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Consumption in Britain 371
eating and drinking and the private life of domestic interiors with a
material culture of porcelain, fine glassware, maiolica, artwork, fabrics
and furnishings (Clunas 1991, 1999; Goldthwaite 1993; Welch 1997). The
value of many of these goods consisted mainly of the cost of the craft
labour that went into their making, and not in value of their materials.
This feature was continued in the spending habits of the wealthy in
eighteenth-century England as preferences shifted towards lightweight
ornamental silver and Sheffield plate, and away from silver whose value
wasdetermined only by its sterling worth (Clifford 1999).
Distinction for the wealthy before and just after the sixteenth century
relied on ‘patina’, a sign of the right sort of duration in the social life of
things. The cult of the durable consumer good was about family status,
and patina was conveyed to objects through surviving family use for sev-
eral generations (McCracken 1988). By the eighteenth century, distinction
was conveyed less by dynasty than by novelty, fashion and taste; and rapid
fashion changes in housing styles and interiors demanded the services
of architects and upholders, an early form of interior designer (Craske
1999). Thorstein Veblen and Georg Simmel analysed the conspicuous con-
sumption of the rich as the motor driving wider consumer trends. This
consumption was associated with Sombart’s luxury; it was individual, he-
donistic and pleasure seeking, and driven by irrational fantastic desires
(Sombart 1913; Miller 1995). But elite consumption was also analysed by
Norbert Elias as a ‘civilizing process’ arising from ‘court rationality’. The
size, ornamentation and style of houses was coded according to rank;
the luxury expenditure to achieve this was ‘necessary’ as a means to aris-
tocratic social assertion (Mennell 1989). Simmel’s ‘trickle down’ theory
and Veblen’s theory of emulation were used rather uncritically by histo-
rians to convey the wider social impact of the consumerism of the rich.
McKendrick used the examples provided by Matthew Boulton and Josiah
Wedgwood, who sought out wealthy customers as ‘legislators of taste’.
Both made commemorative issues of goods for royal birthdays, and sent
new patterns to members of the aristocracy. They then produced similar
commodities in a variety of cheaper materials accessible to all levels of
society. ‘The variety of the great will ever be affecting new modes, in
order to increase that notice to which it thinks itself exclusively entitled.
The lower ranks will imitate them as soon as they have discovered the
innovation’ (Robinson 1987; McKendrick 1983). Few now hold to a sim-
ple emulative model of consumption. Aristocratic consumption, it is now
recognised, frequently had dynastic motivations, while that of the gen-
try conveyed protocol and a sense of belonging as well as the stability
of family connections (Douglas and Isherwood 1979; Vickery 1993, 1998;
Clifford 1999).
Nevertheless, the expenditure of the aristocracy in the eighteenth cen-
tury was enormous. Landholding had become significantly more con-
centrated between the end of the seventeenth century and the early
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372 Maxine Berg
Table 13.6 Estimated average cost of country houses by estate size, 1770–1800
Estate size (acres) Size of house (cu ft) Cost of new house (£) Cost of alteration (£)
Greater than 10,000 600,000 22,000 5,500
5,000–10,000 375,000 12,500 3,125
3,000–5,000 200,000 7,000 1,750
Source:Wilson and Mackley 1999.
eighteenth century, reinforced by primogeniture and the development
of strict settlement. An increasing political role for those with landed
estates further increased valuations, as well as pressures and opportuni-
ties for pomp and display (Cannon 1984). The country house became a
theatre for the display of wealth, political power, taste and genealogical
respectability; it was the largest item of aristocratic expenditure (Wilson
and Mackley 1999).
In the first half of the eighteenth century a suitable country seat might
be built for £2,000–£3,500, but building costs probably doubled between
the1780s and 1810s. The large majority of country houses in the eigh-
teenth century were built for £3,000–£6,000; in the mid-Victorian period
they cost £7,000–£10,000 (see Table 13.6). By comparison, an Arkwright-
type mill was insured during the last thirty years of the eighteenth cen-
tury for £3,000–£5,000 (Wilson and Mackley 1999).
The top 400 landowners had an average income of £10,000. At the
topend of the scale, Walpole spent tens of thousands on his house at
Houghton in Norfolk, owned two other houses in Richmond Park worth
£14,000, and rented a London house at £3,000 per year. His wine bill
was£1,000 a year, and his personal expenditure £9,000 in the four years
between 1714 and 1718. Great country houses were run by a large and
specialised staff of servants: the Duke of Dorset’s forty-five servants at
Knowle cost £474 per year in wages. Running expenses for the larger
establishments could reach the range of £5,000–£6,000. Furnishing an
establishment in the new style could cost the £1,000 James Best paid for
therefitting of his mansion in Chatham, and the new fashion of the
Grand Tour for sons cost £3,000–£5,000 for two years (Burnett 1969).
Incomes for the gentry ranged from £200–£300 up to the wealthiest
with incomes close to £5,000, and their lifestyles varied accordingly. In
1790 there were about 800 gentry families with £5,000, and 3,000–4,000
with incomes of £1,000–£3000, with another 15,000 living on a few hun-
dred pounds a year. Their heaviest expenditures were housing conver-
sions, and servants; the prosperous gentry paid wages for between twelve
and twenty servants per year (Burnett 1969).
It is to the middling classes and even to the labouring poor that his-
torians have recently turned for explanations of the growth and charac-
teristics of consumption in the eighteenth century. Extensive studies of
probate inventories over the period have revealed that each generation
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Consumption in Britain 373
from the mid-seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century left be-
hind more and better possessions, but the value of these goods did not
increase as a proportion of overall estates (de Vries 1993). The general
picture which emerged from these studies was of 25 to 30 per cent of
wealth held in consumer goods between the late seventeenth and the
eighteenth centuries. The relatively more entrenched social position of
thevery wealthy was shadowed by the gathering strength of the mid-
dling classes. The most common criteria for membership of the middling
classes in the mid-eighteenth century were minimum incomes of £40–£50
per year, and liability for payment of the poor rates (a local property
tax used to finance the poor law). On the basis of income, these num-
bers ranged from one to two fifths of the population; poor-rate payers in
some large towns might be 30 per cent of the population (Lindert and
Williamson 1982; Langford, 1989). The middling groups who possessed a
larger and wider array of consumer goods did rise as a proportion of the
population over the period, and they had a disproportionate influence on
wider consumer habits. There is evidence of a shift in the distribution of
income to middling groups between 1750 and 1780, with the proportion
of the English population with incomes between £50 and £400 rising
from 15 to 25 per cent (Schwartz 1985).
Consumption among these groups of the population has been esti-
mated mainly on the evidence of probate inventories. Studies based on
probate inventories cover the period between the mid-seventeenth and
mid-eighteenth centuries primarily because of the limitations of the
source (Weatherill 1988; Shammas 1990). Probate inventories are lists of
moveable possessions that were recorded at death. Such inventories are
more widespread and richer in detail for this period than later in the
eighteenth century. They provide considerable detail of the possessions
and consumer durables of the middling classes; there are relatively few
that survive for the poor. Their coverage for women is also limited; they
were made only for spinsters and widows. Probate inventories as a source
have many other limitations. They provide information only on the ac-
cumulation of goods at the point of death, not on the flow of goods, or
thetiming of their accumulation. They do not distinguish between goods
that were inherited and those that were bought. Only consumer durables
were recorded, and these rarely included clothing. Many new consumer
goods were ephemeral; they were fashion goods, lighter textiles, chap-
books and other paper products, and pottery, and this is a source which
only recorded goods still owned by a person at time of death. Only the
quantities of the goods and their valuation at death were recorded, and
theinventories tell us nothing of their meaning. The valuations assigned
to these goods were frequently artificially low, reflecting the conventions
of the valuers. Valuations taken at the end of a lifetime also fail to cap-
ture the novelty or fashion value of a commodity (Cox 1984; Spufford
1990; Shammas 1993).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
374 Maxine Berg
Table 13.7 Ownership of goods, 1675–1725
Percentage of inventories containing specific commodities
Value of total Value of
Social status inventory household goods Clocks Pictures Looking glasses China Knives and Forks
Gentry £320 £55 51 33 62 13 11
High trades £193 £97 34 35 62 18 7
Intermediate trades £157 £32 25 29 56 19 11
Low trades £92 £19 18 15 37 7 3
Widows/spinsters £82 £18 13 12 36 6 4
Source:Weatherill 1988.
