VICTORIAN FATHERHOOD IN AMERICAN GENRE PAINTING
VICTORIAN FATHERHOOD IN AMERICAN GENRE PAINTING

Summary/Abstract: "From the late 18th century onwards, a series of marked changes appeared in the US, in politics, economics, and social and cultural life which led to a set of shifts in gender roles. Deeply influencing family life as well, these shifts also appeared in the concept of motherhood and, consequently, of fatherhood, too. Recent research on the Victorian period has revealed that fatherhood as actually lived was in fact quite different from the stereotypical descriptions commonly conveyed in literature up to the late 1980s. This paper proposes to contribute to this process of re-assessment by mapping the ways fatherhood was depicted in contemporary genre painting. "[...]

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