Electrifying History: expertise, risk and gender in late Victorian culture

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project reinterprets how electricity entered British domestic life before World War 1. Usually seen as an inevitable result of industrialisation, I argue instead of electrification was accomplished only with great difficulty. A new breed of 'experts' sought to counter the reputation of electricity as a risk-prone, worryingly intangible and an unpleasant illuminate. Controversially extending the boundaries of technical expertise, they popularized electric lighting as a safe luxury commodity invoking utopian electricity futures and images of electricity as a magical female servant. Notwithstanding female's expert's advocacy of electrical techniques for cooking and heating, many householders chose instead to trust gas.