Victorian morality: Encyclopedia - Victorian morality

Victorian morality

Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria (reigned 1837 - 1901) in particular, and to the moral climate of Great Britain throughout the 19th century in general. It is not tied to this historical period and can describe any set of values that espouses sexual repression, low tolerance of crime, and a strong social ethic.

Historians now regard the Victorian era as a time of many contradictions. A plethora of social movements concerned with improving public morals co-existed with a class system that permitted harsh living conditions for many. The apparent contradiction between the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of dignity and restraint and the prevalence of social phenomena that included prostitution, child labour, and an imperialist colonising economy were two sides of the same coin: the various social reform movements and high principles arose from attempts to improve the harsh conditions.

Victorian morality - Historical background

The term Victorian has acquired a range of connotations, including that of a particularly strict set of moral standards, which are often applied hypocritically. This stems from the image of Queen Victoria —and her husband, Prince Albert, perhaps even more so—as innocents, unaware of the private habits of many of her respectable subjects; this particularly relates to their sex lives. This image is mistaken: Victoria's attitude toward sexual morality was a consequence of her knowledge of the corrosive effect of the loose morals of the aristocracy in earlier reigns upon the public's respect for the nobility and the Crown.

Two hundred years earlier the Puritan republican movement under Oliver Cromwell had temporarily overthrown the British monarchy. During England's years as a republic, the law imposed a strict moral code on the people (even abolishing Christmas as too indulgent of the sensual pleasures).

When the monarchy was restored, a period of loose living and debauchery appeared to be a reaction to the earlier repression. See: Charles II of England. The two social forces of puritanism and libertinism continued to motivate the collective psyche of the United Kingdom from the restoration onward. This was particularly significant in the public perceptions of the later Hanoverean monarchs who immediately preceded Queen Victoria. For instance, her uncle George IV was commonly perceived as a pleasure-seeking playboy, whose conduct in office was the cause of much scandal.**

By the time of Victoria, the interplay between high cultured morals and low vulgarity was thoroughly embedded in British culture.

Victorian morality - Victorian morality

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").¹ Those going for a dip in the sea at the beach would use a bathing machine. Verbal or written communication of emotion or sexual feelings was also often proscribed so people instead used the language of flowers.

Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, only four years after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The anti-slavery movement had campaigned for years to achieve the ban, succeeding with a partial abolition in 1807 and the full ban in 1833. It had taken so long because the anti-slavery morality was pitted against a powerful capitalist element in the empire which claimed that their businesses would be destroyed if they were not permitted to exploit slave labour. Eventually plantation owners in the Caribbean received £20 million in compensation.

In Victoria's time the British Royal Navy patrolled the Atlantic Ocean, stopping any ships that it suspected of trading African slaves to the Americas and freeing any slaves found. The British had set up a Crown Colony in West Africa—Sierra Leone—and transported freed slaves there. Freed slaves from Nova Scotia founded and named the capital of Sierra Leone: Freetown. Thus, when Victoria became Queen the British occupied a high moral ground as the nation that stood for freedom and decency. Many people living at that time argued that the living conditions of workers in English factories seemed worse than those endured by some slaves.

In the same way, throughout the Victoran Era, movements for justice, freedom and other strong moral values opposed greed, exploitation and cynicism. The writings of Charles Dickens in particular observed and recorded these conditions. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels carried out much of their analysis of capitalism in and as a reaction to Victorian Britain.

Victorian morality - Notes

• Note 1: The apocryphal stories of skirts on piano legs in the name of modesty arose from a misunderstanding of the use of sheaths to protect the lower extremities of furniture from damage by footwear and brooms.

See also

• Sexual norm
• Sexual repression

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Victorian morality", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki