The Making Of Victorian Sexual Attitudes

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The Making of Victorian Sexuality

Author : Michael Mason
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.X/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Making of Victorian Sexuality by : Michael Mason

Download or read book The Making of Victorian Sexuality written by Michael Mason and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BL A challenging examination of Victorian sexuality. BL Confronts one of the most persistent historical cliches of modern times. BL Draws on a wealth of documentary evidence including medical, scientific, religious, demographic, and literary texts. At a time when AIDS, abortion, and sexual abuse have become favourite topics of media and academic debate, it is no surprise that the Victorians, with their strong associations with prudery and puritanism, are frequently held up as an example of a sexual culture far different from our own. Yet whatdid the Victorians really think about sex? What was the reality of their sexual behaviour, and what wider concepts - biological, political, religious - influenced their sexual moralism? The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent cliches of modern times. Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of nineteenth-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Far from being a license for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexual moralism is shown to bein reality a code intelligently embraced by wealthy and poor alike as part of a humane and progressive vision of society's future. The `average' Victorian man was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois `paterfamilias' of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic,radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children. Persuasively arguing that there is much in Victorian sexual moralism to teach the complacently libertarian twentieth century, this lively and fascinating study offers a radical challenge to one of the most persistent myths of our age.

The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes

Author : Michael Mason
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes by : Michael Mason

Download or read book The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes written by Michael Mason and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victorian sexual moralism was real enough, but what was its nature? The Victorians are often called 'puritanical', with the implication that their sexual moralism was religiously based. It was opposed, we like to think, by freethinkers and progressives, and perhaps also by the working class. Michael Mason has already pointed to the fallacy of such views in his previous volume, The Making of Victorian Sexuality. Here he develops his revisionist account of Victorian sexual ideology and shows that to be 'Victorian' about sex was actually, in its day, to be progressive, optimistic, and modern-minded. Religious beliefs, even in militant form, were only a support for an essentially secular ideal. The Victorian anti-sensual coalition did break down at the end of the century, but the liberationists were old-fashioned reformers, who were often bitterly resisted by, for example, socialists and feminists. This novel and provocative analysis is developed in a series of detailed portraits of crucial movements, episodes, and individuals: the Swedenborgians, Henry James Prince, 'Baron' Renton Nicholson, the 'Vice Society', prostitute rescue, Owenism, neo-Malthusianism, and many more. A formidable array of evidence is assembled for views which strike at the root of conventional wisdom about the English nineteenth century.

Histories of Sexuality

Author : Stephen Garton
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317489012
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Histories of Sexuality by : Stephen Garton

Download or read book Histories of Sexuality written by Stephen Garton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first assessment of one of the most rapidly expanding fields of research: the history of sexuality. From the early efforts of historians to work out a model for sexual history, to the extraordinary impact of French philosopher Michel Foucault, to the vigorous debates about essentialism and social constructionism, to the emergence of contemporary debates about historicism, queer theory, embodiment, gender and cultural history - we now have vast and diverse historical scholarship on sex and sexuality. 'Histories of Sexuality' highlights the key historical moments and issues: pederasty and cultures of male passivity in ancient Greece and Rome; the impact of early Christianity and ideals of renunciation on the sexual cultures of late antiquity; the sustained existence of homosexual cultures in medieval and renaissance Europe; the "invention" of homosexuality and heterosexuality in eighteenth century Europe and America; the truth behind Victorian sexual repression; the work of reformers and scientists such as Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Stella Browne, Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson.

Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism

Author : Deborah Lutz
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393080676
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism by : Deborah Lutz

Download or read book Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism written by Deborah Lutz and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A smart, provocative account of the erotic current running just beneath the surface of a stuffy and stifling Victorian London. At the height of the Victorian era, a daring group of artists and thinkers defied the reigning obsession with propriety, testing the boundaries of sexual decorum in their lives and in their work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhumed his dead wife to pry his only copy of a manuscript of his poems from her coffin. Legendary explorer Richard Burton wrote how-to manuals on sex positions and livened up the drawing room with stories of eroticism in the Middle East. Algernon Charles Swinburne visited flagellation brothels and wrote pornography amid his poetry. By embracing and exploring the taboo, these iconoclasts produced some of the most captivating art, literature, and ideas of their day. As thought-provoking as it is electric, Pleasure Bound unearths the desires of the men and women who challenged buttoned-up Victorian mores to promote erotic freedom. These bohemians formed two loosely overlapping societies—the Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes—to explore their fascinations with sexual taboo, from homosexuality to the eroticization of death. Known as much for their flamboyant personal lives as for their controversial masterpieces, they created a scandal-provoking counterculture that paved the way for such later figures as Gustav Klimt, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Genet. In this stunning exposé of the Victorian London we thought we knew, Deborah Lutz takes us beyond the eyebrow-raising practices of these sex rebels, revealing how they uncovered troubles that ran beneath the surface of the larger social fabric: the struggle for women’s emancipation, the dissolution of formal religions, and the pressing need for new forms of sexual expression.

Prostitution

Author : Dr Paula Bartley
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134610718
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (346 download)

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Book Synopsis Prostitution by : Dr Paula Bartley

Download or read book Prostitution written by Dr Paula Bartley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860-1914 is the first comprehensive overview of attempts to eradicate prostitution from English society, including discussion of early attempts at reform and prevention through to the campaigns of the social purists. Prostitution looks in depth at the various reform institutions which were set up to house prostitutes, analysing the motives of the reformers as well as daily life within these penitentiaries. This indispensable book reveals: * reformers' attitudes towards prostitutes and prostitution * daily life inside reform institutions * attempts at moral education * developments in moral health theories * influence of eugenics * attempts at suppressing prostitution.

Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain

Author : Andrea Zuvich
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
ISBN 13 : 1526753081
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain by : Andrea Zuvich

Download or read book Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain written by Andrea Zuvich and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2020-09-19 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert in Stuart England examines the sexual lives of Britons in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in this frank, informative, and revealing history. Acclaimed Stuart historian Andrea Zuvich explores the sexual mores of Stuart Britain, including surprising beliefs, bizarre practices, and ingenious solutions for infertility, impotence, sexually transmitted diseases, and more. Along the way, she reveals much about the prevailing attitudes towards male and female sexual behavior. Zuvich sheds light not only on the saucy love lives of the Royal Stuarts, but also on the dark underbelly of the Stuart era with histories of prostitution, sexual violence, infanticide, and sexual deviance. She looks at everything from what was considered sexually attractive to the penalties for adultery, incest, and fornication. Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain touches on the fashion, food, science, art, medicine, magic, literature, love, politics, faith and superstition of the day.

The Long Sexual Revolution

Author : Hera Cook
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191530891
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

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Book Synopsis The Long Sexual Revolution by : Hera Cook

Download or read book The Long Sexual Revolution written by Hera Cook and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-02-05 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Hera Cook traces the path of sexuality in England, and shows how its route was determined by the gradual exertion of control over fertility. Most sexual activity had major economic and social costs, the most fundamental of which was the physical cost of children upon women's bodies. Around 1800 birth rates reached historical heights. Using a combination of demographic and qualitative sources, Dr Cook examines the connection between the struggle to lower fertility and the increasing repression of sexuality throughout the nineteenth century. Contraception became a viable option in the early twentieth century. The book charts the resulting slow relaxation of attitudes to sexuality and the remaking of heterosexual physical behaviour, culminating in the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

The History of Sexuality

Author : Michel Foucault
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0679724699
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (797 download)

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Book Synopsis The History of Sexuality by : Michel Foucault

Download or read book The History of Sexuality written by Michel Foucault and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1990-04-14 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why we are so fascinated with sex and sexuality—from the preeminent philosopher of the 20th century. Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.

