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Loading... Inventing the Victorians (2001)by Matthew Sweet
None.  startingover | Feb 1, 2011 |  Thoroughly enjoyable read on a wide cross section of Victorian era myths and facts. (  ) J.v.d.A. | Jul 3, 2007 | 2  |  fringedbenefit | Feb 11, 2007 |
 From Library Journal This fun, iconoclastic read from a British journalist and recent Ph.D. shows that stereotypes of Victorian society don't bear scrutiny. Sweet uses Victorian books, periodicals, memoirs, and advice manuals to counter the myths of a strait-laced, repressed, patriarchal, and gloomy culture. Through an analysis of historical pop culture, Victorians are uncovered as progressive, sexually confused, high-tech, sensation-seeking media junkies. Sweet concludes that the Victorians invented "modernity" and reveals various oft-quoted "facts" to be false. Piano legs, for example, were not modestly hidden, nor legs called limbs; and Queen Victoria had no connection with drafting the amendment criminalizing male "indecent acts" the sponsor merely hoped to reduce buggery's penalty. Sweet points out that mainstream pornography at that time depicted men having same-sex couplings as preludes to male-female sex and that one-third of women were in the formal workforce (favored in the then technologically advanced areas of telegraphy and typing). This book can be enjoyed by a wide audience and is essential reading for 19th-century history buffs and professionals. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
References to this work on external resources.
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He presents evidence to support his theories, though it could be argued that he is as selective as anyone in choosing which sources he uses to back up his arguments; then again, there is an awful lot of source material out there, both proving and disproving some of his key statements, which perhaps only goes to show that the Victorians were as diverse and heterogeneous as we are.
Nevertheless, I think it's a worthwhile project to rescue the Victorians from some of the stereotypical ways in which we view them - that they were prudish, stuffy, stern, and deeply repressed. Are we more enlightened than our ancestors? In some ways, perhaps, but then again our social mores have changed, our values have shifted in some areas (not always for the better, though, necessarily).
Sweet's scope is wide - perhaps too much so - and his subjects range from cinema, to narcotics, sex, food, and - of course - sex. It's a good overview for anyone wanting to know a little more about the Victorians, and as a starting point for thinking about our received ideas of that era and perhaps challenging our own stereotypes. I did feel that Sweet tends to leap from - as another reviewer put it - 'suggestive idea to a monstrous exaggeration', but the book is a good read and filled with interesting facts and plenty of food for thought. [June 2007] (