Talk:Victorian morality
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I've removed the {{cleanup}} tag that I put here earlier as the article has greatly improved thanks to the edits of Theo and others. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 05:17, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] victorian ideas on morality and social class
I just added a sentence to the paragraph on Victoria and Albert regarding sexual behavior: My point does not contradict the paragraph. It shows that both Victoria and Albert were personally affected by the open sexual escapades done by those around them.
I referred to the Prince Consort's broken childhood home due to sexual scandals and his loss of his mother shortly thereafter. This is public info one can see in various sources including Cecil Woodham's and Lady Longford's books on Queen Victoria.
Victorianezine 15:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)Victorianezine
[edit] What's this leg thing???
Victorian prudery sometimes went so far as to deem it improper to say "leg" in mixed company (the preferred euphemism if such must be mentioned was "limb")
A little confusing to me, if there's something I'm missing, just go out and say it.
Because your not sexually oprest enouft.It means this kind of leg ;-)
--81.245.58.149 19:45, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I get the impression a lot of that was limited to the "genteel" middle class in North America - the table leg thing is supposed to originate in a malicious rumour about the Americans started by the British? Livlivliv 00:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] cromwell was no republican
he was a dictator! England was a republic in name only RomanYankee(24.75.194.50 17:18, 23 August 2006 (UTC))
[edit] Article is still a mess, IMHO
Look at the Victorian fashion article for what I think is a slightly better take on things. Among other things, it demolishes the piano leg canard.
I studied anthropology, though I never finished my degree, and I did a fair bit of historical work. It's just plain wrong to claim that there was some unified "morality" in 19th century England. People then believed different things, did different things, and argued vociferously. The article seems to be about later stereotypes of Victorian morality, courtesy of Lytton Strachey and the like (again, see the Victorian fashion article). It's useful to discuss the stereotypes, but it's even more necessary to point out how much "Victorians" differed on various topics. Zora 00:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Victorian attitudes to criminality (copied from WP:RD/H)
Crime, as we understand it today, might be said to be the creation of the Victorian age. Literacy had created the demand for a popular press; and the press fed on the public's taste for crime, particularly in its more lurid forms. Let's take one one case where Victorian perceptions shaped, and continue to shape, how one particular case has been projected and understood: namely the Whitechapel Murders of 1888. Here we are in the realm of Jack the Ripper. He was a 'gentleman', was he not, one who may even have come all the way down to the slums from the palaces of royalty? Well, in fact, we know virtually nothing about the Ripper, because he was never caught. But the journalists of the day were quite happy to fulfill the popular prejudice, no doubt stimulated by the publication two years previously of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that the Ripper was a 'toff', who got his 'pleasures' slumming in London's seedy east end.
The next big concern was over the nature of criminality itself. Most law-breakers, of course, were from the urban poor, the seedbed of the new 'criminal classes'. An explanation was required, beyond mere poverty of course, and was readily supplied by the likes of Edwin Chadwick, the Poor Law reformer, who believed criminality was the response of the idle and the feckless, tempted by easy returns as an alternative to honest labour. Temperance reformers placed the blame on alcohol, just as reformers in education blamed ignorance and lack of opportunity. For the evangelists, it was all due to the abandonment of the standards set by religion. With the growth of popular forms of Social Darwinsim hereditary became a factor; and by the end of the century the notion of the habitual criminal, tainted by birth and background, was gaining ascendency over the notions of morality and idelness. From this management and control became the dominant elements of law-enforcement; and so it remains today. Clio the Muse 03:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
