Family Stucture in Victorian Architecture
By Stevie J. and Kathy C.
The structure of a house is representative of the structure of the family within it. If you were to look at the history of American houses you would see vast changes in the way we live. Many of these changes can be associated to changes in how we build houses, but the actual layout of a house is representative of the social values of that time period. The Victorian age in the late 1800’s brought about a change to the home. The architecture of the classic Victorian home reveals a formally structured family hierarchy, maintained and upheld by the use of public and private space in the home.
The Hierarchy of House and Home
The layout of the Victorian home is not only important in its use of public and private space but also in its creation of a hierarchy. There was a desire in the late 1800s to determine and maintain a place for everything, as George Augustus Sala, a journalist in the Victorian era, put it “subdivision, classification, and elaboration are certainly distinguishing characteristics of the present area of civilisation (Flanders, p. 10).” What this means for the home is that everything and everyone had a place, and this is visible in the structure. In comparison to older housing styles where rooms were multifunctional and most of the space was communal, in the Victorian home there is a rigid separation of every room.
Upon entering a Victorian house you would step into a hallway where you could immediately find the parlor, a place for the public, and near there you would find the dining room. The kitchen was most often placed in the rear of the house but no matter where it was, it was not attached to any of the common spaces such as the parlor or dining room. Since there was no desire for there to be common sleeping areas, you would find any number of small individual bedrooms in the house; this often required most houses to have a second floor. Essentially the Victorian style changed the structure of the house, altering the hallway, kitchen, and parlor most specifically.
The layout of the Victorian house was designed with a clear intention of creating a hierarchy. Those areas that were considered public areas were always considered the most important, while areas that were private were of lesser importance. It was also important those areas remain separate from the private areas. One place this can be seen is the necessity of a parlor over a bedroom. Just about everybody, no matter their station, had a parlor, even in some of the lower income homes were people would sleep in the parlor, often the beds would be moved out of the room during the day (Schlereth p. 120). As for the bedrooms, those created another kind of hierarchy. Not only did the parents’ room become separate from the children’s room but there was a desire to separate the children. First it was important that the boys and girls were separated, then, if possible, the older children should be separated from the younger.
The way the Victorian house was arranged was in response the views and beliefs of that era. In a time of biological classification and social Darwinism, people were trying to find absolute truths about the world around them. Science was the answer to our problems, that if we incorporated scientific ideas and principals into our everyday lives, things would improve. This can be seen in many aspects of society in the late 1800’s, but its appearance in the structure of the house tells us just how much the family was affected by these changes.
Public v. Private Space
One of the most distinctive aspects of the Victorian home, as mentioned earlier, is the fact that it was one of the earliest styles of home architeture that gave the family members separate spaces from each other and from the public. The hall and the parlor, in particular, were very public parts of the home and were kept very separate from private living spaces.
The floor plans of a traditional Victorian house suggest that when a guest entered the house, they would be met visually with only the hall and the stairs. All other parts of the home were off to the sides or upstairs, behind closed doors. If a guest was lucky, they would be invited from the hall into the parlor, but never would they see the bedrooms or the kitchen. For this reason, most families kept the finest of their belongings in the hall and the parlor, along with photographs and needlework that they thought best represented the home’s inhabitants to the outside world. In fact, urban parlors tended to be a tribute to the spending habits of the people (Schlereth p. 123). In other words, a large part of their purpose was to impress guests.
Such a blatantly public space implies that there must have been an equally limited private side to a Victorian household. Again, everything and everyone had its place, and the rigid structure of the home made sure that each member of the family was confined to his or her private area, unless formally presentable to the public. There was no sense of family intimacy beyond the parlor space, which was still very formal. This means that any individual chore or responsibility could not have been shared among the family members. Each individual’s personal burden remained private and separate, just like the rooms of the house. In this way, the strict family hierarchy was maintained. Limited sharing of responsibility meant limited mobility in “family rank.”
It would be very difficult to tell for sure whether the the rigitidy of the Victorian era family influenced the construction of their homes or whether the home architeture nurtured a certain type of family relationship. Either way, the Victorian style house gives us a tangible look at family living in the 1890s (as well as the rest of the era). Like life itself at the time, Victorian houses are formal and orderly, displaying their assets proudly while shielding their inner workings from the world. It was this cooperation between public and private that allowed such a decorous and structured lifestyle to function.
Bibliography
Carley, Rachel. The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture. Henry Holt & Company; New York, NY. 1994
Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home. W.W. Norton & Company; New York, NY. 2004
Schlereth, Thomas J. Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life. HarperPerennial; New York, NY. 1992
“Victoriana” Online. Accessed April 30, 2006.
