HOW TO SECURE YOUR HUSBANDS ESTEEM - ACCOUNTING AND PRIVATE PATRIARCHY IN THE BRITISH MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSEHOLD DURING THE 19TH-CENTURY

Accounting featured prominently in the everyday life and culture of th e middle class family in Britain during the nineteenth century. The in creasing implementation of accounting techniques in the bourgeois home is considered here in the context of the rationalisation of the house hold, the threat of insolvency, the prevailing ideology of domesticity , the employment of domestic labour and contemporary systems of househ old purchasing. It is shown that domestic accounting systems were foun ded on stewardship and hierarchical accountability and thereby contrib uted to the operation of masculine domination in the middle class fami ly. Accounting was an instrument for restraining female consumption an d containing women in domestic roles. Although women were prescribed a ccounting functions in the ''invisible'' private domain they were excl uded from the ''public'' occupation of accountant in Victorian Britain . (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.