Victorian Minds: A Study of Intellectuals in Crisis and Ideologies in Transition
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
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Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugness, hypocrisy, and mindlessness, it now suggests quite the reverse: an age of high intellectual, moral, and spiritual tension, in which the typical problems of modernity were posed in their most acute forms. Gertrude Himmelfarb's distinguished piece of intellectual history explores these tensions and problems with sympathy, candor, and critical subtlety. Victorian Minds is a study of intellectuals in crisis and of ideologies in show more transition, rendered with an elegance of style and thought. "Few works that I know convey the excitement of the intellectual life of 19th-century England as immediately. ... The essays are remarkable no less for the cogency of their wit than for the range and precision of their scholarship"--Lionel Trilling. "Precise and discriminating ... an exemplary study of the 19th century and a superb introduction to the 20th."--Robert A. Nisbet. "Miss Himmelfarb is a writer to whom the organization of ideas into intricate shapes and patterns is imperative, and like many of her subjects-and comparatively few modern intellectuals-she is capable of poised and meaningful generalization."-- A. S. Byatt. show lessTags
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themulhern "Victorian Minds" contains an essay on John Buchan which intrigued me enough to make me want to read a novel of his, something I had not done since a very long time ago.
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I read only the chapters on Buchan, whose work I know very well, and Bentham, who I know hardly at all.
The Bentham chapter was the better of the two. Bentham's lifelong obsession with the Panopticon provides a strong narrative drive. Also, as Bentham's plans are, to quote Wayland Smithers "unconscionably fiendish" -- at one point extending to include a national archipelago of panopticon-style poorhouses where the indigent and their children would be worked and subject to the governance of the super-intendant. A person Himmelfarb plausibly argues Bentham meant from the beginning to be none other than himself. With that as background it is hard not to read comments from Bentham in the voice of a cartoon villain: "But for him [King show more George] all the paupers in the country, as well as all the prisoners in the country, would have been in my hands."
The Buchan chapter is a very good essay. Sympathetic to Buchan, but to my admittedly partisan eye, not sympathetic enough. It also contains a material error of interpretation (the same one, interestingly, noted here by a critic of Nancy Goldstone: https://www.wsj.com/articles/buchan-wasnt-any-kind-of-bigot-1441045584).
Her final paragraph is I think thoughtful, stimulating, and not fully correct:
Buchan - Calvinist in religion, Tory in politics, and romantic in sensibility - is obviously the antithesis of the liberal. It is no accident that he was addicted to a genre, the romantic tale of adventure, which is itself alien to the liberal temper. For what kind of romance would it be that feared to characterize or categorize, to indulge the sense of evil, violence, and apocalypse? It is no accident, either, that the predominance of liberal values has meant the degeneration of a literary form so congenial to the Tory imagination. show less
The Bentham chapter was the better of the two. Bentham's lifelong obsession with the Panopticon provides a strong narrative drive. Also, as Bentham's plans are, to quote Wayland Smithers "unconscionably fiendish" -- at one point extending to include a national archipelago of panopticon-style poorhouses where the indigent and their children would be worked and subject to the governance of the super-intendant. A person Himmelfarb plausibly argues Bentham meant from the beginning to be none other than himself. With that as background it is hard not to read comments from Bentham in the voice of a cartoon villain: "But for him [King show more George] all the paupers in the country, as well as all the prisoners in the country, would have been in my hands."
The Buchan chapter is a very good essay. Sympathetic to Buchan, but to my admittedly partisan eye, not sympathetic enough. It also contains a material error of interpretation (the same one, interestingly, noted here by a critic of Nancy Goldstone: https://www.wsj.com/articles/buchan-wasnt-any-kind-of-bigot-1441045584).
Her final paragraph is I think thoughtful, stimulating, and not fully correct:
Buchan - Calvinist in religion, Tory in politics, and romantic in sensibility - is obviously the antithesis of the liberal. It is no accident that he was addicted to a genre, the romantic tale of adventure, which is itself alien to the liberal temper. For what kind of romance would it be that feared to characterize or categorize, to indulge the sense of evil, violence, and apocalypse? It is no accident, either, that the predominance of liberal values has meant the degeneration of a literary form so congenial to the Tory imagination. show less
These are essays about individuals who were, in some sense, Victorians. Himmelfarb starts early, with Burke, and ends late with Buchan. I read the entire Buchan essay, and then I wanted to read a book by Buchan, for the first time in a very long time.
Reprints articles purblished elsewhere earlier.
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25+ Works 1,958 Members
Gertrude Himmelfarb was born in New York City and studied at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago. A distinguished historian, she has received numerous honorary degrees, fellowships, and awards, including the 2004 National Humanities Medal. She is a fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the American Philosophical show more Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of American Historians. She has written extensively on Victorian England and more generally on intellectual and cultural history. show less
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 941.081 — History & geography History of Europe British Isles Historical periods of British Isles 1837- Period of Victoria and House of Windsor Victoria 1837-1901
- LCC
- DA533 .H55 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Great Britain History of Great Britain England History By period Modern, 1485-
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- English
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