Bristol University Press
5 The Popular Evangelical Narrative of Care and Some Modern Analogues
Abstract
This chapter examines the ‘prize’ books distributed to working-class children in more detail, particularly bestsellers by Hesba Stretton and Silas Hocking, including a discussion of their reception by erudite critics as well as their popular readership. These novels were often the only books in working-class homes in the industrial cities up to the time of the Second World War, and they were more influential in perpetuating the gendered nature of care than the gendered double standard of sexual morality. The chapter traces the persistence of similar social reform messages in the popular culture of today’s secular Britain, now shorn of any evangelical religious content. It argues that the role of religious institutions in patrolling the borders of respectability, their internecine war about sexuality and the scandal of clerical abuse have turned churches into the hypocritical villains of this popular culture. The final examples come from contemporary performance poetry.
Abstract
This chapter examines the ‘prize’ books distributed to working-class children in more detail, particularly bestsellers by Hesba Stretton and Silas Hocking, including a discussion of their reception by erudite critics as well as their popular readership. These novels were often the only books in working-class homes in the industrial cities up to the time of the Second World War, and they were more influential in perpetuating the gendered nature of care than the gendered double standard of sexual morality. The chapter traces the persistence of similar social reform messages in the popular culture of today’s secular Britain, now shorn of any evangelical religious content. It argues that the role of religious institutions in patrolling the borders of respectability, their internecine war about sexuality and the scandal of clerical abuse have turned churches into the hypocritical villains of this popular culture. The final examples come from contemporary performance poetry.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- About the Author vi
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction: Apologia and Recollection 1
- Secularization and the Second Great Commandment 23
- Care for Others, Secularization and Britain’s New Identity Tribes 43
- Caring, Gender and Secularization: The ‘Feminization of Piety’ and Its Legacy 67
- The Popular Evangelical Narrative of Care and Some Modern Analogues 85
- Feminism and the Gendering of Care 105
- The Care Crisis 130
- Rethinking Capitalism, the Future of Work and the Role of Care 147
- Notes 171
- References 177
- Index 194
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- About the Author vi
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction: Apologia and Recollection 1
- Secularization and the Second Great Commandment 23
- Care for Others, Secularization and Britain’s New Identity Tribes 43
- Caring, Gender and Secularization: The ‘Feminization of Piety’ and Its Legacy 67
- The Popular Evangelical Narrative of Care and Some Modern Analogues 85
- Feminism and the Gendering of Care 105
- The Care Crisis 130
- Rethinking Capitalism, the Future of Work and the Role of Care 147
- Notes 171
- References 177
- Index 194
