Thus a characteristic Victorian advice giver of 1870 and a modern purveyor of science around 1900 agreed in their emotional recommendations. Jacob Abbott, author of twenty-eight Rollo books and several advice manuals, was a Congregational minister bent on practical interpretations of Christianity, combining moral lessons with various kinds of factual information. He was big on courage tested by fear, on controlled anger, and on redeeming love. Alice Birney, writing in the early 1900s, was a consumer of the new psychology, having trained with Hall. She participated in various organizations designed to provide mothers with the latest expertise. Explicit moralisms and applied Christianity were not for her. But the emotional content of her work was scarcely different from that of Abbott. She too wanted loving mothers, sweet daughters, morally indignant sons, and courageous boys (though as we will later see she did complicate this last goal slightly).78
The relationship between Victorian emotionology and other aspects of Victorian culture was complex, which is one reason why it has frequently been misconstrued. As Victorians sought to preserve emotional depth while inculcating appropriate targeting and control, they were also involved in a progressive attack on poor bodily discipline. Their etiquette books, another expanding cultural genre that arose with the other kinds of advice literature and attempted to meet similar needs in guiding middle-class families amid strangers and in unfamiliar urban settings, pressed for increasing civilization. Spitting, lack of cleanliness, sloppy posture, brazen stares, drumming of fingers—all were brought, in principle at least, under growing control. Not only etiquette books but also costume itself added to bodily discipline, providing tight collars for men and tight bodices for women along with a host of rules about proper accoutrements from head to toe. Far more space was devoted to proper bodily control when walking and to proper clothing and manners—“If there is any man whom you wish to conciliate, take off your hat to him as often as you meet him”—than to comments on emotion. Concerning the body and its etiquette, a theme of increasing discipline and repression prevailed without significant qualification—except insofar as middle-class people might modify or ignore the rules in actual practice.79 Where emotion had physical manifestations, the standards were again severe, as in the disapproval of public laughter and other conversational excess in the nineteenth-century manners books.
Emotions themselves, however, were different. The etiquette books preached control of anger and other impulses, to be sure, though we will see that even they allowed exceptions for issues like politics that followed the more general emotionology. But the control theme overall was combined with the positive emphasis on passion—which means that the standards applied to emotional life were, quite simply, different from those addressed to the body. Severe physical discipline might in fact have prevailed precisely because emotional life offered so many opportunities for compensatory fervor that purely corporal regulation seemed rather trivial by comparison. Many a tightly dressed, respectable young man or woman could pour out his or her passion with no sense of contradiction—indeed, their physical rigors could be endured precisely because the emotional outlets seemed so much more important. Twentieth-century observers, looking back on Victorian dress and manners, might readily assume that emotional cramping was just as severe, particularly on discovering that there were indeed some strict emotional rules of real importance. But the equation would be wrong; indeed, as we will later see, such an assumption reveals a characteristic twentieth-century confusion about what constraint means.
As noted, sexuality rested somewhere between constraint of bodily habits and emphasis on appropriate emotional fervor. Sexuality had its place, according to most Victorian advice, though it was potentially even more dangerous than the riskiest emotions and even more hemmed in by age and frequency restrictions. As emotional prescriptions themselves made clear, however, sexuality should supplement, never rival, emotional intensity. Again, the power of true love could make the merely physical limits that were part of the Victorian concept of respectability seem readily endurable. Here too, twentieth-century views about the centrality of sexual standards should not lead to confusion about the Victorians; repression in one area did not mean repression across the board. In fact, sexual “repression” actually could facilitate the emotional sparks the Victorians cherished; keeping sex in check, though not to the point of complete neglect of its pleasures, aided love and vice versa. Correspondingly, while sexual constraints produced clear attempts to establish compensatory outlets—in pornography, for example—no such catharsis was needed in the area of emotion, where intensity was allowable.80 Despite their undeniable concern for respectable behavior and their attacks on rudeness, the Victorians did not see the body, sexuality, and emotions as cut from the same cloth. They approached each with varying degrees of rigor and in the end heightened their reliance on emotional intensity precisely because their goals in managing body and sexuality were so demanding.
The mature Victorian emotional culture served advice literature and uplifting fiction from its emergence in the 1840s until well past 1900. The culture was complex, asking men and women to relate to each other emotionally but also to differ, insisting on emotional intensity amid injunctions of strict etiquette and family discipline, informing men that emotions absolutely essential in the public sphere needed to be suppressed at home. Yet, clearly, it was also serviceable. It met Victorian cultural needs. Its very complexity promoted its durability: themes of control could be emphasized against uncivilized behaviors, while themes of passion could drive home the sanctity of family or the joy of action (this last lest the middle class become too stuffy). While we will shortly turn to the demise of this culture, it will be no surprise that elements of the Victorian amalgam persisted in the new synthesis. Ideals of motherlove, intense romance, or anger-propelled social crusaders continued to inspire, complicating the process of change. Before addressing this process, however, I must complete my presentation of the Victorian baseline by discussing the causes and effects of this rich emotional culture. After all, claims of relative consistency and persistence—the themes of this chapter—mean little if the emotional culture is only loosely related to the driving forces of middle-class life, or if it did not connect to real beliefs and behaviors. To be taken seriously, emotional culture must be caused, and it must cause; the Victorian version met both tests.
3 Evaluating the Victorian Emotional Style: Causes and Consequences
Major features of Victorian emotional culture have been well described in recent years. Despite persistent and erroneous oversimplifications about blanket repressiveness and hostility to spontaneity, in fact the picture painted in the previous chapter blends a host of familiar portraits.1 Victorian interest in emotional intensity combined with greater strictures concerning sexuality and bodily control, with emotion actually offering some relief from the more rigorous standards applied to other areas.
The causes of the Victorian style are, however, less well known, partly because the emotional culture has not previously been addressed in its entirety. Furthermore, although we will see that some of the specific consequences have been traced, analysis of effects can be improved