The structure of a house is representative of the structure of the family within it. If you were to look at the history of American houses you would see vast changes in the way we live. Many of these changes can be associated to changes in how we build houses, but the actual layout of a house is representative of the social values of that time period. The Victorian age in the late 1800’s brought about a change to the home. The architecture of the classic Victorian home reveals a formally structured family hierarchy, maintained and upheld by the use of public and private space in the home.
The Hierarchy of House and Home
The layout of the Victorian home is not only important in its use of public and private space but also in its creation of a hierarchy. There was a desire in the late 1800s to determine and maintain a place for everything, as George Augustus Sala, a journalist in the Victorian era, put it “subdivision, classification, and elaboration are certainly distinguishing characteristics of the present area of civilisation (Flanders, p. 10).” What this means for the home is that everything and everyone had a place, and this is visible in the structure. In comparison to older housing styles where rooms were multifunctional and most of the space was communal, in the Victorian home there is a rigid separation of every room.
Upon entering a Victorian house you would step into a hallway where you could immediately find the parlor, a place for the public, and near there you would find the dining room. The kitchen was most often placed in the rear of the house but no matter where it was, it was not attached to any of the common spaces such as the parlor or dining room. Since there was no desire for there to be common sleeping areas, you would find any number of small individual bedrooms in the house; this often required most houses to have a second floor. Essentially the Victorian style changed the structure of the house, altering the hallway, kitchen, and parlor most specifically.
The layout of the Victorian house was designed with a clear intention of creating a hierarchy. Those areas that were considered public areas were always considered the most important, while areas that were private were of lesser importance. It was also important those areas remain separate from the private areas. One place this can be seen is the necessity of a parlor over a bedroom. Just about everybody, no matter their station, had a parlor, even in some of the lower income homes were people would sleep in the parlor, often the beds would be moved out of the room during the day (Schlereth p. 120). As for the bedrooms, those created another kind of hierarchy. Not only did the parents’ room become separate from the children’s room but there was a desire to separate the children. First it was important that the boys and girls were separated, then, if possible, the older children should be separated from the younger.
The way the Victorian house was arranged was in response the views and beliefs of that era. In a time of biological classification and social Darwinism, people were trying to find absolute truths about the world around them. Science was the answer to our problems, that if we incorporated scientific ideas and principals into our everyday lives, things would improve. This can be seen in many aspects of society in the late 1800’s, but its appearance in the structure of the house tells us just how much the family was affected by these changes.
Public v. Private Space
One of the most distinctive aspects of the Victorian home, as mentioned earlier, is the fact that it was one of the earliest styles of home architeture that gave the family members separate spaces from each other and from the public. The hall and the parlor, in particular, were very public parts of the home and were kept very separate from private living spaces.
The floor plans of a traditional Victorian house suggest that when a guest entered the house, they would be met visually with only the hall and the stairs. All other parts of the home were off to the sides or upstairs, behind closed doors. If a guest was lucky, they would be invited from the hall into the parlor, but never would they see the bedrooms or the kitchen. For this reason, most families kept the finest of their belongings in the hall and the parlor, along with photographs and needlework that they thought best represented the home’s inhabitants to the outside world. In fact, urban parlors tended to be a tribute to the spending habits of the people (Schlereth p. 123). In other words, a large part of their purpose was to impress guests.
Such a blatantly public space implies that there must have been an equally limited private side to a Victorian household. Again, everything and everyone had its place, and the rigid structure of the home made sure that each member of the family was confined to his or her private area, unless formally presentable to the public. There was no sense of family intimacy beyond the parlor space, which was still very formal. This means that any individual chore or responsibility could not have been shared among the family members. Each individual’s personal burden remained private and separate, just like the rooms of the house. In this way, the strict family hierarchy was maintained. Limited sharing of responsibility meant limited mobility in “family rank.”
It would be very difficult to tell for sure whether the the rigitidy of the Victorian era family influenced the construction of their homes or whether the home architeture nurtured a certain type of family relationship. Either way, the Victorian style house gives us a tangible look at family living in the 1890s (as well as the rest of the era). Like life itself at the time, Victorian houses are formal and orderly, displaying their assets proudly while shielding their inner workings from the world. It was this cooperation between public and private that allowed such a decorous and structured lifestyle to function.
