Books in Brief: Victorian People and Ideas

Victorian People and Ideas, by R. D. Atlick (Norton, 338 pp., $10). Although intended merely as an introduction to the cultural background of English Victorian letters, this book provides more than its foreword might seem to promise. It presents a series of well crafted essays on Victorian society, broadly ranging over a multitude of topics. Parliamentary reforms, the power struggles between Tories and Liberals, economic changes, the religious renewal within the Anglican and dissenting churches, sexual mores, and the spiritual and scientific impact of Darwinism, all lie within its compass. The work, though by no means original, treats with the appropriate respect the views of such scholars as Elie Halévy and G. D. H. Cole. One section discusses the convergence of Utilitarian and Evangelical ideas in shaping the dominant mind set of middle class Victorians. Despite the divergent starting points of the Utilitarians—one being secular and materialistic and the other scripturally oriented—both stressed “the sacrifice of immediate pleasure” and the dignity of labor. Atlick also finds a link between the emergence of Victorian morality and the persistence of eighteenth century rationalism. Once past the individualism of the Romantics and the debauchery of the Regency, mid-nineteenth century Englishmen sought a return to the sharply ethical focus of Enlightenment thought. Utilitarianism and Evangelicism, each in its own way, satisfied this need. The book does contain one irritant, a tendency to sermonize on issues currently fashionable. Carefully listing the sexist practices of Victorian England, it then attributes the supposedly rampant emotional disorders of upper and middle class ladies to “an unnaturally sheltered and restricted existence.” One might wonder why such afflictions have not become any less prevalent among their modern counterparts, now increasingly emancipated. Atlick also swallows without reservation Engels’ account, written in the 1840s, of working class misery, proclaiming his description as true “in all its sickening but verifiable detail.” Although material privation certainly did exist, the detail referred to was the work of a highly partisan parliamentary commission intent on discrediting the Liberals then in power. Despite such lapses, and even despite the attempt to impose an invidious, though inaccurate, context on Burke’s remark about “the swinish multitude,” the scholarship remains basically sound. And the volume does make for fast and agreeable reading.

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Paul Gottfried

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Victorian People and Ideas, by R. D. Atlick (Norton, 338 pp., $10). Although intended merely as an introduction to the cultural background of English Victorian letters, this book provides more than its foreword might seem to promise. It presents a series of well crafted essays on Victorian society, broadly ranging over a multitude of topics. Parliamentary reforms, the power struggles between Tories and Liberals, economic changes, the religious renewal within the Anglican and dissenting churches, sexual mores, and the spiritual and scientific impact of Darwinism, all lie within its compass. The work, though by no means original, treats with the appropriate respect the views of such scholars as Elie Halévy and G. D. H. Cole. One section discusses the convergence of Utilitarian and Evangelical ideas in shaping the dominant mind set of middle class Victorians. Despite the divergent starting points of the Utilitarians—one being secular and materialistic and the other scripturally oriented—both stressed “the sacrifice of immediate pleasure” and the dignity of labor. Atlick also finds a link between the emergence of Victorian morality and the persistence of eighteenth century rationalism. Once past the individualism of the Romantics and the debauchery of the Regency, mid-nineteenth century Englishmen sought a return to the sharply ethical focus of Enlightenment thought. Utilitarianism and Evangelicism, each in its own way, satisfied this need. The book does contain one irritant, a tendency to sermonize on issues currently fashionable. Carefully listing the sexist practices of Victorian England, it then attributes the supposedly rampant emotional disorders of upper and middle class ladies to “an unnaturally sheltered and restricted existence.” One might wonder why such afflictions have not become any less prevalent among their modern counterparts, now increasingly emancipated. Atlick also swallows without reservation Engels’ account, written in the 1840s, of working class misery, proclaiming his description as true “in all its sickening but verifiable detail.” Although material privation certainly did exist, the detail referred to was the work of a highly partisan parliamentary commission intent on discrediting the Liberals then in power. Despite such lapses, and even despite the attempt to impose an invidious, though inaccurate, context on Burke’s remark about “the swinish multitude,” the scholarship remains basically sound. And the volume does make for fast and agreeable reading.