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The De-moralization Of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values
As the debate over values grows ever more divisive, one of the most eminent historians of the Victorian era reminds readers that values are no substitute for virtues--and that the Victorian considered hard work, thrift, respectability, and charity virtues essential to a worthwhile life. "An elegant, literate defense of ninteenth-century English mores and morals."--New York.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
About the author
Gertrude Himmelfarb
48 books41 followersGertrude Himmelfarb, also known as Bea Kristol, was an American historian. She was a leader and conservative interpretations of history and historiography. She wrote extensively on intellectual history, with a focus on Britain and the Victorian era, as well as on contemporary society and culture.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 24, 2016
This is a very important book. The myth of the sexual revolution, is that the Victorians sowed the seeds of all our uptightness and repressed character, and that the 1960s liberated us from all that.
The reason why this book is important is that Himmelfarb launches a defence of the Victorians, aimed at completely dispelling that myth.
The Victorians, as recounted here, were people who were driven by a strong sense of principle and duty, of morality rather than vapid "values".
This book is vital, because it contains an arsenal of information to counter the myths concerning the 19th century. Rather we should look back to the Victorian era as a period from which we can learn a great deal, and also how to sincerely address the problems of a given age.
The reason why this book is important is that Himmelfarb launches a defence of the Victorians, aimed at completely dispelling that myth.
The Victorians, as recounted here, were people who were driven by a strong sense of principle and duty, of morality rather than vapid "values".
This book is vital, because it contains an arsenal of information to counter the myths concerning the 19th century. Rather we should look back to the Victorian era as a period from which we can learn a great deal, and also how to sincerely address the problems of a given age.
October 1, 2022
The book is mostly about the moral life of Victorian England. For my purposes, there’s too much detail.
I like mainly the overarching theme to this book. Back then, there was a certain sense of propriety – standards of proper behavior – that had an enduring if not eternal quality about them. Increasingly in the post Victorian era, this kind of moral presence waned. For the author, it was replaced by “values,” which had a distinct subjectivism and relativeness, as in anything an individual might like (“value”). This, for her, becomes “The Demoralization of Society.”
Himmelfarb acknowledges that to a significant degree there’s a cultural- and age-boundedness to Victorian morals. She even makes a distinction between the overly prescriptiveness of the early Victorian period and the more liberalized, tolerant morals of the later Victorian period. She is not advocating a return to the Victorian Age. Rather, she would like to see the re-emergence of a sense of what is and what is not proper for society today.
As to what this might be, Himmelfarb focuses on personal responsibility that goes hand in hand with demands for personal rights, and she is against government paternalism, of the Orwellian, Big Brother kind, about what is and is not appropriate for personal and public behavior. (It is especially interesting that this 1994 book highlights the problem with “woke” politics that was current even then).
Early on in her book, she says that Victorians were not about cruelty, misery, squalor and ignorance – the common charges of the Victorian age. Well, maybe not explicitly, goal wise, that way, but there did seem to be hefty collateral damage along that line, and an unhealthy indifference to it as “the price of doing business.” The larger point is that Victorian “morals” were part of the colonial era when standards about what was and what was not proper were highly ethno- and class-centric in their judgments.
I also think her criticism of Nietzsche missed an important point – a call to break the bondage to morals and belief systems that pinned humans down and turned them into other-directed beings. But tossing out Victorian morals leads in her mind to the value-free, nihilistic relativism that she believes pervades our culture today in academia, in thought leaders, and in government speak, where no one, putatively, judges another for what they believe.
I say “putatively” because value judgements are only in theory relative and nihilistic. In reality, standards of “proper” behavior pervade today's society and they are highly moralistic and judgmental. They are everywhere and they are heavily tribal with pressures to conform and substantial penalties for violation. That’s really her point about “woke” politics coming from the left. It’s also the point about the cultural right and family values. Both political spectrums have a significant religiosity about them, with strong opinions about right and wrong. And then there’s the silent stuff – the prohibitions about probing too much into one’s personal life because it breaks through the masks people wear to cover who they really are. Then you get superficial pleasantries, not genuineness. Or, there’s the deportment issue. For example, real men don’t reveal themselves, except for anger, which is ok because it presents strength. Stoic life is the ideal. Or, the rural-urban cultural divide where each looks on the other as unsophisticated or silly. Where is our inner Nietzsche – to free ourselves of all of this and to be tolerant ourselves?
