Talk:Victorian morality

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I've removed the {{cleanup}} tag that I put here earlier as the article has greatly improved thanks to the edits of Theo and others. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 05:17, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

In what way?

The Victorian era saw the rise of the penitentiary. Thus, capital punishment (which was tradionally applied for stealing things like handkerchiefs, etc.) was no longer used.

(It's funny that who ever wrote that in the article was trying to "warm up" to the idea of Victorian morality, but included an incorrect description of it - thus expressing their own conservative desires, not those of the Victoria era). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.69.86 (talk) 05:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just added a sentence to the paragraph on Victoria and Albert regarding sexual behavior: My point does not contradict the paragraph. It shows that both Victoria and Albert were personally affected by the open sexual escapades done by those around them.

I referred to the Prince Consort's broken childhood home due to sexual scandals and his loss of his mother shortly thereafter. This is public info one can see in various sources including Cecil Woodham's and Lady Longford's books on Queen Victoria.

Victorianezine 15:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)Victorianezine[reply]

Victorian prudery sometimes went so far as to deem it improper to say "leg" in mixed company (the preferred euphemism if such must be mentioned was "limb")

A little confusing to me, if there's something I'm missing, just go out and say it.

Because your not sexually oprest enouft.It means this kind of leg ;-)

--81.245.58.149 19:45, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I get the impression a lot of that was limited to the "genteel" middle class in North America - the table leg thing is supposed to originate in a malicious rumour about the Americans started by the British? Livlivliv 00:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

he was a dictator! England was a republic in name only RomanYankee(24.75.194.50 17:18, 23 August 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Look at the Victorian fashion article for what I think is a slightly better take on things. Among other things, it demolishes the piano leg canard.

I studied anthropology, though I never finished my degree, and I did a fair bit of historical work. It's just plain wrong to claim that there was some unified "morality" in 19th century England. People then believed different things, did different things, and argued vociferously. The article seems to be about later stereotypes of Victorian morality, courtesy of Lytton Strachey and the like (again, see the Victorian fashion article). It's useful to discuss the stereotypes, but it's even more necessary to point out how much "Victorians" differed on various topics. Zora 00:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Crime, as we understand it today, might be said to be the creation of the Victorian age. Literacy had created the demand for a popular press; and the press fed on the public's taste for crime, particularly in its more lurid forms. Let's take one one case where Victorian perceptions shaped, and continue to shape, how one particular case has been projected and understood: namely the Whitechapel Murders of 1888. Here we are in the realm of Jack the Ripper. He was a 'gentleman', was he not, one who may even have come all the way down to the slums from the palaces of royalty? Well, in fact, we know virtually nothing about the Ripper, because he was never caught. But the journalists of the day were quite happy to fulfill the popular prejudice, no doubt stimulated by the publication two years previously of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that the Ripper was a 'toff', who got his 'pleasures' slumming in London's seedy east end.

The next big concern was over the nature of criminality itself. Most law-breakers, of course, were from the urban poor, the seedbed of the new 'criminal classes'. An explanation was required, beyond mere poverty of course, and was readily supplied by the likes of Edwin Chadwick, the Poor Law reformer, who believed criminality was the response of the idle and the feckless, tempted by easy returns as an alternative to honest labour. Temperance reformers placed the blame on alcohol, just as reformers in education blamed ignorance and lack of opportunity. For the evangelists, it was all due to the abandonment of the standards set by religion. With the growth of popular forms of Social Darwinsim hereditary became a factor; and by the end of the century the notion of the habitual criminal, tainted by birth and background, was gaining ascendency over the notions of morality and idelness. From this management and control became the dominant elements of law-enforcement; and so it remains today. Clio the Muse 03:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is not appportite for this site removeing it now —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bvernon199 (talk • contribs) 21:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The "Crisis of Faith" would hit religion and the citizens' Faith like a brick. The Crisis of Faith was brought about in 1859 with Charles Darwin's work On the Origin of Species; his theory was (in the basic form) that the Natural World had become what it was through gradual change over eons.[14] He told that natural selection and survival of the fittest was the reason man had survived so long.[15] His theory of evolution based on empirical evidence would call into question Christian beliefs, and the Victorian Values.[16] People's lives became totally uprooted and there was a need to find a new system to base their values and morality on.[17] Unable to completely lose Faith they combined both their Religious beliefs with individual Duty -- [18] duty to one's God, fellow man, social class, neighbour, to the poor and the ill.[19]

What "Crisis of Faith"? Is it a book? You keep capitalizing it like it is a book. In fact, you seem to be capitalizing things all willy nilly.