Analysis based on these inventories indicates much greater ownership
of eating and drinking utensils, furnishings, books and pictures, looking
glasses and clocks and window curtains. Weatherill’s data (Table 13.7)
indicate that ownership of earthenware and looking glasses roughly dou-
bled between 1670 and 1725, while that of pewter plates, clocks, pictures
and window curtains increased by three to five times. The percentages of
inventories containing knives and forks, china and utensils for hot drinks
rose from virtually none to 10 or 15 per cent (Weatherill 1993). New and
decorative goods like pictures and window curtains were much more
common in towns, and London dominated for indicators of possession
of utensils for hot drinks. Possession of new goods also differed by social
status, though often in unexpected ways. Weatherill found that new and
expressive goods were more frequently found in the inventories of the
middling classes, and especially the urban middling classes, especially
tradesmen, than in those of either the gentry or yeoman farmers.
There were also marked regional differences. The much larger data set
of 8,000 inventories collected in the study by Overton and Whittle for the
two counties of Kent and Cornwall indicates significant additions to the
domestic environment in Kent, along with higher levels of consumption.
Many new types of furnishings and novelties appeared in the Kent inven-
tories, while the quality of life in Cornwall declined over the period; its
consumption was selective, practical and traditional (Overton 2000).
These large-scale studies of probate inventories tell us only about the
greater proliferation of consumer goods across middle-rank households
into the first part of the eighteenth century. More confined studies based
on individual towns, and drawing on the evidence of wills as well as
inventories and insurance records, provide a more partial picture into
thelater eighteenth century. These indicate greater ownership of a wider
range of consumer durables, but no sudden or rapid expansion in this.
Very high proportions of those leaving wills in eighteenth-century Birm-
ingham and Sheffield made bequests of goods which included clothing,
silver, jewellery, linen and china, as well as shop goods and cash (Berg
1993c). Metalworkers insured in Birmingham and Sheffield in a sample
drawn from 1776–87 indicated relatively substantial ownership of both
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Consumption in Britain 375
trade goods and consumer goods. Over 40 per cent of those insuring
goods in Sheffield insured these for values of £100 to £500; in Birming-
ham nearly 60 per cent of insurers of goods insured at this level (Berg
1993a).
Most houses of the middle rank in the period between the late sev-
enteenth and the early eighteenth century had between three and six
rooms, including a general living room or houseplace. This never con-
tained a bed, but did have decorative things such as pictures, looking
glasses or a clock, and books. By the early eighteenth century many in
this rank had a parlour or best living room with new types of furniture.
Weatherill emphasised the special place of cooking in these households,
and the social significance of serving meals. Social conventions on the
timing of meals, the laying out of the table and the presentation of food
were increasingly the subject of conduct manuals and etiquette, but for
most people were largely subconscious (Weatherill 1993).
Forthe middling classes, it is equally important to consider those items
which were rarely to be found in inventories, but which expressed im-
peratives of self-presentation and individuality. Sensitivity to image, and
apropensity to buy display goods such as window curtains, mirrors and
best clothing, played an important subjective role in consumer expendi-
ture. The clothing that was rarely itemised in inventories was discussed
in detail in the texts of wills (Weatherill 1991; Berg 1996). A sample of
women who left wills in eighteenth-century Birmingham and Sheffield
indicates that 27 per cent of Birmingham female will makers and 25.5
per cent of Sheffield female will makers left bequests of clothing. Their
bequests were fully described, and categorised as ‘best’ or ‘everyday’ or an
item worn on a special occasion (Berg 1996). Relatively high proportions
of budgets continued to be spent on clothing, despite declining costs of
fabric, because of frequent fashion changes
The real divide among historians arises over the extent to which the
labouring classes took part in consumer society in the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Long and heated debates over the standard
of living have both opened up the opportunities for and closed off the
possibilities of a great deal of labouring-class consumption (see chapter
10 above). Horrell and Humphries’s calculations on budgets, followed by
Feinstein’s recent calculations of the standard of living of the average
working-class family, indicate an improvement of less than 15 per cent
between the 1780s and the 1850s. Feinstein’s calculations for the propor-
tions of budgets are shown in Table 13.8.
Feinstein assumes that the proportions of budgets taken up by tea,
coffee, sugar and treacle stayed the same over the period, and used an
index for the price of clothing reflecting the rise in the importance of
cotton relative to wool and linen (Feinstein 1998). Horrell and Humphries
provided the detailed background to these estimates, perceiving retrench-
ment of demand for products of traditional industries and decreased
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376 Maxine Berg
Table 13.8 Expenditure in working-class budgets
% 1788–92 % 1828–32 % 1858–61
Food 69 65 61
Rent 10 11 13
Drink 10 11 12
Clothing 6 8 9
Source:Feinstein 1998.
demand for products of new manufactur-
ing industries, and arguing that, if any-
thing, the low levels of working-class de-
mand put a brake on the demand for
manufactured goods. They argued that
working-class budgets were relatively sta-
ble over the period, and these indicate
expenditures on necessaries of about
six-sevenths of household income, with
little left over for discretionary expenditure (Horrell and Humphries 1992;
Horrell 1996).
