Gordon Marsden (editor) - Victorian values : personalities and perspectives in nineteenth-century society

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Victorian Values

I have often bored readers of Open History with my demands for more popular history written by professional historians and amateur historians of quality. Victorian Values fills the bill very nicely. It is compact, cheap and cheerful, and contains 16 splendid essays covering a wide spectrum of Victorian Society. There are essays on William Lovett and adult education; the influence of Charles Dickens; Pugin and the Medieval dream; Titus Salt; Joseph Chamberlain and the municipal ideal; Victorian ladies and nursing reform; and Christian Socialism.

The aim of the collection is to demonstrate that it is very difficult to generalise about Victorian values or anything else Victorian. Victorian Society was not a uniform, sepia-coloured world where everyone thought and acted in the same way. It was, like any other society, rich and complex. The Victorians were as complex as ourselves, says the publisher's blurb, pulled this way and that by faith and doubt, by assurance and unease. And they, like us, looked backwards to find a past golden age to provide solid models of faith, stability and aesthetic unity. Did they succeed? Well, you'll have to buy the book to find out!

Sean Ward, reviewing the First Edition in Open History, the magazine of the Open University Historical Society

Victorian Values

Personalities and
Perspectives in
Nineteenth-Century
Society

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Second Edition

Edited by Gordon Marsden

First published 1990 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited
Second Edition 1998

Published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Editorial matter Gordon Marsden 1990, 1998
Articles History Today 1987, 1989, 1996, 1997

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN 13: 978-0-582-29289-5 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Victorian values : personalities and perspectives in Nineteenth
century society / edited by Gordon Marsden. 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes biliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-582-29289-1
1. Great BritainSocial conditions19th century. 2. Social
valuesHistory19th century. 3. Great BritainHistoryVictoria,
18371901Biography. 4. Great BritainBiography. I. Marsden,
Gordon, 1953 .
HN385.V55 1998
306.094109034dc21 98-4601
CIP

Set in 10/12pt Palatino

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Contents

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Victorian values have hit the headlines several times during the last ten years. The Victorians might or might not have been pleased, but they would certainly have been occasionally amused. They were well aware of the divergence of precept and practice. Recent topical interest has thrown more light on our own society and culture and on our economy than on theirs.

Professional historians have long pointed out how difficult it is to generalise about Victorian values or, for that matter, anything else Victorian. Had not the good Queen lived so long we would have divided the nineteenth century in a different way and no-one could have talked of Victorianism. As it is, we rightly distinguish between early, middle and late Victorian. We also note contrasts at any point in the long reign between perceptions in one part of the country and another part or between one class and another. The two were, of course, directly related. Because there were so many barriers of communication the mode of proclaiming and communicating values is a subject of great interest in itself.

In a period of continuing change there was never any full agreement about what Victorian values really were, and during the late-Victorian years there was a sustained, if usually unsuccessful, attack on those Victorian values which had been dominant during the mid-Victorian years.

Nonetheless, most articulate Victorians were concerned about values even when they were in disagreement about religion, a core subject to study, about economics, where recent, current and prospective changes were recognised to be far-reaching, and about politics, where much, though not all, of the development must be explained in terms other than those of values.

In reprinting this series of articles on Victorian values from History Today, we focus on Victorian experience in diverse forms. The questions raised cannot be answered glibly. Moreover, they cover all aspects of experience, not least double standards in relation to sex. The psychology cannot be left out, turning as it does on issues of character and will. Because the questions are often basic, it is doubtful whether they will ever be exhausted. Whatever the reasons for the topical interest in Victorian values, we are still not out of a society and culture which feels it necessary to appeal to them.

ASA BRIGGS

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Special thanks are due to those who helped make both the History Today Victorian Values articles and the subsequent book project possible: Asa Briggs, for his initial enthusiasm for the series and subsequent advice and to my colleagues at History Today, particularly Marion Soldan, and Jacqueline Guy, whose tremendous experience and magpie eye garnered the wealth of illustrations for Victorian Values (of which the present book version can offer merely a representative sample). Thanks also to my parents and grandparents, who filtered through to me the best of those values, and to Richard, for looking to the future while putting up with the past.

GORDON MARSDEN

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Gordon Marsden

Queen Victoria
Woodcut by Sir William Nicholson, c. 1899. (HT Archives)

T he past is a foreign country, remarks a character in L. P. Hartleys novel The Go Between, they do things differently there. But did they? And should we? No period from the past has been more enthusiastically plundered to promote the present in the past fifteen years than the Victorian era. The supposed values and principles that underpinned its society have been rediscovered and recommended in that period by a motley mix of academics, journalists and politicians, including the prime minister of Great Britain who ended up attaching

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