Labours of love? Gift labour, women, and exchange in mid-nineteenth century Britain

By using one family, the Welsh-Carlyles, this essay traces how material culture, an expanded sense of Maussian gift exchange, and conceptions of the Victorian middle-class world came together in the making and giving of dress gifts to reinscribe or challenge discourses around prevailing gendered and classed norms. An interrogation of female makers of fashion reveals a new category of labour outside of the capitalist market, gift labour; the impacts of this new system of labour reveal how women in mid-nineteenth century Britain mobilized cultural ideas about femininity and expectations of gendered labour to frame their emotional lives and interpersonal relationships around gifted clothing.