Such conclusive quantitative judgements have not put to rest flour-
ishing research into the imperatives and stimuli to labouring-class con-
sumption. The budgets used frequently contained hidden moral precepts
or agendas, especially over expenditure on tea, sugar and clothing (Styles
1994). There are further disagreements over regional and sectoral divi-
sions of labouring-class living standards. But perhaps the key problem is
one of periodisation. The pessimistic positions on budgets and standards
of living all refer to the period between the late 1780s and the 1840s,
long known to be a time of severe pressure on the labouring poor, from
high food prices in the 1790s to trade and industrial crises in the early
nineteenth century. Much of the research on expanding consumption
refers to the later seventeenth and first two-thirds of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Allen identifies a divergence in real wages in Europe for 1500–1750
between England and the rest of Europe, with wages in England higher
than for her neighbours. The wages of the skilled portions of the labour-
ing classes, furthermore, left the cash to buy the luxuries of the consumer
revolution (Allen 2001). Indicators of wages of skilled workers, especially
in new industries such as the potteries, did rise over the period between
1770 and 1815 (Botham and Hunt 1987). A great variety of conditions pre-
vailed even among the smallest cottagers of rural Warwickshire. One day
labourer who in 1714 left goods, cash and clothing valued at £41 listed
as his possessions a cupboard, a table, three chairs, three caldrons and a
frying pan, and five pewter dishes, as well as a few beds, and some linens
and blankets. Fifteen years later another valued his goods, cash and ap-
parel at only £16, and left similar though fewer items; a higher-status
husbandman among them left goods valued at £40, including a clock
(Alcock 1993).
One key part of the consumption of the labouring poor was that of
colonial groceries and new beverages: tea, sugar, tobacco, gin and rum.
The key beverage of choice even among poor households by the end of the
eighteenth century was tea sweetened with sugar, both imports from long
distances, and this also required fuel for heating water. Tea, sugar and
fuel feature as necessities in family budgets, but tea and sugar were also
new addictive luxuries which, on existing wages, required substitution
away from other food products.
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Consumption in Britain 377
Longstanding disputes over living standards do not dislodge burgeon-
ing evidence of luxury expenditure among those who could not afford
thefashion, respectability or addiction in which they indulged. Even on
Horrell and Humphries’s own evidence, during the period of high prices
in 1787–96, 10.6 per cent of working-class expenditure went on non-
essential items, with the largest share spent on clothing. Horrell also
finds an increase in total household spending of 43 per cent over the
period 1800–41, with a rise in spending on non-essential items of 137 per
cent, and on essentials of only 30 per cent (Horrell 1996). Hans Medick
long ago challenged the old market/custom division, as well as the sim-
ple correspondence between standards of living and the consumption of
manufactured goods and luxuries. Medick argued that plebeian produc-
ers invested a large part of their usually modest monetary income in
consumption, fashion and drinking. Following the cultural anthropology
of Bourdieu, Medick argued that this behaviour provided a form of ‘sym-
bolic capital’ which interacted with wider plebeian culture (Medick 1982).
Evidence from pauper letters and inventories indicates possession of silver
spoons, watches and rings which were pawned when necessary to raise
cash. Voth has estimated the ownership of watches to be widespread,
approximating to 16–40 per cent in 1750. Even the lower figure would
provide for one third of all males of prime age (Voth 2000). Labourers
in pauper inventories of the late eighteenth century owned a substan-
tial variety of household goods and decorative or semi-luxury items. And
studies of consumption and the family life-cycle show that a family of
four among the rural labouring classes might spend £5 a year on dress,
and more than this at different stages of the family life-cycle (Sokoll 1997;
King 1997; Styles 1994, 2002a).
Clothing was a particularly important marker of style, respectability
and fashion. Correct dress was one of the constantly recurring considera-
tions that underlay the extensive theft of clothing during the period, the
growth of a large and sophisticated trade in second-hand clothing, the
development of fashion styles in adornment and ornamentation, and es-
pecially an enormous product diversification in types and costs of fabrics.
