Guilt did not, of course, fully replace shame, and an element of shame continued to inhere in both family reprimands and public chastisements. Guilt and shame are not entirely discrete in emotional terms, in any event, nor need it be argued that shame is necessarily less intense emotionally than guilt. It can be superficial, laughed off, as was not infrequently the case in colonial New England; but it can be deeply anguishing as well. The inculcation of guilt, however, was intended to make intense emotional and moral wrestling part of the fundamental experience of recognizing one’s own wrongs; and the wrestling was internal, part of an emotional arsenal that was teaching people to acknowledge, manage, and, finally, utilize the intense passions of which they were capable. Indeed, inculcation of guilt could simply add to the depths of shame. Victorian etiquette books, as John Kasson has demonstrated, multiplied rules of dress and bodily control, thereby increasing the number of occasions on which private shame might be felt in public. When these occasions were magnified by a conjoint feeling of guilt at the omission, the overall emotional intensity, and its designed deterrent effect, could be greatly heightened.73 Finally, inculcation of guilt, particularly at the familial level, depended on the larger loving environment that Victorian emotionology preached. Isolation from family plus consciousness of damage to loved ones was now experienced as a separation from a deeply positive emotional environment. Guilt, as an experience of self-hate, flourished readily in this context, and again it differed from the reactions that simple scorn from the outside world could generate.
Guilt, then, must be added to the other intense emotional attributes encouraged by Victorian culture. The person who could not react profoundly to his or her own shortcomings—the person who might depend simply on regulation from the outside—was emotionally inadequate. Just as a man of good character had the anger necessary to spur achievement, the courage to face fear, and the capacity to love, so he must, as needs be, have the ability to feel guilt. The woman of good character needed the capacity to love in several forms, and she also needed to be capable of feeling guilty when other emotional norms like serenity of temper escaped her. The harsh bath of guilt did not mean being overwhelmed—for like other intense emotions, guilt must finally be mastered through action, apology, and correction; it should not paralyze. Again we see real consistency in Victorian emotional culture, in which capacity for guilt related readily to other emotional goals.
Conclusion
Victorians approved of passion, and they used the word frequently. They wanted men to have the passion to impel them to great deeds, and they wanted women to share with men a certain spiritual passion in love. The blander word “emotion,” which has gained currency in the twentieth century, appeared rarely in Victorian discussion, where certain kinds of quiet, moral impulses were described as sentiments and the equally important, more vigorous surges came under the heading of passion. Word use is tricky, of course, and Victorians used the word “passion” more generally than we do. But they also used it openly, without an inevitably accompanying caution and without confining it to the sexual realm. In this respect, their vocabulary corresponded to the real values culturally ascribed to targeted anger, courage, love, and grief.
Contrary to some bloodless stereotypes of the nineteenth century, the Victorians even associated passion with civilization. They saw what they termed more primitive societies (by which they meant every society but their own) as calmer and more restrained. They granted that tight-knit, sedate communities avoided certain problems, like frequency of suicide, but they found the stimulus of modern urban life—where “all human passions are exercised with more fourfold constancy and intensity”—both inevitable and desirable on balance.74
Victorian emotionality surely included more standards than those applied to the dangerous emotions, to love, to grief, and to guilt. It certainly emphasized disgust, when moral disgrace, uncleanliness, or odor was encountered. It could include, particularly in early Victorianism and later among women, a proclivity to tearful sadness that deserves exploration in light of the larger emotional culture. The emotional charge behind the rise of humanitarian sentiment, which ultimately became part of the Victorian emotional style broadly construed, also needs further assessment, for its promptings of intense empathy with distant peoples readily connected to other features of the emotionology. We know that humanitarian urges were novel, arising in part from changes in philosophical beliefs and economic systems. Their fit with the new emotional culture needs more attention, for humanitarianism served as an additional outlet for vigorous feeling. The full range of Victorian emotional criteria has yet to be probed, and there may be some further surprises. The main point is clear, however. Underlying the extensive discussions of various kinds of emotional goals was a desire to prevent untoward expression or excess combined with equal insistence on the importance of appropriate emotional vigor. Northerners, men, middle-class Victorians in general were told to expect to experience passions, beginning in childhood, that they must learn to direct, use, and savor. Victorian relish in intense, if focused, emotionality related to a host of other interests—in strong wills, in romantic idylls, in evocative cemeteries, in tales of heroism, and of course in true, loving womanhood. The Victorian era began with the recognition of emotion’s central role—such that a leading Unitarian could seek to dispel charges of dry rationalism with appeals to a “heart-stirring energy”—and the same theme picked up momentum in subsequent decades.75
The emotional culture was purveyed in a variety of forms. Advice to parents was intended to launch appropriate socialization, for after the early period, in which childish innocence seemed only to require parental restraint, Victorian prescribers judged that parents had more positive lessons to impart, providing models of love and guidance in handling the essential but risky emotions. The emotional culture did not, however, assume that early childhood ended the process of emotional development. This is why children’s stories assumed such a hortatory aspect, offering models for courage and warnings against both loss of control and emotional vapidity. A related genre of youth advice manuals, some authored by the same people who wrote children’s fiction, drove the same lessons home and added pointers on love. Adult fiction, as found in the women’s magazines that were popular among men as well, and marital advice completed the picture.76
Variations existed, to be sure. Advice manuals differed considerably in the amount of space they gave to particular emotional issues. Jealousy, for example, might be passed over completely in youth advice materials, or it might receive a few cautionary paragraphs. But mainstream middle-class literature did not vary much in content, and when variations did occur, they seemed to involve an author’s judgment about whether or not her audience needed to be reminded of the basic rules. There were no widely circulated dissenting views on the necessity of properly directed emotional spark.
Not surprisingly, Victorian emotional culture interacted extensively with formal scientific comment on emotion, as it began to emerge under the aegis of Darwinian theory by the 1870s and 1880s. The chronological relationship was clear: popularized Victorian culture came first. Psychologists like James and Hall added a formal evolutionary twist in looking for species functions for particular emotions, but they did not create the underlying tone. Rather, knowingly or not, they echoed established wisdom, and of course gave it added authority in the process. James commented scientifically on the link between emotions and the body, but then lapsed into standard advice about mastering emotions through diligent practice without destroying passion.77 Hall, as we have seen, precisely delineated the dangers but also the necessity of anger in men. Like the