Bibliography
Carley, Rachel. The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture. Henry Holt & Company; New York, NY. 1994
Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home. W.W. Norton & Company; New York, NY. 2004
Schlereth, Thomas J. Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life. HarperPerennial; New York, NY. 1992
“Victoriana” Online. Accessed April 30, 2006.
posted by Leslie Madsen-Brooks at 4:55 PM
10 Comments:
This is a really neat essay because it illustrates how the physical space/object conveys ideas and values such as family hierarchy and separation of public and private spheres. I also think it is interesting how people use their homes as a means of showing their compliance to societal values of control, and displaying that they too possess what America says they should. An example of this is the parlor, which you mention all families had, including people of lower class. Even if a person had to sleep in the parlor instead of having a bedroom they wanted to make sure that their Victorian home included such an essential room.
The Victorian Home represents a sort of prosperity that existed during the time. It was mentioned in the essay that prior to this, there were smaller more communal homes, a stark contrast from the victorian homes. The family life, however, must have suffered or changed as a result of the Victorian home due to the separation that existed because of the larger home and secluded nature of independent rooms.
I would say that the thing that strikes me the most is the idea that even poorer people (or people living in urbanized housing) were arranging their homes in the Victorian style which could only be properly done in a wealthier home. The situation is not unlike to day with our worship of celebrity lifestyles from the way we wear our clothes, to the way we design our homes by watching "cribs" or Entertainment Tonight.
To respond to Nicole, I wonder what the relationship between family proximity and family relations actually is. Today we live in closer quarters than say the Victorian middle class did, yet some would argue that the family is "falling apart." Just a thought.
I find the relationship between the structure of the house and the hierarchy incredibly interesting. I have always envisioned the Victorian home as the perfect, beautifully decorated house, only to realize that beyond the beauty of the parlor the home has no warmth. It would be interesting to see the interaction among family members, as I wonder why every room is so spaced out?
The display of objects that have importance to outsiders by a family is a subject that i have had some time to think in depth about. Is it just a correlation that at this period the home stoped having the duel role of home and place of buisness? Or is it that because of this changing role, that the privacy that was beforehand unknown was now celeberated along with the allowance of recreational free space in the parlor?
Architecture can serve as a means to provide us with an inside view of the Victorian era and a deeper understanding of the way of life in American life. Both,Stevie J. and Kathy C, provide and analyze such ways of life. For example, division and creation in hierachies was firmly justified through the likes of science e.g. Social Darwinism. In order to keep with these values,it seems like there was a necessity to have a parlor to not only receive and entertain guests but to give the impression that the Hosts are doing financially well. Also, it can be noted that from viewing the designs of the house, it seems like the guests are firmly controlled in th sense that they can only go in a few places due to walkways. The second floor serves as a way to prevent guests from entering the private lives of their guests. Instead, guests are only allowed to view the gilded life of the host.
I think the mentality that the people in the 1890s, are in a lot of ways similar to the mentality we share today. We are so concerned about our appearences to other people that maybe our values are compromised. Many of you mentioned that people displayed all their most extravagant posessions in the parlor, on display to the public, while the personal aspects of life are hidden behind closed doors. I think this internalization of problems and keeping secrets, more than the lack of interaction between family members, led to the deterioration of the family ideal. Esteem seemed really important to the people in the 1890s and we are still very much the same way today.
Besides spatial organization, I also think ornamentation of Victorian era homes speaks loudly of those that inhabit it. While homes before the Victorian era certainly had some aesthetic considerations, it is not until the Victorian era that such an emphasis is placed on it. While function is dealt with on the interior, the exterior of the Victorian home tends to speak of the philosophies of the Victorian people. For the most part, the exterior ornamentation is a rearrangement of classical architectural elements such as pediments, cornices, columns, etc into an architectural language that we classify as Victorian. It's basically just a translation of classical Greek philosophy, such as order, placement, canons, and the ideal form. I think it's interesting to see how similar these ancient Greek ideals are to Victorian thinking.
The family structure where each individual family lives within its own walls still holds true today... each family with its public sphere of influence through work school etc and also the private sphere where things may go on behind closed doors. Its interesting that the Victorian homes were so rigid in nature because it seems that middle and upper classes at the time could also be percieved as rigid and also stingy because in many ways women and children were confined to very specific roles.
Great post. I've never acknowledge the social implications the structure of a room in a household has. The public and private spheres speak to the social structure of a community, and a society. This idea of a room in a building, let alone a home, is probably easier to see in a corporate building, given theres the 'bosses' office in the highest floor, opposed to the employees designated cubicles on the first floor. Having said the following, it leaves us to brainstorm as to what our modern day design says about us and our fellow neighbor in terms of social economic class and hierarchy.
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