What were the dominant virtues and values in the Victorian period and how have historians challenged their alleged ubiquity?
Our memory of the Victorians— mostly handed down to us by polemicists and doctrinaires — is woefully unnuanced;
Haughty capitalists strutting down dimly lit streets, stopping only to shed cigar cinders in the contorted faces of the the deserving poor; droves of emaciated children emerging from unlit mines, encrusted with caked soot and engine oil; cohorts of exhausted workers trudging home to a sordid hovel lit only by two quivering tapers; children losing themselves in wistful dreams of undarned socks while painstakingly swallowing a spoonful of mildewed porridge; entire families cowering under a threadbare duvet, lulled to sleep by the infernal din of the steel furnaces below.
As historians examining the Victorian era, we’re dealing with a two century old wilt of doctrinarian attitudinising. So much of Victorian life has been rendered inscrutable by apocryphal sensationalism. A reappraisal, therefore, of Victorian narratives and values — is well overdue. Historians like Matthew Sweet have dedicated entire books as discussions of the prolegomenon ‘why we are wrong about the Victorians’.
If we ask academics to enumerate archetypically Victorian values, they might say: prudishness, thrift, individualism, responsibility, self-reliance, an entrepreneurial spirit, the idea of the self-made man, the civilising mission, evangelism to name a few. This essay will touch upon some of these values in turn. As we do so, we will also examine the extent to which these values were ubiquitous. We begin with the emergence of ‘thrift’ as a Victorian value.
Prior to the late 18th century, a man who made his living through trade was considered socially subpar. Even a well-read, refined, intelligent merchant with a fortune twice that of the local gentry could only dream of rubbing elbows with the topmost echelons of society. Earned wealth was base. Merchants were always inferior to nobility —inferior to those who who lived off of their inheritence. Contempt of thrift reigned supreme well into the 18th century.
The 16th and 17th century understanding of ‘thrift’ is neatly illustrated by Shakespeare’s Shylock. Shylock’s ‘well-won thrift’[1] is denounced as profoundly immoral. Contempt of thrift and commercial success was the norm among the 16th century intelligentsia.
This narrative, interestingly, underwent a seismic shift in the beginning of the 19th century. On the heels of industrialisation, the bourgeoisie came to be more lauded than nobility. Economic historian Deirdre McCloskey limns this development in her trilogy: Bourgeois Dignity and Bourgeois Equality. McCloskey attributes the unprecedented economic prosperity of the 19th century to the rise of ‘bourgeoise dignity’. Once thrift and self-sufficiency became admirable qualitites, people were free to pursue personal achievement with a good conscience. It is McCloskey’s contention that Victorian prosperity began with a ‘re-evaluation of Bourgeois dignity’. The shift wasn’t psychological, in her opinion. Rather, it was a change in rhetoric. Uniquely, McCloskey interpolates shifts in social narrative through commensurate shifts in lexis. In one chapter, she examines the very protean meaning of the word ‘honest’. Prior to the late 18th century, ‘honest’ was a essentially a facsimile of the Latin ‘honestiores’, meaning ‘nobles’.[2] As the 18th century drew to a close, however, ‘honest’ meant something different entirely. According to McCloskey, a collective consciousness in ferment (rapid industrialisation) birthed the ‘honest’ we know today; staying true to one’s word. ‘Honesty’ was no longer reserved for the landed gentry, but was reborn as the lynchpin of contract. This marks a radical shift in rhetoric. The very notion of honesty itself, was now distinctly bourgeois. No longer did the ‘proudly leisured’ nobility elicit admiration from the masses. The leisured gentry was supplanted by the self-made man; the new role model.
The growth of bourgeois dignity fanned the flames of individualism: growing industry showcased the individual’s ability to produce, innovate and be self-sufficient —the unlimited scope of the human mind. Every guinea bought more and more goods in lock-step with ever-accelerating innovation. Engineers of Brunel’s stripe became household names. Even the most radical individualist philosophers, like Cobden, Herbert Spencer and Auberon Herbert became bedside reading. By 1848, when McCloskey believes ‘bourgeois ideology had wholly triumphed’, bourgeois dignity and individualism had been ineffaceably ingrained in Victorian culture. Criticisms of individualism and thrift.