What is “proper” is a loaded question. Himmelfarb is about such things as restraint, duty, persistence and grace. Translate that for the commoners though and that could mean for one to know one’s place, to accept one’s position, to just do one’s job without complaint. By default, it’s convenient hierarchy and elitism, the pecking order of chickens. More fundamentally, I think, what is proper has a strong tint of what is “enduring and eternal,” i.e., Plato’s objective realm, which, per Nietzsche, doesn’t exist.
I think “proper” reflects that balance point that divides the self from the other. It is that line that Himmelfarb sort of draws with her comment about personal responsibility counter that balances demands for personal rights. Too much of either is bad, for the other or for the self. It’s the golden rule concept, as variously expressed across the ages and across the globe. The rest is detail, a weighing of one side or the other – to push forward when there’s need, out of respect for the self; or, to restrain oneself out of respect for the other’s interest. It certainly is not a nitpicking of dos and don’ts by religious nutcases, Boston Brahmins, or the old school marm who is heavy handed with the ruler.
I like mainly the overarching theme to this book. Back then, there was a certain sense of propriety – standards of proper behavior – that had an enduring if not eternal quality about them. Increasingly in the post Victorian era, this kind of moral presence waned. For the author, it was replaced by “values,” which had a distinct subjectivism and relativeness, as in anything an individual might like (“value”). This, for her, becomes “The Demoralization of Society.”
Himmelfarb acknowledges that to a significant degree there’s a cultural- and age-boundedness to Victorian morals. She even makes a distinction between the overly prescriptiveness of the early Victorian period and the more liberalized, tolerant morals of the later Victorian period. She is not advocating a return to the Victorian Age. Rather, she would like to see the re-emergence of a sense of what is and what is not proper for society today.
As to what this might be, Himmelfarb focuses on personal responsibility that goes hand in hand with demands for personal rights, and she is against government paternalism, of the Orwellian, Big Brother kind, about what is and is not appropriate for personal and public behavior. (It is especially interesting that this 1994 book highlights the problem with “woke” politics that was current even then).
Early on in her book, she says that Victorians were not about cruelty, misery, squalor and ignorance – the common charges of the Victorian age. Well, maybe not explicitly, goal wise, that way, but there did seem to be hefty collateral damage along that line, and an unhealthy indifference to it as “the price of doing business.” The larger point is that Victorian “morals” were part of the colonial era when standards about what was and what was not proper were highly ethno- and class-centric in their judgments.
I also think her criticism of Nietzsche missed an important point – a call to break the bondage to morals and belief systems that pinned humans down and turned them into other-directed beings. But tossing out Victorian morals leads in her mind to the value-free, nihilistic relativism that she believes pervades our culture today in academia, in thought leaders, and in government speak, where no one, putatively, judges another for what they believe.
I say “putatively” because value judgements are only in theory relative and nihilistic. In reality, standards of “proper” behavior pervade today's society and they are highly moralistic and judgmental. They are everywhere and they are heavily tribal with pressures to conform and substantial penalties for violation. That’s really her point about “woke” politics coming from the left. It’s also the point about the cultural right and family values. Both political spectrums have a significant religiosity about them, with strong opinions about right and wrong. And then there’s the silent stuff – the prohibitions about probing too much into one’s personal life because it breaks through the masks people wear to cover who they really are. Then you get superficial pleasantries, not genuineness. Or, there’s the deportment issue. For example, real men don’t reveal themselves, except for anger, which is ok because it presents strength. Stoic life is the ideal. Or, the rural-urban cultural divide where each looks on the other as unsophisticated or silly. Where is our inner Nietzsche – to free ourselves of all of this and to be tolerant ourselves?