Making Marriage Modern

Author : Christina Simmons
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199723559
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Marriage Modern by : Christina Simmons

Download or read book Making Marriage Modern written by Christina Simmons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-10 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth-century middle-class ideal of the married woman was of a chaste and diligent wife focused on being a loving mother, with few needs or rights of her own. The modern woman, by contrast, was partner to a new model of marriage, one in which she and her husband formed a relationship based on greater sexual and psychological equality. In Making Marriage Modern, Christina Simmons narrates the development of this new companionate marriage ideal, which took hold in the early twentieth century and prevailed in American society by the 1940s. The first challenges to public reticence to discuss sexual relations between husbands and wives came from social hygiene reformers, who advocated for a scientific but conservative sex education to combat prostitution and venereal disease. A more radical group of feminists, anarchists, and bohemians opposed the Victorian model of marriage and even the institution of marriage. Birth control advocates such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger openly championed women's rights to acquire and use effective contraception. The "companionate marriage" emerged from these efforts. This marital ideal was characterized by greater emotional and sexuality intimacy for both men and women, use of birth control to create smaller families, and destigmatization of divorce in cases of failed unions. Simmons examines what she calls the "flapper" marriage, in which free-spirited young wives enjoyed the early years of marriage, postponing children and domesticity. She looks at the feminist marriage in which women imagined greater equality between the sexes in domestic and paid work and sex. And she explores the African American "partnership marriage," which often included wives' employment and drew more heavily on the involvement of the community and extended family. Finally, she traces how these modern ideals of marriage were promoted in sexual advice literature and marriage manuals of the period. Though male dominance persisted in companionate marriages, Christina Simmons shows how they called for greater independence and satisfaction for women and a new female heterosexuality. By raising women's expectations of marriage, the companionate ideal also contained within it the seeds of second-wave feminists' demands for transforming the institution into one of true equality between the sexes.

A Curious History of Sex

Author : Kate Lister
Publisher : Unbound Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1783528060
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (835 download)

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Book Synopsis A Curious History of Sex by : Kate Lister

Download or read book A Curious History of Sex written by Kate Lister and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is not a comprehensive study of every sexual quirk, kink and ritual across all cultures throughout time, as that would entail writing an encyclopaedia. Rather, this is a drop in the ocean, a paddle in the shallow end of sex history, but I hope you will get pleasantly wet nonetheless. The act of sex has not changed since people first worked out what went where, but the ways in which society dictates how sex is culturally understood and performed have varied significantly through the ages. Humans are the only creatures that stigmatise particular sexual practices, and sex remains a deeply divisive issue around the world. Attitudes will change and grow – hopefully for the better – but sex will never be free of stigma or shame unless we acknowledge where it has come from. Based on the popular research project Whores of Yore, and written with her distinctive humour and wit, A Curious History of Sex draws upon Dr Kate Lister’s extensive knowledge of sex history. From medieval impotence tests to twentieth-century testicle thefts, from the erotic frescoes of Pompeii, to modern-day sex doll brothels, Kate unashamedly roots around in the pants of history, debunking myths, challenging stereotypes and generally getting her hands dirty. This fascinating book is peppered with surprising and informative historical slang, and illustrated with eye-opening, toe-curling and meticulously sourced images from the past. You will laugh, you will wince and you will wonder just how much has actually changed.

Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England

Author : Ian Ward
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1782253696
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (822 download)

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Book Synopsis Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England by : Ian Ward

Download or read book Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England written by Ian Ward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Victorians worried about many things, prominent among their worries being the 'condition' of England and the 'question' of its women. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England revisits these particular anxieties, concentrating more closely upon four 'crimes' which generated especial concern amongst contemporaries: adultery, bigamy, infanticide and prostitution. Each engaged questions of sexuality and its regulation, legal, moral and cultural, for which reason each attracted the considerable interest not just of lawyers and parliamentarians, but also novelists and poets and perhaps most importantly those who, in ever-larger numbers, liked to pass their leisure hours reading about sex and crime. Alongside statutes such as the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act and the 1864 Contagious Diseases Act, Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England contemplates those texts which shaped Victorian attitudes towards England's 'condition' and the 'question' of its women: the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot, the works of sensationalists such as Ellen Wood and Mary Braddon, and the poetry of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England is a richly contextual commentary on a critical period in the evolution of modern legal and cultural attitudes to the relation of crime, sexuality and the family.

