20世紀初期イングランドの労働者の生活 : 2編の伝記による都市と農村の事例

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Quantitative informations on the conditions of the life of labourers can be given through averages and indices. But what they show are abstract and conceptually made up life of labourers. Here is made an attempt to gain more specific aspects of family lives of rural and urban labourers who lived at the lowest part of the agricultural and industrial society in England in the early twentieth century through two biographies : Winifred : A Wiltshire Working Girl by Sylvia Marlow (1991) and Billy Boy, the Story of a Lancashire Weaver's Son by William Woodruff (1993). Comparison of family life is made between that of an agricultural labourer and that of a cotton factory weaver, in terms of income, expenditure, diet, dwelling, schooling and pleasure, and class consciousness. It is revealed that their lives either in the country or in the city were much poorer than we Japanese presume. But also it is shown that poor as they were, they may have known how to enjoy life better than the contemporary Japanese counterparts did. The members of both of the families knew clealy that there were "them" and "us" in their society, but they were not inclined to upset "them" by violent revolution. Marx, as Eric Hobsbawm says, may not have known about what English proletariat really were.
城西大学の論文
2001-03-24