What is “proper” is a loaded question. Himmelfarb is about such things as restraint, duty, persistence and grace. Translate that for the commoners though and that could mean for one to know one’s place, to accept one’s position, to just do one’s job without complaint. By default, it’s convenient hierarchy and elitism, the pecking order of chickens. More fundamentally, I think, what is proper has a strong tint of what is “enduring and eternal,” i.e., Plato’s objective realm, which, per Nietzsche, doesn’t exist.
I think “proper” reflects that balance point that divides the self from the other. It is that line that Himmelfarb sort of draws with her comment about personal responsibility counter that balances demands for personal rights. Too much of either is bad, for the other or for the self. It’s the golden rule concept, as variously expressed across the ages and across the globe. The rest is detail, a weighing of one side or the other – to push forward when there’s need, out of respect for the self; or, to restrain oneself out of respect for the other’s interest. It certainly is not a nitpicking of dos and don’ts by religious nutcases, Boston Brahmins, or the old school marm who is heavy handed with the ruler.
March 30, 2016
- (from the jacket) 'Gertrude Himmelfarb, like so many Americans, is appalled by crime, drug addiction, illiteracy, juvenile delinquency, illegitimacy, and welfare dependency. The solution she proposes "...is a return to Victorian 'virtues'..." "...respectability, self-help, philanthropy, discipline, cooperation, cleanliness, obedience, and orderliness. Their commitment to these qualities amounted to a surrogate religion...a moral code that, cutting across class lines, governed both public and private lives." She argues that when politicians, teachers, and journalists today bemoan the absence of values, the term is so relative and subjective so as to be meaningless. What is needed is a re-moralization of our society. A society-wide adoption of the virtue of moral responsibility."
November 26, 2007
The premise is lucidly written but not cogently argued. I am not convinced that our society is one of degenerates (or one currently spiraling into moral decay). The author thinks Victorianism is the best shit that ever arrived on Earth. She ranks it higher than sliced bread. She denigrates victims of \"date rape,\" and extols Jewish Victorians.
I think she's a conservative wench.
Who can write.
I think she's a conservative wench.
Who can write.
October 12, 2023
A curious history book - each chapter stands alone as an analysis of how Victorians thought about morality in different contexts: Good Manners, Domestic Life, Feminism, Poverty, Capitalism, the London Jewry, and Sexual Liberation. The final two chapters aim to connect the book to the modern day but since that modern day was in 1995 its arguments seem bland.
Main Takeaways:
- There were some interesting odd historical facts recorded below. Himmelfarb can tell a good story and her historical research is impeccable. She wants us to learn from the Victorians and overcome our prejudices against them.
- Victorian society seems to have had so much vigour and a large part of this vigour was devoted to practising Victorian virtues.
- Much of Victorian morality seems to be a secularised Christian morality; Nietzsche was infuriated by the logical inconsistency of it. Marxist Victorians, feminist Victorians, anti-feminist Victorians, aesthete Victorians, they were all, far more than they would have imagined, men and women of their time: Victorians.
Here are my notes for my own record:
8 - The elevation of the family over the state is a specifically Christian idea. Plato believed in sharing women and children. Even Aristotle writes more about the family for the purpose of the well-ordered state than for the family itself.
10 - It was Nietzsche in the 1880’s who popularised the term ‘values’ as moral beliefs. He did this deliberately: his ‘transvaluation of values’ was to be the final revolution against classical and Christian virtues. If God is dead and there is no good and evil then there can be no vices and virtues only values, subjective and relative.
11 - Near the end of his life sociologist Max Weber said, “Our intellectual universe has largely been formed by Marx and Nietzsche.”
12 - “Victorian Virtues were neither the Classical nor the Christian virtues; they were more domesticated than the former and more secular than the latter.”
Manners and Morals
25 - fascinating section on Gladstone’s diary revealing his struggles with masturbation for which he practised self-flagellation. He was possibly inspired in this by Newman whom he admired. The diary uses whip symbols or little x’s to signify penance and impurity respectively.
26 - “For many Victorians, the loss of religious faith inspired a renewed and heightened moral zeal.”
27 - In the census of 1851 50% of those who could go to church the Sunday before the census had done so and this was taken as evidence of a decline in religious practice.