Lemire points out the availability even in the late seventeenth century of
flowered, coloured and white cotton calicoes at prices ranging from 9d.
per yard to 1s. 7d. By the 1770s to 1780s over fifty cotton textile fabrics
sold for less that 12
1
2
d. per yard, with most of the remaining selling for
13d. to 2s. per yard. Chapmen, pedlars and hawkers over the course of
that century had established oriental cotton textiles as a new decency
among the middling sorts and a new want among the labouring poor.
A cotton gown, by the mid-eighteenth century, formed the basis of a fe-
male servant’s appearance; this might cost 6–7s., or 8s. ready made, the
equivalent of at least a week’s wages for many working people; they also
bought gowns for over twice this amount (Lemire 1991; Styles 2002).
Wages offemaleservants ranged widely between metropolis and
provinces and between houses of the very rich and more middling class
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
378 Maxine Berg
houses; they might be as much as £15 per annum by the end of the eigh-
teenth century, but with many earning under £4 per annum. Most of
these servants lived in; they spent most of what they earned on clothing,
and they bought new fashionable clothing, as well as workday wear, even
if they had to go into debt to do so. This included lengths of fabric for
gowns of printed cotton or linen and even occasional worsted-silk mixes
and silks. They bought petticoats, and sometimes stays; they had acces-
sories ranging from neckcloths to hats and shoebuckles. ‘They combined
thecostlyandstylishwiththecheapandmundane...theycomprised
afinancially circumscribed, but huge and free-spending market for new,
fashionable clothing’ (Styles 2002).
If new clothing was not to be afforded by the labouring poor, then
themarket in second-hand clothing was highly developed, especially at
inland markets, ports and dense population centres. Pawnbrokers con-
ducted a lively trade in pawned clothing, and pedlars and earthenware
hawkers accepted worn clothing in exchange for other goods, then sell-
ing this clothing on. Clothing was a kind of currency, easily convert-
ible into cash. There were 260 officially designated pawnbrokers listed
by theend of the eighteenth century, and Colquhoun estimated that
there were in London alone several thousand receivers and hawkers of
second-hand goods, including clothing. Clothing was by far the most com-
monly pawned consumer item in the 1770s, and women were the most
active pawners (Lemire 1998). Clothing was one of the most commonly
stolen commodities in the eighteenth century, accounting for over 27
per cent of recorded larceny cases, and the greatest percentage of all
prosecuted thefts (Beattie 1986; Lemire 1990). Ornamentation and fash-
ionable adornment were so important to style that second-hand clothing
wastransformed through the addition of scarves, patterned stockings,
shoe buckles, waistcoats, a hat, and a variety of ribbons and buttons, and
stolen items were quickly reassembled in unrecognisable forms (Lemire
1997). Clothing featured in the wills of those who had very little else to
leave, and it was frequently described in detail. Birmingham and Sheffield
widows who appeared to have no house and little cash, still bequeathed
shifts, gowns, petticoats, caps, bits of lace and handkerchiefs (Berg 1996).
Among the very poor who were pauperised at various points of their
lives, inventories reveal a variety of household goods and decorative items
that indicate once better times in their life-cycle. The range of goods
theworking population could expect to own had expanded to such a
degree by the late eighteenth century that even the poor might have
more in their inventories than their better-off middling ancestors of the
early years of the century owned (King 1997). But it was particular types
of goods that were considered to be necessary to basic self-respect and
decency. Deep shame was expressed in pauper letters that reported the
pawning of outdoor clothes and shoes. One woman wrote, ‘I was oblig’d
to putmyonlydecentGowninpledge...andhavenotbeenabletogo
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Consumption in Britain 379
out of doors or even to a place of worship.’ A male pauper wrote, ‘My old
Great Coat which hides the Rufull tokens of want and Poverty – will take
2/6 to Redeem’ (Sokoll 1997). The poor law authorities did respond to the
perceived needs of the poor for respectable dress, providing regular sets
of new clothing for paupers in a wide range of different types of cloth and
different colours, and made in the ‘current fashion’; regular replacement
once or twice yearly allowed for the accumulation of clothing (King 2002).
Aspirations to fashionable dress, among better-off industrial workers
and journeymen, but also among ordinary working people, were espe-
cially expressed in leisure clothing which marked a connection between
appearance and independence. James Bisset, who was working as a jour-
neyman in a Birmingham toymaker’s in the later eighteenth century, lost
his position, and found himself in debt for £20, the whole value of which
was for the clothing he owned (Berg 1998b). Other journeymen and in-
dustrial workers owned wigs and fashionable hats, or plated buttons and
buckles (Lemire 1996; Harte 2001).