--68.44.13.238 (talk) 13:03, 8 January 2010 (UTC) Quba Osman[reply]

There were many different reasons for unbelief in the nineteenth century (such as eighteenth-century French arguments like Voltaire's, or the philosophy of Hume), and Darwin's theory was not uncritically accepted (the main problem was that he and his nineteenth-century adherents knew nothing of dominant and recessive genes, and couldn't gainsay the counterargument that mutations would disappear in the gene pool of a large population). This encyclopedia page depends too much on that single book by S. B. 4.154.253.213 (talk) 01:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article is one of history, and this section, as far as the evidence and citations provided goes, seems to be mostly a hopeful projection of what the author assumes was the impact of Darwinism and the supposed universal psychological process of the population being "unable to completely lose their faith". Largely citing one and only one book, this appears more misinformation by someone eager to work his worldview into his historical narrative than objective history. Apart from actual demographic data as to the supposed social impact of the time, this section is nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Empiric (talk • contribs) 14:04, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Boy! This is sloppy. " . . . [T]he outward appearance of dignity and restraint together with the prevalence of social phenomena such as prostitution and child labour." What other society in previous history did *not* have prostitution and child labour?

While I'm griping, there appears to be only one -- perhaps two -- books sited for this article/opinion piece. If there were more, I might be readier to believe its credibility. Pittsburgh Poet (talk) 23:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sexually transmitted diseases were an important element of the Victorian sexual prudery. Note the "free love" movement screeched to a halt when AIDS was introduced. Also, the proliferation and plight of orphans, especially out of wedlock waifs, is not mentioned in articles about "Victorian sexual morality." These issues are interesting and important in the history of sexual morals and habits. It was abt 1860s -1870s that the transmissibility of STDs was discovered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.169.89.135 (talk) 03:19, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is only a single source in use for Religious morality. I note that, from what I know of the subject, it wasn't evolution that the Victorians made a fuss about (except for the real fundamentalist types); it was natural selection and the element of chance. Allens (talk) 22:43, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that 90% of the citations in this article are from 'Bayley, S (2008). Victorian Values: An Introduction. Montreal: Dawson College.' However, I can find nothing about this book anywhere - except for a reference from a year 2000 college course, run by a Susan Bayley at Dawson College, to a 'Manual of readings prepared by the instructor'. Suggest that these citations be removed and replaced by something more appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.7.200.178 (talk) 00:32, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed--and the sections citing Bayley do not actually deal with morality. so I deleted them. Rjensen (talk) 21:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My great-grandmother reckoned that in Victorian times a naked teapot spout was considered to be so suggestive that special covers were knitted to cover the spout.AT Kunene (talk) 15:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion the entire Religious Morality section is in need of a rewrite. I feel that it's poorly-written and has too many clichés.

69.127.82.225 (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

While not limited to English Victorians, the 19th century was ambiguous on race: individual people "of color" could be noble, admirable, etc. but only the white race could be counted on generally, for morality.

The same could be said for "class": only nobility could be "counted on." Disadvantaged people were suspect, though there were individual exceptions. Student7 (talk) 01:10, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Descriptions of body functions were taboo in writing and often verbally, as well. Difficult to tell from general primary sources exactly when the conversion from privies to indoor toilets took place, for example. What sort of "rest stop" arrangements are made for women on stage coaches, for example? Totally missing from literature. At dances at people's homes where many people needed to use facilities? Forget it! Student7 (talk) 01:49, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The text mixes 1) what the morality of the times was with 2) what modern people think it was and 3) what the literature of the times reveals. These need to be clearly delineated. Student7 (talk) 16:39, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]