33 - It was John Wesley who coined the motto ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’
39 - In under 50 years the Victorians reduced crime by 50%
47 - Thackeray: “What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour virgin; to have the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and the love of your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with constancy; and through evil or good to maintain truth always?”
Domestic Life
63 - An alternative view of women’s liberation from Frederic Harrison: “Our true ideal of the emancipation of Woman is to enlarge in all things the spiritual, moral, affective influence of Woman; to withdraw her more and more from the exhaustion, the contamination, the vulgarity of mill-work and professional work; to make here more and more the free, cherished mistress of the home, more and more the intellectual, moral and spiritual genius of man’s life.”
If the average Victorian could see modern society what would he think? That women have traded moral and spiritual power for economic and political power?
Himmelfarb records interviews with Victorian women which found they were skeptical of working outside the home because women are far more likely to be exploited and mistreated by their employers than their husbands. They also consistently reported that marriage and family was the greatest source of fulfilment in their lives.
Himmelfarb documents historical studies which contradict some modern stereotypes of the Victorians:
i) women almost always controlled the household finances
ii) Many women worked outside the home though they generally reported preferring not to do this
iii) While there was stigma around unwed motherhood, unwed mothers did not report being deliberately ill-treated and were normally cared for in the family home.
Of a study done of people born in the Victorian age “many of the respondents spoke nostalgically of that earlier time when life was more rigorous and restrictive but also, they thought in retrospect, more orderly and satisfactory."
83 - Victorian social worker Helen Bosanquet “In reference to the outside world, man has power and woman ‘influence’. Within the home woman has the active power and man ‘influence’.”
87 - “Victorian poets and preachers surely over-romanticised the family, but they did not overemphasise it. ‘Family values’ were indeed at the heart of Victorian culture and society.”
Feminism
88 - To the Victorians “‘reformer’ was as much a profession, and a respectable one, as doctor, lawyer, writer, or politician.”
90 - Before the Reform Act of 1832 some women actually had the vote since franchise varied from locality to locality.
92 - Francis Bacon “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune”
99 - Florence Nightingale told John Stuart Mills that she didn’t think suffrage was important. Other significant women who opposed it: Beatrix Potter, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Christina Rossetti.
101 - Beatrix Potter on the position of women in society: “if women are to compete with men, to struggle to become wealth producers and energetic citizens, to vie with men in acquisition of riches, power or learning, then I believe they will harden and narrow themselves, degrade the standard of life of the men they try to supplant, and fail to stimulate and inspire their brother workers to a higher level of effort. And above all, to succeed int he struggle, they must forego motherhood, even if, in training themselves for the prize fight, they do not incapacitate themselves for child-bearing. And what shall we gain? Surely it is enough to have half the human race straining every nerve to outrun their fellows in the race for subsistence or power? Surely we need some human beings who will watch and pray, who will observe and inspire, and, above all, who will guard and love all who are weak, unfit, or distressed? Is there not a special service of woman, as there is a special service of man?”
107 - “Throughout the 19th century, more novels were published by women writers (under their own names) than by men.”
111 - The Divorce Act of 1857 removed divorce from the consideration of the church and made it a civil action.
Poverty
Himmelfarb describes the interesting saga of the Victorians trying to make the workhouses worse because the working classes complained that they would be better off in the workhouse than outside of it. Dickens and other Victorian writers then criticised this policy, which had not even been put into effect in many areas, so that as the workhouses continually improved throughout the Victorian era, fictional depictions of them grew worse.
Jewry
This chapter was interesting but I couldn’t see anything useful in it. Although I was intrigued by the expression Beatrix Potter quotes as popular: “every country has the Jew it deserves.”
New Men and New Women
188 - Nietzsche “when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet” but the English: “They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality.”
207 - John Stuart Mill, who didn’t live to see the New Men and Women, predicted that sexuality would increasingly come under the control of the reason as civilisation advanced.
Himmelfarb notes that there was overlap between Victorian feminists and the ‘sexually liberated’ New Women but that they were two distinct groups: the feminists campaigned for specific causes such as for and against suffrage, opposing the de facto legalisation of prostitution, for and against birth control, etc. The New Women did not have any political agenda and did not seek to promote their views to the rest of society - they supported independence from marriage and practised free love.