To conclude on the dynamics of labouring-class consumption, there
remains a divide between findings of declining or stable standards of liv-
ing, and those of rising demand for consumer goods, especially addictive
food goods such as sugar and tea and fashion goods such as clothing (see
chapter 10). Clothing in particular did account for rising real expendi-
ture. The reasons for this increase in consumption without prior growth
in incomes can be sought in changes in prices; prices of cotton textiles fell
by approximately one-third from the 1770s to 1850. And lighter textiles,
and more frequent fashion changes, pushed for a higher proportionate
ownership of clothing. The enhanced hedonic value of clothing provided
by perceived improvements in quality and fashion change could increase
the utility gained by consumers of these goods, and they might substi-
tute these for other goods, including necessaries and housing standards.
Another means of consuming in the absence of changes in income was
debt, a constant feature of labouring-class life (Finn 2000).
GENDER AND HOUSEHOLD DIVISION
OF CONSUMPTION
Evidence on the variety and value of men’s clothing raises questions over
the accepted gender analysis of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
consumption. Sombart and Simmel, both writing at the turn of the twen-
tieth century, associated the incentives to the growth of consumption
with sexuality. Sombart, in Luxury and Capitalism,wrote that the principal
cause of the expansion of trade, industry and finance capital over the
whole period between 1300 and 1800 was the demand for luxury goods,
especially by the nouveaux riches, courts and the aristocracy. An intensifi-
cation of the demand for luxuries, sexual and political in origin, made
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
380 Maxine Berg
fashion a driving force of the social elites. Sombart explained the rise of
luxury, ultimately, by the psychological impulse to gratify the senses; this
wasrooted in turn in sexuality. Mistresses, courtesans and salon culture
provided the sirens of consumer society (Sombart 1967 [1913]). Simmel
identified a dynamic behind fashion, a dynamic also rooted in psycholog-
ical impulses, but in this case impulses of imitation and emulation. He
identified a fundamental conflict in society between adaptation to our
social group and individual elevation from it. It was class based, so that
imitation from below of a given pattern was followed by flight towards
novelty and distinction from above (Frisby and Featherstone 1997). The
key actors here were not courtesans but female domestic servants.
The identity which has come to be assumed between consumption and
women arises from gendered presentations of the luxury debates, espe-
cially as conveyed in these influential texts by Sombart and Simmel, as
well as Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class.Theywerethe source
of Neil McKendrick’s claim for female agency, and especially that of ser-
vants in spreading the desires for consumer goods. Women’s desires for
consumer goods have been assumed to be generic, driven by leisured con-
spicuous consumption, female vanity and fashion. Not only servants and
courtesans but female industrial workers were assumed to be subject to
such desires. Young spinners were condemned by moralists for spending
themoney they earned in domestic manufacture in ‘buying fine clothes
and other gawdy gew gaws’ (Berg 1985). Such assumptions also lie behind
theories of household behaviour such as de Vries’s ‘industrious revolu-
tion’. De Vries’s theory rests on intra-household decisions over labour,
leisure and consumption taken among husbands, wives and children. De
Vries, like McKendrick, drew attention to the rising decision-making role
of the woman of the household (assumed to be a wife). The wife in the
de Vries model takes on a primary role as decision maker in consump-
tion, and occupies a strategic place at the intersection of reproduction,
production and consumption. She is an ‘active consumer’ rather than a
passive victim of fashion manipulators. Her willingness to shift her tastes
must be combined with power in household decision-making; both con-
vert to her ability to buy novelties and luxuries in the marketplace for
herself and the household (de Vries 1993). That power in decision-making
depends in turn upon a specifically targeted demand for female labour
such as existed in the new consumer industries of the proto-industrial pe-
riod and the early stages of the industrial revolution (Berg 1993b). There
is also, however, no evidence that increased female employment in low-
wage labour entailed more access by women to family decision-making.
Evidence of women’s unequal access to food in the household, frequently
through self-denial (see chapter 9), might also be found in other consumer
goods, for example clothing versus drink and tobacco.
While de Vries’s theory of the ‘industrious revolution’ places gender
at the centre of explanation, it does not address the actual practices
of women’s and men’s consumption. Evidence here is lamentably thin;
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