Household Gods, The British and their Possessions
Household Gods, The British and their Possessions
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家神、英国人和他们的财产
DOI：
10.1093/jdh/epm019
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发表时间：
2007
影响因子：
0.2
通讯作者：
M. Brewis
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
M. Brewis
黛博拉·科恩在这本生动而内容丰富的关于19世纪和20世纪中产阶级住宅的研究中宣称，家神是英国人对国内内部的热爱的历史。她对她所谓的“中产阶级自我塑造”很感兴趣(P.XV)，以及当面临评论家眼中的好品味和差品味之间的选择时，中产阶级消费者通常会选择会让威廉·莫里斯(William Morris)、亨利·科尔(Henry Cole)等设计改革者震惊的产品。防尘套上的插图说明了这一点。这张照片显示的是20世纪90年代伯恩维尔村一所身份不明的房子里的客厅：一个角落里有一个巨大的米洛维纳斯石膏模型，每个表面都覆盖着装饰品和植物，墙上挤满了名画的复制品，厚重的软垫椅子上塞满了垫子，花纹地毯上躺着花纹地毯。在正文中，科恩将这张照片与一张展示伯恩维尔一家客厅的照片配对，这是乔治·吉百利想要的，也是莫里斯会批准的(P.XIV)。一个谨慎的天南星占据了角落。唯一的座位是一把单独的温莎椅子和一张朴素的木凳。抛光的木地板上铺着一块小破布地毯。壁炉上方的架子上只有一把日本扇子和几件精心摆放的中国的装饰品，背景是光秃秃的墙壁。这本书分为七章，涵盖了一个世纪，从19世纪30年代到20世纪30年代，其中有一个简短的结语，回顾了21世纪的电视改头换面和房地产节目，证明英国人今天像他们的维多利亚时代和爱德华七世时代的祖先一样痴迷于自己的家园。在这个按时间顺序排列的框架内，各章都是按主题编排的。科恩的叙述以一章开始，讲述了消费的道德，以及维多利亚时代，特别是福音派基督徒如何将他们的良知与为他们的家购买产品的愿望调和起来。在十九世纪中叶，设计改革者提倡这样一种观念，即品味蕴含着道德品质，而良好的品味在提升和塑造品格方面起着至关重要的作用(第19页)。正如科恩用她特有的简洁所说的那样，“如何成为好人和富裕的人：这是19世纪中期以来英国中产阶级面临的问题”(第30页)。
‘Household gods is a history of the British love affair with the domestic interior’, declares Deborah Cohen in this lively and hugely informative study of the nineteenth-and twentieth-century middle-class home. She is intrigued by what she calls ‘middle-class self fashioning’(p. xv), and by how, when faced with a choice between what critics considered good and bad taste, middle-class customers usually opted for products that would have appalled William Morris, Henry Cole and other design reformers. The illustration on the dust-jacket makes the point. The photograph shows the parlour from an unidentified house in Bournville Village in the 1900s: a large plaster cast of the Venus de Milo occupies one corner, every surface is covered with ornaments and plants, reproductions of famous paintings crowd the walls, the heavily upholstered chairs are plumped up with cushions and patterned rugs lie on patterned carpet. In the text, Cohen pairs this photograph with one that shows a Bournville parlour as George Cadbury intended, and as Morris would have approved (p. xiv). A discreet aspidistra occupies the corner. The only seating is a solitary Windsor chair and an austere wooden bench. There is a small rag-rug on the polished wooden floor. Decorative objects are restricted to a Japanese fan and a few carefully placed pieces of china on the shelves above the fireplace against the backdrop of bare distempered walls.The book is organized into seven chapters, covering a century from the 1830s to the 1930s with a brief epilogue on the twenty-first century which examines television makeover and property programmes as evidence that the British are as just as obsessed with their homes today as their Victorian and Edwardian ancestors were. Within this chronological framework the chapters are constructed thematically. Cohen’s narrative begins with a chapter on the morality of spending and how the Victorians, and in particular evangelical Christians reconciled their consciences with a desire to acquire products for their homes. In the mid-nineteenth century, design reformers promoted the idea that taste was imbued with moral qualities and good taste had an essential role to play in elevating and shaping character (p. 19). As Cohen with her characteristic succinctness puts it,‘How to be good and well-to-do: this was the question that confronted the British middle classes from the mid-nineteenth century onwards’(p. 30).