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Inventing the Victorians: What We Think We Know About Them and Why We're Wrong by Matthew Sweet
thefullbronte's review against another edition
5.0
Haiku:
Dr. Sweet excels
debunking myth after myth.
People never change.
Dr. Sweet excels
debunking myth after myth.
People never change.
catsobvi's review against another edition
3.0
This was an enjoyable and insightful book. The author’s main point is that the Victorian stereotype of the stuffy, prudish, repressed society is inaccurate. They were more like us than we think, and they may even have been more open about some things than we are now. They were the beginning of our contemporary ideas on all manner of topics. The author himself says that there is so much information from the period it would be easy to make whatever case for the Victorians that you wanted. But I think this just shows that the Victorian society was more varied and difficult to categorize, as any society peopled by diverse personalities would be.
There was a lot of fun, anecdotal evidence given throughout and covering a wide range of topics. The Victorians loved sensationalism, sex and scandals. And, contrary to popular belief, they did not seek these things in secret, hiding away from the light of day in which they maintained their prudish and repressed façade. Their sexuality was more fluid and less defined than it is today. Pornography was one of the most lucrative businesses of the time. They were the initiators of junk mail, commercial tie-ins for books and other entertainment, publicity stunts and other intense marketing schemes. Their seemingly-uptight and complex etiquette may have actually had common sense behind it.
An idea he brings up is not judging previous periods by today’s standards. Things we may now consider horrible were not necessarily thought of in a negative way and were often considered normal. We can see this in the Victorian view of children. They created an ideal of childhood innocence but they also sexualized children. We judge the Victorian’s harshly for this, yet we perpetuate both of these views today. Anti-pedophile campaigns v. teenage pop stars prancing around in something akin to underwear. We also view the Victorian fascination with freak shows as monstrous and cruel, yet the author shows how this lifestyle could be immensely lucrative and freeing for those who may have few other options. They were celebrities and had more control over their lives than we see in the modern stereotype of the poor victims locked up and mistreated. Of course, the reality of any morally ambiguous situation is difficult to pin down and will make most people uncomfortable, especially since morality tends to be viewed as absolute, not fluid.
He also makes a case against the concept of ‘separate spheres’, claiming that the domestic and professional worlds were far more complex than this. Women worked in the home and outside while men helped with house work. The Victorian concept of masculinity and what was proper conduct for a man was rife with contradictions, leading to a lack of consensus on the subject. Women had more power and men were less confident in their power than the one-dimensional stereotypes will allow.
Overall, this is an entertaining intro to the Victorians.
There was a lot of fun, anecdotal evidence given throughout and covering a wide range of topics. The Victorians loved sensationalism, sex and scandals. And, contrary to popular belief, they did not seek these things in secret, hiding away from the light of day in which they maintained their prudish and repressed façade. Their sexuality was more fluid and less defined than it is today. Pornography was one of the most lucrative businesses of the time. They were the initiators of junk mail, commercial tie-ins for books and other entertainment, publicity stunts and other intense marketing schemes. Their seemingly-uptight and complex etiquette may have actually had common sense behind it.
An idea he brings up is not judging previous periods by today’s standards. Things we may now consider horrible were not necessarily thought of in a negative way and were often considered normal. We can see this in the Victorian view of children. They created an ideal of childhood innocence but they also sexualized children. We judge the Victorian’s harshly for this, yet we perpetuate both of these views today. Anti-pedophile campaigns v. teenage pop stars prancing around in something akin to underwear. We also view the Victorian fascination with freak shows as monstrous and cruel, yet the author shows how this lifestyle could be immensely lucrative and freeing for those who may have few other options. They were celebrities and had more control over their lives than we see in the modern stereotype of the poor victims locked up and mistreated. Of course, the reality of any morally ambiguous situation is difficult to pin down and will make most people uncomfortable, especially since morality tends to be viewed as absolute, not fluid.
He also makes a case against the concept of ‘separate spheres’, claiming that the domestic and professional worlds were far more complex than this. Women worked in the home and outside while men helped with house work. The Victorian concept of masculinity and what was proper conduct for a man was rife with contradictions, leading to a lack of consensus on the subject. Women had more power and men were less confident in their power than the one-dimensional stereotypes will allow.
Overall, this is an entertaining intro to the Victorians.
grauspitz's review against another edition
This just isn't worth my time. Not only does the author not bother defining the scope of the book, such as what years fall within the Victorian period (I had initially assumed he'd stop at 1914 but then he goes and examines works from the 1920s and calls them Victorian) or what countries he's going to focus on, but he doesn't really have a central argument beyond "look at all these cultural things from the Victorian period." He also doesn't really attempt to connect any of the examples he uses and just jumps from one vaguely similar topic to another.
I had also hoped that the author would spend a bit of time examining how, where and why these stereotypes about the Victorian period emerged but it seems like that topic is only mentioned in the introduction.
From what I've seen in other reviews, I will have similar qualms with the rest of the book so I'm just going to put it down now instead of pressing on. I just don't care enough about the Victorian period to want to read a book that can essentially be boiled down to a bunch of amusing anecedotes about the Victorian period that are vaguely connected to each other.
I had also hoped that the author would spend a bit of time examining how, where and why these stereotypes about the Victorian period emerged but it seems like that topic is only mentioned in the introduction.
