Finally, early Victorian emotionology began a process by which jealousy came to be viewed as a disproportionately female problem. To the extent that romantic jealousy had long been seen as a sign of weakness, this attribution had some precedent. Other traditional uses of jealousy, however, as in the pursuit of honor, had been disproportionately masculine. No more. Women’s family focus and their own sentimental, loving nature made them particularly susceptible. “As in matters of the heart in general, females are more susceptible to the passion than men.” By the same token, some popularizers argued that women should exercise particularly repressive vigilance: “Jealousy is, on several counts, more inexcusable in a woman than in a man.” Because women’s principal emotional contribution was selfless love, and because as a practical matter jealousy might drive a suitor or spouse away, women needed to keep their possessiveness under wraps. Other stories, while implicitly confirming jealousy as a female issue, suggested a bit more leniency. A housewife’s manual in 1858 described a woman’s growing jealousy of her husband’s preoccupation with work. She is ashamed of her feelings but grows increasingly distracted by them. Finally the husband becomes aware and includes her in his work (in appropriately simple terms). Jealousy in this case is not good, but it can be handled by a compassionate male response with the result that a marriage is recemented.25 When jealousy was considered female and therefore somewhat understandable, and when it might quietly enforce a couple’s unity, it was open to constructive adjustment. Here was another reason why, though officially reproved and considerably redefined, jealousy drew less concerted fire from Victorians, early and late, than did anger or fear. Again, the litmus was the impact on family ties, which in this case, in practice, proved modest.
Overall, the early Victorian emotional style was disarmingly simple, though potentially demanding. Building on the earlier focus on family ties, it also incorporated an initial reaction to the growing separation of work from home. However, although emotional life outside the family was evoked in references to life’s storms and the pressures on men as agents in this murky world, standards for nonfamilial emotions were not set. Real emotion meant family, and family meant solace and calm.26 Emotions that supported this, various forms of love being atop the list, were good and were praised without reservation. Emotions that threatened it were bad and were condemned. Adults were urged to restrain themselves and spare their children in this ominous second category.
The result could be oppressive. Women especially were urged into a single, exiguous emotional mold: they must love, but they had no other legitimate emotional outlet. Anger, in particular, was denied them, and even fear had to be tightly controlled. At the same time, they encountered some criticism for disproportionate emotionality, a vague claim that nonetheless served as an additional constraint. But men had severe emotional chores as well, even though their emotional nature was not so narrowly defined. For both genders, difficult emotions were degraded as bestial or animal-like, and loss of control harked back to demonic possession.
Whether this culture’s prescriptions were thoroughly repressive might be debated, for the early Victorian style certainly did not seek to limit all emotion, nor are we certain about readers’ actual acceptance of prescriptive advice. Yet, while the standards added up in principle to a tidy package, from childish innocence to marital and parental harmony, their very idealism invited dismay over sordid realities. These standards led to criticism of emotional reactions by other family members and, even more, to criticism of one’s own impulses, with repressive consequences. Quite apart from the obvious attack on “bad” emotions, the sanctity of harmony and the drumbeat emphasis on serenity offered emotional rewards of a sort, but also a deadening uniformity—and they put a serious damper on any emotional flare.
Important elements of the initial Victorian formula persisted into later nineteenth-century emotionology, including some of its gender implications and the real tensions between emotionality and a longed-for calm. But the early Victorian statement was not the final word. From the later 1840s onward, new ingredients were blended in. The mature Victorian emotional style, which would in most respects persist into the early twentieth century, inserted previous emotional standards into a much more complex amalgam. Family no longer ruled so completely, though its special domain was acknowledged, and the primacy of tranquillity yielded to a growing delight in appropriately targeted emotional intensity. The Victorians became increasingly, though selectively, passionate.
Mature Victorianism: The Uses of Dangerous Emotions
One general index of mature Victorianism emerged about midcentury, when standard setters displayed a growing interest in putting dangerous emotions to good use. The bad-good dichotomy remained, still defined mainly by compatibility with family solidarity, but the later Victorians became more interested in emotional challenge and emotional motivation, and this caused them to reevaluate desirable emotional range.
The emergence of a more nuanced approach to anger was a key component in this change. Even in the early period, a few advice writers, while hewing to the party line on anger as a family scourge, suggested that complete absence of anger was undesirable in men. William Alcott wrote, “I should not envy those, who were so indifferent—so wanting in sensibility—as never to have a single feeling of displeasure”; and he criticized those who felt that the best temper was one “incapable” of being moved. A story in Peterson’s drove home a similar point, as a young wife mused that “Tom was spirited and quick-tempered—great, loving hearted men always are.”27
From the late 1840s—T. S. Arthur’s 1848 manuals for young men and women signaled some of the change—these themes were more explicitly picked up, as Victorian culture developed a new ambiguity where anger was concerned. The basic message was simple, though its ramifications were potentially complex: anger was a bad emotion at home, but it was a vital emotion in the world of work and politics. Women should remain anger free, in keeping with their domestic roles, but men were set the challenging task of curbing their anger within the family while utilizing its potential to spur actions necessary to competition or social justice. At the same time, invocations of childish innocence began to decline as popularizers saw a real and vital natural anger that, at least in men, must be tamed without being excised. Darwinian findings played a role in this redefinition of childhood from the 1860s onward, as popular literature began to acknowledge a “natural” anger that must be confronted, not simply preached away.28
Some early Victorian advice persisted, notably in the constant concern that parents curb their anger in dealing with children. Emotional control remained essential, and it was up to parents to initiate this control by regulating their reactions.
Anger could still be excoriated, though the demonic imagery tended to fade. And while family harmony remained a crucial reason for anger control, the justifications now broadened to a wider social realm. Anger was now a public problem as well, a shift that would be extended further