That thrift and individualism were typically Victorian values is rarely contested. Some might, however, alert McCloskey to a chicken-or-the-egg causality dilemma. Marx, for instance, argued that the emergence of individualism and bourgeoisie had materialistic precursors — not McCloskey’s rhetorical precursors. Marxists would argue that bourgeoise virtue arose a posteriori from ‘primitive accumulation’, form buccaneering and the intrepid exploits of imperial mavericks. In a word; that the fruits of individualism were rotten at the core. McCloskey takes issue with this view. With the matter-of-factedness we might expect from an economic historian, she dismisses these arguments as unconvincing. Very econometrically, she writes: ‘Saving and investment must be used when they are made, or they depreciate. They cannot accumulate from an age of piracy to an age of industry.’[3]
Some might also question the sincerity of Victorian individualism. As Jan Morris notes in his Heaven’s Command, Sir Garnet Woleseley (the inspiration for Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Major-General’) admired the spartan collectivism of the Ashanti kingdom. He believed the Ashanti’s brutal abrogration of individual interests in favour of State interests was worthy of emulation.[4] In light of Woleseley’s almost mythical status in Victorian society, individualism was clearly eclipsed by imperial fervour and jingoism.
Classical liberal theorist Herbert Spencer questioned the sincerity of Victorian individualism as early as 1851, with the publication of his Social Statics. According to Spencer, the ravenous maw of jingoism stood poised to devour the individual and usher in “the new slavery”.
The Victorians are often held to be insufferable zealots and prudes. It is beyond dispute that early 19th century Britain saw a religious revival within public life. An array of missionary societies were founded, many of them bolstered by The Clapham Sect — which had risen to prominence on the crest of the abolitionist movement. Its members held feverish sermons at Holy Trinity Church on Clapham, inspiring undecided missionaries to spread civilisation. Their preachings were zealously puritanical and dogmatic in tone. In response to the Indian Mutiny, as it was referred to then, preacher Charles Spurgeon essentially essentially calls for holy war:
‘My friends, what crimes they have committed! … The Indian government never ought to have tolerated the religion of the Hindoos at all [sic] (!). If my religion consisted of bestial*ty, infanticide and murder, I should have no right to it unless I was prepared to be hanged. The religion of the Hindoos is no more than a mass of the rankest filth that imagination ever conceived. The Gods they worship are not entitled to the least atom of respect. Their worship necessitates everything that is evil and morality must put it down. The sword must be taken out of its sheath, to cut off our fellow subjects by their thousands’[5]
By the 1830s, the Clapham Sect even held sway over parliament. Its tireless campaigning, for instance, prompted the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. In his study of the sect’s sociopolitical ramifications The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s circle changed Britain, Stephen Tomkin argues that the Clapham Sect was instrumental in moulding Victorian moral codes. In his own words, ‘the ethos of Clapham became the spirit of the age’[6]
Yet it would be a stretch to say Clapham-puritanism was representative of Victorian society. We demonstrably know it wasn’t. Take, for instance, the reception of Charles Darwin’s The Origins of the Species. Contrary to popular belief, evolution wasn’t shunned by Victorian society as apostasy. On the contrary, it was embraced. Even clergymen were swept off their feet by Darwin’s theories, becoming evolutionary biology enthusiasts — among them Charles Kingsley. In fact, atheism was a shibboleth of the British intelligentsia. G.K. Chesterton once remarked that by the 1890s, ‘atheism had become the religion of the suburbs’.[7]
The notion that the Victorians were prude and dull also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In his Inventing the Victorians, Sweet gives a thoroughly engaging account of the front page of The Times from the 1st of January, 1861. Out of the 179 advertisem*nts listed, 81 relate specifically to entertainment.[8] The page is a bristling panoply of colour (figuratively), brimming with life and excitement. There are advertisem*nts for innumerable gadgets and widgets jumping out at the reader, in Sweet’s words; ‘gasping’ of ‘breathless excitement’. Opportunities to experience thrills, excitement and entertainment were readily available in the form of music halls, magic shows, freak shows, circuses, zoos and much more. As for sexual repression, the Victorian era is notorious for its commercial availability of erotica. Lewd, racy serials were circulated widely within all social classes.
