Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to offer some historical context to research
that documents the sense of a lack of entitlement to leisure that middle-class
white women have and to the many studies that have identified a lack of leisure
opportunity in the lives of women burdened with domestic responsibilities. The
data for this research was collected from letters, diaries and other documents
written by women and men of colonial New South Wales. Evidence is presented
that suggests both genteel (middle-class) and plebeian (working-class) women
of the early colonial period in New South Wales had relatively good access to
leisure, but that this access appears to have been somewhat eroded over the
ensuing decades of the Victorian era with the rise of evangelical values and the
so-called 'domestic revolution'. These findings demonstrate that a lack of leisure
is not endemic to the condition of womanhood. The contemporary 'problem' of
middle-class white women's leisure in Australia has roots in the Industrial and
French revolutions and the Protestant work ethic. Each played a part in
reshaping middle-class ideals of femininity in Britain that were transported in
good order to Australia in the Victorian era. Despite two significant waves of
feminism and numerous strategies used by women collectively and individually
to enlarge their leisure space, the 'problem' which emerged in the midnineteenth
century is still visible in the twenty-first century.
