2 - The Culture of the Wives: Life in the British Isles

Summary

As Already Noted, Soldiers’ Wives in the first half of the nineteenth century were a lightning rod for criticism. Middle- and upper-class commentators frequently thought them rowdy, ignorant, prone to drunkenness, lacking necessary homemaking skills, and all too likely to fall into prostitution in the absence of their husbands. In short, as an article in the Morning Chronicle put it, they were a curse, contaminating all those around them. With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, this view began to jostle uncomfortably with a second understanding: that soldiers’ wives were passive victims who simply could not cope in the absence of the patriarchal head of the family. While these stereotypes oscillated uncomfortably in the public mind during the second half of the nineteenth century, the extent to which either of them was borne out in reality is debatable. These women, moreover, had to negotiate the expectations and demands of two sets of authority: like their husbands they had to obey the regulations and orders of the army and its officers, but they were also wives in a society which expected men to head their households, to exercise authority over their spouses, and to provide for them. The authority soldiers could exert over their wives was diminished, however, by several factors. First, soldiers were often physically absent from their families, not just on extended service elsewhere, but also in the course of daily life. They were regularly not available to resolve quotidian problems and crises. Second, these men did not provide many of the basic necessities of life for their families; the army did. Housing in barracks, beds and bedding, food rations (in some circumstances), medical care (for part of the century) and clothing for men were all provided by the army, although it did deduct from soldiers’ pay for some of these benefits. In short, the army partially usurped the husband's role of provider for his family, although some soldiers at least saw the benefits on offer as part of the wages they earned, as will be seen. Third, soldiers’ very low pay and the many deductions to which it was subject also helped to weaken the husbands’ role of provider and forced army wives to take paid employment in order for the family to achieve subsistence.