Victorian Moral Grandeur

George Eliot: The Emergent Self By Ruby V. Redinger

Knopf, 515 pp., $15 The Victorians have a justified reputation for a concern with sexual morality and decorum. In the past decade ordinary readers have been shocked and surprised to learn that the practice of what Steven Marcus called “those other Victorians,” and even Victorians with whom we are more familiar, deviated from the Evangelical model of joyless instinctual fulfillment. But it is seldom noticed that it was morals and ethics generally, and not sex in particular, which so troubled the Victorians. The moral problem seemed so acute to them because they believed that the transcendental assurances as well as the institutional guardians of morality were on the point of giving way.

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Stephen J. Tonsor

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George Eliot: The Emergent Self By Ruby V. Redinger

Knopf, 515 pp., $15 The Victorians have a justified reputation for a concern with sexual morality and decorum. In the past decade ordinary readers have been shocked and surprised to learn that the practice of what Steven Marcus called “those other Victorians,” and even Victorians with whom we are more familiar, deviated from the Evangelical model of joyless instinctual fulfillment. But it is seldom noticed that it was morals and ethics generally, and not sex in particular, which so troubled the Victorians. The moral problem seemed so acute to them because they believed that the transcendental assurances as well as the institutional guardians of morality were on the point of giving way.