214 - The counter-culture of Victorian morality was made up of aesthetes. Curiously however, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Lord Douglas, and many associated with the fin de siecle movement, including John Gray (assumed to be the model for Dorian Gray) later converted to Catholicism.
219 - “Late-Victorian England produced not only the writers associated with the fin de siecle but a host of others who were not: Henry James, George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Bridges, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle, A.E. Hausman. And there were other, younger writers who were just beginning to make their name: John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton.” What a list!
219 - “New Women novels [of which Himmelfarb describes a few] had an ambiguous effect, portraying the liberated woman in such a way as to make her seem sympathetic, and even heroic, but also tragic, condemned to loneliness, betrayal, and death.” as indeed so may of the the New Women actually were. Himmelfarb recounts the unhappy life and suicide of Marx’s daughter.
220 - “This was as fertile a period in ideas and institutions as any in modern English history [as any in history in fact] spawning a variety of socialist organisations and philanthropic societies, research and scientific enterprises, education and reform movements, philosophical and scientific theories. And these new ideas and institutions supported and reinforced most of the traditional Victorian values, even when they purposed to reform society."
Epilogue
222 - In the Victorian era out-of-wedlock births were around 5% in England, 4% in London, 33% in Paris, 46% in Stockholm, 49% in Vienna. Victorianism was an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. In England the rate rose by a few percent during the wars but remained around 5% until 1960 when it started it’s dramatic rise.
226 - English crime rates increased forty-fold between 1901 and 1992.
236 - Himmelfarb reminds us how quickly society’s morality can change: In 1965 69% of women and 65% of men under 30 said premarital sex was always or almost always wrong. By 1972 the figures were 24% and 21%. How could things change so quickly in just 7 years?
246 - This feels like something that would be written today but it came out in the 90’s: “more and more conservatives are returning to an older Burkean tradition, which appreciates the material advantages of a free-market economy (Edmund Burke himself was a disciple of Adam Smith) but also recognises that such an economy does not automatically produce the moral and social goods that they value.”
247 - Himmelfarb argues it’s unjust to use ‘Thatcherism’ to describe a belief in free-markets and ignoring morality when Mrs Thatcher was criticised for promoting ‘Victorian virtues’.
Main Takeaways:
- There were some interesting odd historical facts recorded below. Himmelfarb can tell a good story and her historical research is impeccable. She wants us to learn from the Victorians and overcome our prejudices against them.
- Victorian society seems to have had so much vigour and a large part of this vigour was devoted to practising Victorian virtues.
- Much of Victorian morality seems to be a secularised Christian morality; Nietzsche was infuriated by the logical inconsistency of it. Marxist Victorians, feminist Victorians, anti-feminist Victorians, aesthete Victorians, they were all, far more than they would have imagined, men and women of their time: Victorians.
Here are my notes for my own record:
8 - The elevation of the family over the state is a specifically Christian idea. Plato believed in sharing women and children. Even Aristotle writes more about the family for the purpose of the well-ordered state than for the family itself.
10 - It was Nietzsche in the 1880’s who popularised the term ‘values’ as moral beliefs. He did this deliberately: his ‘transvaluation of values’ was to be the final revolution against classical and Christian virtues. If God is dead and there is no good and evil then there can be no vices and virtues only values, subjective and relative.
11 - Near the end of his life sociologist Max Weber said, “Our intellectual universe has largely been formed by Marx and Nietzsche.”
12 - “Victorian Virtues were neither the Classical nor the Christian virtues; they were more domesticated than the former and more secular than the latter.”
Manners and Morals
25 - fascinating section on Gladstone’s diary revealing his struggles with masturbation for which he practised self-flagellation. He was possibly inspired in this by Newman whom he admired. The diary uses whip symbols or little x’s to signify penance and impurity respectively.
26 - “For many Victorians, the loss of religious faith inspired a renewed and heightened moral zeal.”
27 - In the census of 1851 50% of those who could go to church the Sunday before the census had done so and this was taken as evidence of a decline in religious practice.
