense of ease. It was in the eighteenth century that the concept of comfort was fully established, albeit being mainly reserved for those who could afford it. During the nineteenth century, the obsession with domesticity, respectability and comfort reached its zenith. The concept of comfort for the Victorians was both material and immaterial, in the sense that is was both physical and emotional. For example, comfort and neatness were still seen as representative of morality as well as of bodily ease, but on the other hand too much physical comfort implied luxury and extravagance, and by extension, a lack of moral fibre. By the mid-nineteenth century, the changes in home comforts for the middle classes were very noticeable.
