Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
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In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most respected scholars of Victorian thought and culture, explores the many facets, public and private, of the Victorian idea of morality. Incisively and provocatively she illuminates the moral imagination of the Victorians, the imagination that treasured the complexity of the heart and mind and that sought, by aesthetic means as well as ethical, to adorn and enhance rather than destroy the 'decent drapery of life.' The show more conventional view of Victorianism-a Family Shakespeare purged of indelicacies, piano legs sheathed in pantaloons, and the works of male and female authors chastely residing on separate shelves-gives way to the subtle and sympathetic analysis of an ethos that combined a profound sense of social and moral responsibility with a remarkable tolerance for idiosyncrasy and individuality. Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians invites us to reconsider the complex and colorful panorama of ideas and attitudes, beliefs and behavior, that goes under the name of Victorianism-and it reconsiders well our own relation to that much abused and misunderstood culture.An important book that deserves a wide readership. It deserves to be read for the critical quality of Miss Himmelfarb's mind and the constant questioning of fashionable attitudes. One does not have to agree with her to enjoy the characteristic sharpness of her writing, or the characteristic breadth of her reading.-New York Times Book Review. A collection of extraordinarily intelligent essays, held together not by a single thread of argument but by the sustained moral imagination of an acute student of nineteenth-century life and thought...Miss Himmelfarb's essays make clear that there was nothing wrong with either the Victorians' morality or their imaginations.-National Review. show lessTags
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Fascinante y refrescantemente crítico... Un libro importante... un examen de los pensamientos y la imaginación moral de algunas de las castas predominantes de escritores, pensadores, eruditos y estetas que han dominado la vida cultural inglesa en los últimos doscientos años.
Jan 31, 2012 (Edited)Spanish
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25+ Works 1,956 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
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 306.0942 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Social history Europe England And Wales
- LCC
- HN400 .M6 .H56 — Social sciences Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Social history and conditions. Social problems. By region or country
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 119
- Popularity
- 272,971
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
