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(First published at The Epic Rat)
There’s a great book by B. Seebohm Rowntree called Poverty that I read while researching my PhD thesis. It’s definitely not a light read, but today I’m going to discuss one of its central revelations: the idea that poverty is a cycle, rather than a fixed condition. Working families in the nineteenth century went through five distinct stages, says Rowntree. Here’s how it works:
1. A girl is born into poverty. This lasts through early childhood, until she and her siblings are old enough to earn money and contribute to the family income (which is young! See my post about Extreme Child Labour at Books by Their Cover).
2. When she’s a bit older, she works while living at home. She’ll earn more than she needs to cover her share of the rent and food, and this is her chance to save some money. She gets married and uses her savings to rent and furnish a home of her own.
3. When her savings are gone, she and her husband will again sink into poverty, which lasts until their own children are able to start work. This time period fluctuates according to how many children they have.
4. When the children are earning money and living at home, she experiences another period of ease, with enough to eat and perhaps a chance to save a little.
5. When the children leave home and she is too old to work, she sinks back into poverty because she’s never earned enough to set aside money for her old age.
This sounds melodramatic, but in fact it was the condition of millions in Victorian England. What’s astonishing is how hard these poor people worked to try to keep body and soul together. It’s a long way from the glamorous dresses and elegant ballrooms we often picture when we think of the Victorian age, but this was the experience of more people than not. That’s why, in my novel The Agency: A Spy in the House, I tried to balance scenes of affluent high life with those of urban grit. The two coexist all the time, and it’s one of the jobs of a novelist to show you the underside.