Victorian anxiety toward nudity also seems ‘invented’, to co-opt Sweet’s terminology. Queen Victoria herself would often draw sketches of the nude male, even gifting select ones to Prince Albert. Although the famous ‘Bathing machines’ have become a symbol of Victorian neuroticism and repression, they do not appear to have been considered absolutely essential . Famous diarist Reverend Francis Kilvert, for instance, praised the ‘delicious feeling of freedom’ of bathing in the nude, as one ’[strips] in the open air … [while] running naked down to the sea’.[9]
The notion that the Victorians were a pack of imperialist warmongers is also spurious. ‘Interest’ in empire was primarily reserverd for public servants and missionaries. As mentioned above, the renaissance of missionary efforts in the 19t century was accompanied by a rekindled desire to ‘civilise’ heathen lands. However, the Empire’s expansion, power castlings and machinations failed to elicit interest among the broader masses. As Jan Morris Notes in his Pax Britannica, the imperial ideal was slow to permeate British society. Even at the time of the Diamond Jubilee — the alleged zenith of imperial glory — Morris believes most of the British population regarded the Empire as ‘vague appendages’ of sea-power, ‘scattered somewhere beyond the horizon’ — ‘ill-explained’ and out of sight[10].
The Victorian value system was complex. It is often misrepresented or misunderstood. Many historians can’t see past its internal contradictions. And who can blame them? Victorian morality constantly tried to reconcile immiscible opposites: rationalism and superstition (e.g.seances), individualism and militarism, science and religion, liberalism and socialism. Victorianism was a study in having a cake and eating it too. Because it was so rife with contradictions, historians are tempted to beat our own drum of modernity: thank Heavens we have taken such progressive strides since then. But upon closer inspection, we’re presented with a more nuanced image. They were, Sweet argues, not dull, not sexually repressed — but restrained and prudish, and probably less hypocritical about sex than we are today. Maybe they even had more fun than we have. They weren’t all religious zealots — when Darwin published his work, he was censured by scientists, not believers. Working class London denizens weren’t hard-line imperialists — in fact, we’re arguably much more forgiving today when the state pushes to widen its own prerogatives.
The values they held: personal responsibility, self-reliance, industriousness and individualism were, and are values worth adhering to. They fostered independence of spirit and action. Most would agree that these are sound values. In many ways, we have only rephrased them: ‘You shouldn’t care about what other people think about you!’, ‘You don’t need him or her’, ‘Don’t have children too early’, ‘Move away from home and get a taste of the “real world”.
Victorians strayed from their values. Men kept mistresses and subscribed to erotic publications. Yes, individualism was on the wane from the 1870s onwards. Yes, many Victorians grew increasingly enamoured with Empire at the expense of personal liberty by 1900. This is all true. However, in terms of straying from our own values, this writer can’t help but wonder whether the hypocrisy of the 21st century far exceeds that of the Victorians: Our primary concern today is what others think of us — be it at social functions or social media. Dreading solitude and introspection, we bury ourselves in devices and social media to evade responsibility — all the while extolling the virtues of personal responsibility in public schools. We endorse promiscuity in the name of progressivism, yet sneer at those who put it into practice.
There is nothing new under sun.
[1] Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1.3.371)
[2] Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (The University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 261.
[3] Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Draft version, http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/), p. 412.
[4] Jan Morris, Heaven’s Command (Faber and Faber), p. 344.
[5] Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (Penguin), p. 121.
[6] Stephen Tomkins, The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s circle changed Britain (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2010), p. 248.
[7] A. N. Wilson, After the Victorians: The World our Parents Knew (Random House, 2013), p. 80.
[8] Matthew Sweet, Inventing the Victorians (Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 1.
[9] Francis Kilvert, A Wiltshire Diary, ‘Thursday 5 September, 1872’
[10] Jan Morris, Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 19.