Sex, Politics and Society

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317861566
Total Pages : 462 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (178 download)

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Book Synopsis Sex, Politics and Society by :

Download or read book Sex, Politics and Society written by and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering study which has become an established classic in its field, Sex, Politics and Society provides a lucid and comprehensive analysis of the transformations of British sexual life from 1800 to the present. These changes are firmly located in the wider context of social change, from industrialization and the experience of Empire through the establishment of the welfare state to the rise of new social movements, such as feminism and gay liberation, and new forms of social conservatism. Now fully revised and updated, and with a new chapter bringing the story right up to date, this new edition considers: the transformation of the sexual world through globalization and the internet the changing impact of the AIDS pandemic over the last thirty years the influence of new currents in social and cultural theory on the study of sexuality the gradual depoliticization and mainstreaming of sexuality within historical study Combining rich empirical detail with innovative theoretical insights, Sex, Politics and Society remains at the cutting edge of the subject and this third edition will inspire and provoke a whole new generation of readers in history, sociology, social policy, and the study of sexuality.

Straights

Author : James Joseph Dean
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814789412
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Straights by : James Joseph Dean

Download or read book Straights written by James Joseph Dean and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how straight Americans make sense of their sexual and gendered selves Since the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the politics of sexual identity in America have drastically transformed. It’s almost old news that recent generations of Americans have grown up in a culture more accepting of out lesbians and gay men, seen the proliferation of LGBTQ media representation, and witnessed the attainment of a range of legal rights for same-sex couples. But the changes wrought by a so-called “post-closeted culture” have not just affected the queer community—heterosexuals are also in the midst of a sea change in how their sexuality plays out in everyday life. In Straights, James Joseph Dean argues that heterosexuals can neither assume the invisibility of gays and lesbians, nor count on the assumption that their own heterosexuality will go unchallenged. The presumption that we are all heterosexual, or that there is such a thing as ‘compulsory heterosexuality,’ he claims, has vanished. Based on 60 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of straight men and women, Straights explores how straight Americans make sense of their sexual and gendered selves in this new landscape, particularly with an understanding of how race does and does not play a role in these conceptions. Dean provides a historical understanding of heterosexuality and how it was first established, then moves on to examine the changing nature of masculinity and femininity and, most importantly, the emergence of a new kind of heterosexuality—notably, for men, the metrosexual, and for women, the emergence of a more fluid sexuality. The book also documents the way heterosexuals interact and form relationships with their LGBTQ family members, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. Although homophobia persists among straight individuals, Dean shows that being gay-friendly or against homophobic expressions is also increasingly common among straight Americans. A fascinating study, Straights provides an in-depth look at the changing nature of sexual expression in America.

The Origins of Sex

Author : Faramerz Dabhoiwala
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019993939X
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origins of Sex by : Faramerz Dabhoiwala

Download or read book The Origins of Sex written by Faramerz Dabhoiwala and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man admits that, when drunk, he tried to have sex with an eighteen-year-old girl; she is arrested and denies they had intercourse, but finally begs God's forgiveness. Then she is publicly hanged alongside her attacker. These events took place in 1644, in Boston, where today they would be viewed with horror. How--and when--did such a complete transformation of our culture's attitudes toward sex occur? In The Origins of Sex, Faramerz Dabhoiwala provides a landmark history, one that will revolutionize our understanding of the origins of sexuality in modern Western culture. For millennia, sex had been strictly regulated by the Church, the state, and society, who vigorously and brutally attempted to punish any sex outside of marriage. But by 1800, everything had changed. Drawing on vast research--from canon law to court cases, from novels to pornography, not to mention the diaries and letters of people great and ordinary--Dabhoiwala shows how this dramatic change came about, tracing the interplay of intellectual trends, religious and cultural shifts, and politics and demographics. The Enlightenment led to the presumption that sex was a private matter; that morality could not be imposed; that men, not women, were the more lustful gender. Moreover, the rise of cities eroded community-based moral policing, and religious divisions undermined both church authority and fear of divine punishment. Sex became a central topic in poetry, drama, and fiction; diarists such as Samuel Pepys obsessed over it. In the 1700s, it became possible for a Church of Scotland leader to commend complete sexual liberty for both men and women. Arguing that the sexual revolution that really counted occurred long before the cultural movement of the 1960s, Dabhoiwala offers readers an engaging and wholly original look at the Western world's relationship to sex. Deeply researched and powerfully argued, The Origins of Sex is a major work of history.

Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940

Author : Simon Szreter
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521528689
Total Pages : 734 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (286 download)

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Book Synopsis Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 by : Simon Szreter

Download or read book Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 written by Simon Szreter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-25 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an original interpretation of the history of falling fertilities in Britain between 1860 and 1940. It integrates the approaches of the social sciences and of demographic, feminist, and labour history with intellectual, social, and political history. It exposes the conceptual and statistical inadequacies of the orthodox picture of a national, unitary class-differential fertility decline, and presents an entirely new analysis of the famous 1911 fertility census of England and Wales. Surprising and important findings emerge concerning the principal methods of birth control: births were spaced from early on in marriage; and sexual abstinence by married couples was a far more significant practice than previously imagined. The author presents a new general approach to the study of fertility change, raising central issues concerning the relationship between history and social science.

Erotic City

Author : Josh Sides
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199874069
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Erotic City by : Josh Sides

Download or read book Erotic City written by Josh Sides and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How San Francisco became America's capital of sexual libertinism and a potent symbol in its culture wars

Inventing the Victorians

Author : Matthew Sweet
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1466872713
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Inventing the Victorians by : Matthew Sweet

Download or read book Inventing the Victorians written by Matthew Sweet and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Suppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong." So begins Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet, a compact and mind-bending whirlwind tour through the soul of the nineteenth century, and a round debunking of our assumptions about it. The Victorians have been victims of the "the enormous condescension of posterity," in the historian E. P. Thompson's phrase. Locked in the drawing room, theirs was an age when, supposedly, existence was stultifying, dank, and over-furnished, and when behavior conformed so rigorously to proprieties that the repressed results put Freud into business. We think we have the Victorians pegged--as self-righteous, imperialist, racist, materialist, hypocritical and, worst of all, earnest. Oh how wrong we are, argues Matthew Sweet in this highly entertaining, provocative, and illuminating look at our great, and great-great, grandparents. One hundred years after Queen Victoria's death, Sweet forces us to think again about her century, entombed in our minds by Dickens, the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and by images of unfettered capitalism and grinding poverty. Sweet believes not only that we're wrong about the Victorians but profoundly indebted to them. In ways we have been slow to acknowledge, their age and our own remain closely intertwined. The Victorians invented the theme park, the shopping mall, the movies, the penny arcade, the roller coaster, the crime novel, and the sensational newspaper story. Sweet also argues that our twenty-first century smugness about how far we have evolved is misplaced. The Victorians were less racist than we are, less religious, less violent, and less intolerant. Far from being an outcast, Oscar Wilde was a fairly typical Victorian man; the love that dared not speak its name was declared itself fairly openly. In 1868 the first international cricket match was played between an English team and an Australian team composed entirely of aborigines. The Victorians loved sensation, novelty, scandal, weekend getaways, and the latest conveniences (by 1869, there were image-capable telegraphs; in 1873 a store had a machine that dispensed milk to after-hours' shoppers). Does all this sound familiar? As Sweet proves in this fascinating, eye-opening book, the reflection we find in the mirror of the nineteenth century is our own. We inhabit buildings built by the Victorians; some of us use their sewer system and ride on the railways they built. We dismiss them because they are the age against whom we have defined our own. In brilliant style, Inventing the Victorians shows how much we have been missing.