From what I've seen in other reviews, I will have similar qualms with the rest of the book so I'm just going to put it down now instead of pressing on. I just don't care enough about the Victorian period to want to read a book that can essentially be boiled down to a bunch of amusing anecedotes about the Victorian period that are vaguely connected to each other.
librarianonparade's review against another edition
4.0
Perhaps no other era in British history is subject to quite as much stereotyping and myth-making as that of the Victorians. We acknowledge the contribution they made to our lives, the legacy they have bequeathed in the forms of bridges, buildings, roads, museums and theatres, the Empire, but to a very large extent we still dismiss what they represented to themselves.
As Matthew Sweet ably points out,,the Victorians are what we define ourselves against. It is in rebelling against Victorian strictures that we have created our supposedly more free, more permissive, more relaxed, modern society. After all, that's how we see the Victorians, isn't it? Stodgy. Uptight. Repressed. Hypocritical. Humourless. Patriarchal. Straight-laced. Everything we aspire not to be be.
But Sweet explodes a lot of these myths, highlighting exhaustively just how wrong much of this actually is. He chronicles Victorian attitudes to sex, crime, drugs, pornography, the family, children, sensational journalism, publicity stunts, homosexuality - much of which appears surprisingly 'modern' to our eyes. When one ventures off the beaten path of historical research, there is an astonishing wealth of material still housed in libraries, museums and archives that demonstrate how often the Victorians were there ahead of us in the search for the new and modern. Perhaps we owe more to the Victorians than just our architecture and infrastructure...
As Matthew Sweet ably points out,,the Victorians are what we define ourselves against. It is in rebelling against Victorian strictures that we have created our supposedly more free, more permissive, more relaxed, modern society. After all, that's how we see the Victorians, isn't it? Stodgy. Uptight. Repressed. Hypocritical. Humourless. Patriarchal. Straight-laced. Everything we aspire not to be be.
But Sweet explodes a lot of these myths, highlighting exhaustively just how wrong much of this actually is. He chronicles Victorian attitudes to sex, crime, drugs, pornography, the family, children, sensational journalism, publicity stunts, homosexuality - much of which appears surprisingly 'modern' to our eyes. When one ventures off the beaten path of historical research, there is an astonishing wealth of material still housed in libraries, museums and archives that demonstrate how often the Victorians were there ahead of us in the search for the new and modern. Perhaps we owe more to the Victorians than just our architecture and infrastructure...
wealhtheow's review against another edition
2.0
Sweet sets out to prove that the Victorians were not so different from us. He has a point: they were the beginning of the current industrialized, urban-oriented society we live in today. To this day many of the phrases, assumptions, and phenomena (sex scandals as news, professional sports teams, advertising techniques) from that era remain.
Unfortunately, Sweet is good at research but bad and piecing it together. He lards the text with heaps of anecdotes and snide asides, makes wild assumptions, then contradicts himself only paragraphs later. His logic is faulty at best, and laughably insane at worst. One chapter he maintained that prostitution was not as common as historians think; the very next chapter he talks about how very prevelent prostitution was, and how this proves that Victorians were open minded about sex. He also spends at least 20% of the book talking about current events in a very hack-journalist sort of way: half the chapter on Victoria journalists' use of sex to sell newspapers is actually about Sweet's momentary glimpse of Monica Lewinsky. The chapter closes with a cigar joke. God I hate him.
"Although Virginia Woolf claimed to have found her visit to the movies in January 1915 'very boring,' it is doubtful whether she would have found the freedom to cut and splice the chronology of her narratives without the example of the cinematograph." wtf? don't mess with the Woolf. Almost every chapter contains an attempt to chip away at the Bloomsbury group--luckily Sweet sucks, so it's hard to take his nuggets of cruelety and poor logic seriously.
Note: According to the British Board of Film Censors, in 1912, the list of 22 reasons for which a film might be cut or censored included "medical operations," indecorous dancing," "native customs in foreign lands abhorrent to British ideas," staggering drunkards," or "funerals."
Unfortunately, Sweet is good at research but bad and piecing it together. He lards the text with heaps of anecdotes and snide asides, makes wild assumptions, then contradicts himself only paragraphs later. His logic is faulty at best, and laughably insane at worst. One chapter he maintained that prostitution was not as common as historians think; the very next chapter he talks about how very prevelent prostitution was, and how this proves that Victorians were open minded about sex. He also spends at least 20% of the book talking about current events in a very hack-journalist sort of way: half the chapter on Victoria journalists' use of sex to sell newspapers is actually about Sweet's momentary glimpse of Monica Lewinsky. The chapter closes with a cigar joke. God I hate him.
"Although Virginia Woolf claimed to have found her visit to the movies in January 1915 'very boring,' it is doubtful whether she would have found the freedom to cut and splice the chronology of her narratives without the example of the cinematograph." wtf? don't mess with the Woolf. Almost every chapter contains an attempt to chip away at the Bloomsbury group--luckily Sweet sucks, so it's hard to take his nuggets of cruelety and poor logic seriously.
Note: According to the British Board of Film Censors, in 1912, the list of 22 reasons for which a film might be cut or censored included "medical operations," indecorous dancing," "native customs in foreign lands abhorrent to British ideas," staggering drunkards," or "funerals."
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