Rural Women and Urban Extravagance in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

This essay discusses two exhibitions that romanticised the rural Celtic fringes of Britain for consumption in London, the ‘metropolis of the world’. Alice Hart's reconstructed Donegal Village at the Irish Exhibition (1888), organised under the auspices of the Donegal Industrial Fund, assuaged the reality of poverty in the Congested Districts; the Duchess of Sutherland's faux Highland cottage at the Victorian Era Exhibition (1897), organised by Scottish Home Industries, suggested hunting, fishing and scenic views rather than land reform and emigration. While the differences between the organisations inform the parts they played in exhibitions, they clearly and precisely converge in one respect: both advertised, glorified and sold the rural when existence in Donegal and in the Highlands was financially precarious and disappearing. They also share another characteristic: the female patrons, their associations and the female workers have ironically disappeared from historical writings while still visible are the colonised representations of exhibitions in which they participated. This essay seeks to recollect the historical moment at which the two associations flourished, examine how each group performed its self-appointed task and analyse their places as urban enthusiasts of the rural experience.