33 - It was John Wesley who coined the motto ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’
39 - In under 50 years the Victorians reduced crime by 50%
47 - Thackeray: “What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour virgin; to have the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and the love of your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with constancy; and through evil or good to maintain truth always?”
Domestic Life
63 - An alternative view of women’s liberation from Frederic Harrison: “Our true ideal of the emancipation of Woman is to enlarge in all things the spiritual, moral, affective influence of Woman; to withdraw her more and more from the exhaustion, the contamination, the vulgarity of mill-work and professional work; to make here more and more the free, cherished mistress of the home, more and more the intellectual, moral and spiritual genius of man’s life.”
If the average Victorian could see modern society what would he think? That women have traded moral and spiritual power for economic and political power?
Himmelfarb records interviews with Victorian women which found they were skeptical of working outside the home because women are far more likely to be exploited and mistreated by their employers than their husbands. They also consistently reported that marriage and family was the greatest source of fulfilment in their lives.
Himmelfarb documents historical studies which contradict some modern stereotypes of the Victorians:
i) women almost always controlled the household finances
ii) Many women worked outside the home though they generally reported preferring not to do this
iii) While there was stigma around unwed motherhood, unwed mothers did not report being deliberately ill-treated and were normally cared for in the family home.
Of a study done of people born in the Victorian age “many of the respondents spoke nostalgically of that earlier time when life was more rigorous and restrictive but also, they thought in retrospect, more orderly and satisfactory."
83 - Victorian social worker Helen Bosanquet “In reference to the outside world, man has power and woman ‘influence’. Within the home woman has the active power and man ‘influence’.”
87 - “Victorian poets and preachers surely over-romanticised the family, but they did not overemphasise it. ‘Family values’ were indeed at the heart of Victorian culture and society.”
Feminism
88 - To the Victorians “‘reformer’ was as much a profession, and a respectable one, as doctor, lawyer, writer, or politician.”
90 - Before the Reform Act of 1832 some women actually had the vote since franchise varied from locality to locality.
92 - Francis Bacon “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune”
99 - Florence Nightingale told John Stuart Mills that she didn’t think suffrage was important. Other significant women who opposed it: Beatrix Potter, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Christina Rossetti.
101 - Beatrix Potter on the position of women in society: “if women are to compete with men, to struggle to become wealth producers and energetic citizens, to vie with men in acquisition of riches, power or learning, then I believe they will harden and narrow themselves, degrade the standard of life of the men they try to supplant, and fail to stimulate and inspire their brother workers to a higher level of effort. And above all, to succeed int he struggle, they must forego motherhood, even if, in training themselves for the prize fight, they do not incapacitate themselves for child-bearing. And what shall we gain? Surely it is enough to have half the human race straining every nerve to outrun their fellows in the race for subsistence or power? Surely we need some human beings who will watch and pray, who will observe and inspire, and, above all, who will guard and love all who are weak, unfit, or distressed? Is there not a special service of woman, as there is a special service of man?”
107 - “Throughout the 19th century, more novels were published by women writers (under their own names) than by men.”
111 - The Divorce Act of 1857 removed divorce from the consideration of the church and made it a civil action.
Poverty
Himmelfarb describes the interesting saga of the Victorians trying to make the workhouses worse because the working classes complained that they would be better off in the workhouse than outside of it. Dickens and other Victorian writers then criticised this policy, which had not even been put into effect in many areas, so that as the workhouses continually improved throughout the Victorian era, fictional depictions of them grew worse.
Jewry
This chapter was interesting but I couldn’t see anything useful in it. Although I was intrigued by the expression Beatrix Potter quotes as popular: “every country has the Jew it deserves.”
New Men and New Women
188 - Nietzsche “when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet” but the English: “They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality.”
207 - John Stuart Mill, who didn’t live to see the New Men and Women, predicted that sexuality would increasingly come under the control of the reason as civilisation advanced.
