Victorian morality

[NovaKart]

What were the origins of Victorian morality and why and how did it change from the earlier Georgian period? How has it influenced us and how much of it has survived?

 

[Tahuti]

From what I gather, the notion that there was a prudish Victorian morality is for a significant part just an image falsely casted upon the 19th century after its conclusion. Victoria had a relatively scandal-free reign compared to the Georgian monarchs, which may have feulled that particular perception.

 

[innonimatu]

Victoria's reign coincided with the first age of the mass media, though the printed press. I don't find it hard to believe that this increased the importance of social norms, etiquette and morality. Political stability might have tilted those towards the conservative side? Though I can hardly call conservative to a country and a century where ancient institutions such as christianity and slavery were finally seriously challenged.

 

[Kyriakos]

I also read that some authors (eg Lovecraft) claim that the 'Victorian morality' indeed was largely or near-entirely an idealisation through the literature of that era (such as Dickens, or i suppose to some extent also RL Stevenson). Dickens, at any rate, is abrurdly saccharine in the moral depictions of the characters. Dostoevsky had claimed that any adolescent could read Dickens.

On the other hand, it seems likely that the reasonably upper class of the Victorian era was significantly educated and refined. A nice work of reference would be 'The confessions of an English opium-eater', which is a rather delicate work by De Quincy.

 

[Borachio]

Victorian morality and prudishness came in as a reaction to the C18th libertines, I think.

But, of course, it was just a veneer, Victorians were just as venal and immoral as anyone else, beneath the surface.

How much survives today? Not a lot I'd say. The First and Second World Wars put paid to most of it. The permissive sixties did for the rest.

 

[Traitorfish]

Victorian morality and prudishness came in as a reaction to the C18th libertines, I think.

That's the usual story, but I'm dubious, because it places the elite in a cultural bubble. If you look at contemporary literature, the primary target of moralising rants aren't libertines or even aristocrats, but the urban poor, who are regarded as lacking either the moderating constraints of rural society or the natural self-discipline of the middle class. Victorian moralism seems to me a reaction to the confrontation of the industrial bourgeoisie with the "dangerous classes" of industrial society, rather than simply a generational trend within the elite.

This social dimension of Victorian morality really must be stressed, because it wasn't simply neo-Puritanism, it was very explicitly a concern for public morals. This is a change from the eighteenth century, because it expressed an experience of "public life" that hadn't existed before industrialism, when life was far more localised and communities were understood to be generally self-administering so far as issues of morality were concerned. (Significantly, earlier complaints were usually directed against vagrants, such as itinerant workers and Roma, who were threatening precisely because they existed outside of the community.) Victorian morality required the creation, or perhaps we should say discovery, of a mass society, and was a reaction to the threat of disorder (and even revolt; the two were not clearly distinguished in the bourgeois Victorian mind) implicit within that society.

And in that sense, Victorian morality is alive and well, among both liberals and conservatives, who compete to assert the means by which the poor shall be rescued from themselves. If there's a difference, it's that Victorians at least believe the poor could be elevated to a state of self-discipline, however many generations it may take, while it's now accepted as common sense that the poor are eternally and irreparably incapable of self-government, and the debate is simply as to the proper ratio of stick:carrot. It's largely dropped the Puritan edge, but that's because it was never really needed in the first place, but was rather a cultural quirk of Anglo-American Protestant culture, and nowadays public moralism and consumerist hedonism can sit quite happily side by side.

"Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again." "But that's what it's all about!"

 

[Borachio]

So, a reaction to Chartism, rather than the libertines?

The contrast between Fielding and Dickens is stark, isn't it?

I rather like to think that "morality" comes and goes in waves. The Puritans of the C17th predated the libertines of the C18th.

The hippies of the sixties were decidedly more permissive than generation X. No?

 

[Traitorfish]

You're conflating subcultures with populations, there. The Puritans were never typically of mid-C17th Englishmen, even if they happened to run the country for a while. The hippies certainly weren't representative of 1960s Americans, and while the average Gen Xer might be less permissive than the average hippy, they're probably more permissive than the average baby boomer. You're certainly right that "morality" comes and goes, but it's not a simple back-and-forth from one generation to the next.

 

[Borachio]

even if they happened to run the country for a while

I think that says it all, really.

Sure, people get on with their lives, willy nilly. Largely ignoring whatever the dominant "subculture" happens to be, but making the day to day adjustments that maybe necessary, as it suits them.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

How much survives today? Not a lot I'd say.

White wedding dresses.

 

[Borachio]

Engagement rings, wedding rings and bridesmaids?

I've going to really miss having a black hearse pulled by black horses, with black plumes, and professional mourners, though.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The idea of special jewelry to signify marital status is ancient, millennia before Queen Victoria.

 

[Borachio]

Yes. I think you're right.

But when did engagement rings gain currency? Weren't they insurance against breach of promise? And that's a Victorian invention.

Or maybe not? I'm guessing here.

 

[NovaKart]

Were wedding dressed not white before the Victorian age?

 

[cybrxkhan]

Were wedding dressed not white before the Victorian age?

Nope. Or at least not on any significant scale.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Were wedding dressed not white before the Victorian age?

Not usually. The bride would wear her fanciest dress or, if her family was wealthy enough, a dress would be custom-made and could be any color. Some were extremely colorful.

A proper Roman bride wore a red veil, for example.

 

[Borachio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_fashion#Norms_for_Mourning

And didn't the Victorians have a thing for jet?

I suspect their preference for black clothes, and jet, had something to do with all that coal.

Also the contrast with white wedding dresses.

 

[Quackers]

I quite like this peroid of British history. We avoided any catastrophic wars, extended British power all over the globe, led a ban on the trans-atlantic slave trade, extended franchise to the majority of the British population. We had Darwin, Dickens, steam engines, factories, bridges - marvelous.

You can trace our decline with the gradual fall in identification with Victorian values. A shame.

 

[Borachio]

Right. So all those dark satanic mills were just a figment of the imagination?

Bring back child-labour, child prostitution, mudlarks and working down the pits?

That's not to say the Victorian living conditions were all that much worse (in some ways, for some people, they were better) for the general population than the Georgian and Regency periods, but it was pretty close.

Still, I'm open to persuasion: I'll let you persuade me, if you can.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Child labor, child slavery, and child prostitution are very much modern problems. And don't forget about child porn.

One of my neighbors a couple of apartments ago had been a child soldier in Africa. He's one of the lucky ones who was able to get out, come to Canada, and turn his life around.