Himmelfarb notes that there was overlap between Victorian feminists and the ‘sexually liberated’ New Women but that they were two distinct groups: the feminists campaigned for specific causes such as for and against suffrage, opposing the de facto legalisation of prostitution, for and against birth control, etc. The New Women did not have any political agenda and did not seek to promote their views to the rest of society - they supported independence from marriage and practised free love.
214 - The counter-culture of Victorian morality was made up of aesthetes. Curiously however, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Lord Douglas, and many associated with the fin de siecle movement, including John Gray (assumed to be the model for Dorian Gray) later converted to Catholicism.
219 - “Late-Victorian England produced not only the writers associated with the fin de siecle but a host of others who were not: Henry James, George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Bridges, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle, A.E. Hausman. And there were other, younger writers who were just beginning to make their name: John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton.” What a list!
219 - “New Women novels [of which Himmelfarb describes a few] had an ambiguous effect, portraying the liberated woman in such a way as to make her seem sympathetic, and even heroic, but also tragic, condemned to loneliness, betrayal, and death.” as indeed so may of the the New Women actually were. Himmelfarb recounts the unhappy life and suicide of Marx’s daughter.
220 - “This was as fertile a period in ideas and institutions as any in modern English history [as any in history in fact] spawning a variety of socialist organisations and philanthropic societies, research and scientific enterprises, education and reform movements, philosophical and scientific theories. And these new ideas and institutions supported and reinforced most of the traditional Victorian values, even when they purposed to reform society."
Epilogue
222 - In the Victorian era out-of-wedlock births were around 5% in England, 4% in London, 33% in Paris, 46% in Stockholm, 49% in Vienna. Victorianism was an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. In England the rate rose by a few percent during the wars but remained around 5% until 1960 when it started it’s dramatic rise.
226 - English crime rates increased forty-fold between 1901 and 1992.
236 - Himmelfarb reminds us how quickly society’s morality can change: In 1965 69% of women and 65% of men under 30 said premarital sex was always or almost always wrong. By 1972 the figures were 24% and 21%. How could things change so quickly in just 7 years?
246 - This feels like something that would be written today but it came out in the 90’s: “more and more conservatives are returning to an older Burkean tradition, which appreciates the material advantages of a free-market economy (Edmund Burke himself was a disciple of Adam Smith) but also recognises that such an economy does not automatically produce the moral and social goods that they value.”
247 - Himmelfarb argues it’s unjust to use ‘Thatcherism’ to describe a belief in free-markets and ignoring morality when Mrs Thatcher was criticised for promoting ‘Victorian virtues’.
April 20, 2021
First off, this is a non-fiction history book and I read it in preparation for my senior thesis. I usually don't read a lot of non-fiction books because I find them boring, but this book was so good. I loved Gertrude Himmelfarb's writing style and it wasn't to tedious to read. This is a must-read if you are interested in the Victorian Era, as well as finding out why it has the title that it does. 5/5 Stars.
February 19, 2020
A breezy but interesting survey of Victorian morality which convincingly defends it from its libertine critics. But then the book bizarrely and abruptly devolves into a 1990s screed against crime and illegitimacy that is dated and unconvincing.
I will be looking for more history from Himmelfarb, but not social commentary.
I will be looking for more history from Himmelfarb, but not social commentary.
May 2, 2022
This is the second time I've read this book. I enjoyed it both times. I must say though that I enjoyed the first half much more than the second. The first half or so is about the difference between the Virtues that Victorians revered, as opposed to the Values of modern society. Whereas virtues are principles that are believed to be universal ideals toward which to steer our self-development, values are whatever subject interests you. These are not equivalent, nor are they of equal weight philosophically. Himmelfarb also gives a compelling case for how the Victorians viewed themselves, and the ideals they attempted to live by. She shows that people were more content with their lot, and more likely to see their lives as meaningful. The second half of the book is merely a litany of descriptions of poverty in Victorian times. I suppose she is trying to make a case here for how believing in virtue impacted even the poorest paupers. It got rather dry for my taste, but may be of use to those seeking to understand Victorian times better.
June 19, 2024
Short, concise, and well-argued. Great historical insight into the Victorian era. However, out of the 10 chapters in the book, only 5 directly address what the title advertises. The other five cover feminism, the poor classes, the Victorian jews, etc. which are well-written and interesting, but don't quite deliver on what was advertised. All in all, I would recommend reading it for the great 5 chapters it offers! Himmelfarb is a great historian with great insight.
February 27, 2017
One can often finish an academic book unsure of what the author *really* thinks about the subject at hand. This is not the case when reading Gertrude Himmelfarb's work. From the first words, the socially conservative Jewish-American historian aligns herself with the Victorians who are the centre of her study, and the values - or rather "virtues" - they promoted: industriousness, abstemiousness, domesticity and chastity.
Himmelfarb's primary claim that these values came to widely accepted in Victorian England and American, and that this shift produced positive social outcomes. According to the statistics she produces in The De-Moralisation of Society, crime went down, illegitimacy went down and literacy went up during the second half of the 19th century. I'm willing to entertain the idea that this is true, but will need to investigate the figures more closely before supporting this claim. Also, I don't agree with her claim that marriage is prima facie good (it's true the single parenthood is correlated with negative outcomes, but a correlation is not association).
As well as stressing the peace brought by Victorian 'respectability', Himmelfarb's defends these values against those claim they are elitist (because it encouraged docility and the acceptance of bourgeoisie and anti-woman. She argues that both working class and leading woman of the era, including Florence Nightingale, Beatrice Webb and George Elliot, supported the preservation of 'womanliness'. It was in fact a man, John Stuart Mill, who called for the
Himmelfarb's primary claim that these values came to widely accepted in Victorian England and American, and that this shift produced positive social outcomes. According to the statistics she produces in The De-Moralisation of Society, crime went down, illegitimacy went down and literacy went up during the second half of the 19th century. I'm willing to entertain the idea that this is true, but will need to investigate the figures more closely before supporting this claim. Also, I don't agree with her claim that marriage is prima facie good (it's true the single parenthood is correlated with negative outcomes, but a correlation is not association).
As well as stressing the peace brought by Victorian 'respectability', Himmelfarb's defends these values against those claim they are elitist (because it encouraged docility and the acceptance of bourgeoisie and anti-woman. She argues that both working class and leading woman of the era, including Florence Nightingale, Beatrice Webb and George Elliot, supported the preservation of 'womanliness'. It was in fact a man, John Stuart Mill, who called for the
Shelved as 'tasted'
March 10, 2009I keep renewing this one and really want to delve into it but have too many other things I'm also studying. Tasted for now, but I'll come back to it.
"The shift from "virtue" to "values" has had other unfortunate consequences. Having displaced virtue from the central position it once occupied, as the defining attribute of the good life and the good society, we have relegated it to the bedroom and boudoir. When we now speak of virtue, we no longer think of the classical virtues of wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage, or the Christian ones of faith, hope, and charity, or even such Victorian ones as work, thrift, cleanliness, and self-reliance. Virtue is now understood in its sexual connotations of chastity and marital fidelity. One of the great mysteries of Western thought, the philosopher Leo Strauss has said, is "how a word which used to mean the manliness of man has come to mean the chastity of women."" (p. 15)
"The shift from "virtue" to "values" has had other unfortunate consequences. Having displaced virtue from the central position it once occupied, as the defining attribute of the good life and the good society, we have relegated it to the bedroom and boudoir. When we now speak of virtue, we no longer think of the classical virtues of wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage, or the Christian ones of faith, hope, and charity, or even such Victorian ones as work, thrift, cleanliness, and self-reliance. Virtue is now understood in its sexual connotations of chastity and marital fidelity. One of the great mysteries of Western thought, the philosopher Leo Strauss has said, is "how a word which used to mean the manliness of man has come to mean the chastity of women."" (p. 15)
June 27, 2008
You wouldn't think a brief history on the Victorians could be so interesting--- but it is.
December 10, 2010
Book club pick for November
April 1, 2011
Not memorable.
September 17, 2012
An interesting look at the Victorian definition of morals, were their ideas originated, and how that influenced subsequent times. Includes an apt description of defining deviancy down.
June 11, 2014
I enjoyed this book, but a month later the thesis is hazy.
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