Victorian morality is a distillation of the
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...
views of the
middle class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...
in 19th-century Britain, the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
.
Victorian values emerged in all
social class
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for exam ...
es and reached all facets of Victorian living. The values of the period—which can be classed as religion, morality,
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...
, industrial
work ethic, and personal improvement—took root in Victorian morality. Contemporary plays and all literature—including old classics, like
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's works—were cleansed of content considered to be inappropriate for children, or "
bowdlerized".
Historians have generally come to regard the Victorian era as a time of many conflicts, such as the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of dignity and restraint, together with serious debates about exactly how the new morality should be implemented.
The international slave trade was abolished, and this ban was enforced by the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
. Slavery was ended in all the British colonies,
child labour
Child labour is the exploitation of children through any form of work that interferes with their ability to attend regular school, or is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation w ...
was ended in British factories, and a long debate ensued regarding whether
prostitution
Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...
should be totally abolished or tightly regulated. Male
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexu ...
was made illegal by the
Labouchere Amendment.
Personal conduct
Victorian morality was a surprising new reality. The changes in moral standards and actual behaviour across the British were profound. Historian
Harold Perkin wrote:
Between 1780 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical.
Historians continue to debate the various causes of this dramatic change.
Asa Briggs emphasizes the strong reaction against the French Revolution, and the need to focus British efforts on its defeat and not be diverged by pleasurable sins. Briggs also stresses the powerful role of the evangelical movement among the Nonconformists, as well as the evangelical faction inside the established Church of England. The religious and political reformers set up organizations that monitored behaviour, and pushed for government action.
Among the higher social classes, there was a marked decline in gambling, horse races, and obscene theatres; there was much less heavy gambling or patronage of upscale houses of prostitution. The highly visible debauchery characteristic of aristocratic England in the early 19th century simply disappeared.
Historians agree that the middle classes not only professed high personal moral standards, but actually followed them. There is a debate whether the working classes followed suit. Moralists in the late 19th century such as
Henry Mayhew decried the slums for their supposed high levels of cohabitation without marriage and illegitimate births. However new research using computerized matching of data files shows that the rates of cohabitation were quite low—under 5%—for the working class and the poor. By contrast, in 21st-century Britain nearly half of all children are born outside marriage, and nine in ten newlyweds have been cohabitating.
Slavery
Opposition to slavery was the main evangelical cause from the late 18th century, led by
William Wilberforce (1759–1833). The cause organized very thoroughly, and developed propaganda campaigns that made readers cringe at the horrors of slavery. The same moral fervor and organizational skills carried over into most of the other reform movements. Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, only four years after the
abolition of slavery throughout 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 on slave trading, but not slave ownership, which only happened in 1833. It took so long because the anti-slavery morality was pitted against powerful economic interests which claimed their businesses would be destroyed if they were not permitted to exploit slave labour. Eventually,
plantation
Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...
owners in the
Caribbean
The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...
received £20 million in cash compensation, which reflected the average market price of slaves.
William E. Gladstone, later a famous reformer, handled the large payments to his father for their hundreds of slaves. The
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
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
A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony governed by Kingdom of England, England, and then Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain or the United Kingdom within the English overseas possessions, English and later British Empire. There was usua ...
in
West Africa
West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...
—
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...
—and transported freed slaves there. Freed slaves from
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...
founded and named the capital of Sierra Leone "
Freetown
Freetown () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, e ...
".
Abolishing cruelty
Cruelty to animals
William Wilberforce,
Thomas Fowell Buxton and
Richard Martin introduced the first legislation to prevent cruelty to animals, the
Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822; it pertained only to cattle and it passed easily in 1822.
In the
Metropolitan Police Act 1839, "fighting or baiting Lions, Bears, Badgers, Cocks, Dogs, or other Animals" was made a criminal offence. The law laid numerous restrictions on how, when, and where animals could be used. It prohibited owners from letting mad dogs run loose and gave police the right to destroy any dog suspected of being
rabid. It prohibited the use of dogs for drawing carts. The law was extended to the rest of England and Wales in 1854. Dog-pulled carts were often used by very poor self-employed men as a cheap means to deliver milk, human foods, animal foods (the cat's-meat man), and for collecting refuse (the
rag-and-bone man). The dogs were susceptible to
rabies
Rabies is a viral disease that causes encephalitis in humans and other mammals. It was historically referred to as hydrophobia ("fear of water") because its victims panic when offered liquids to drink. Early symptoms can include fever and abn ...
; cases of the disease among humans had been on the rise. They also bothered the horses, which were economically much more vital to the city. Evangelicals and utilitarians in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals persuaded Parliament it was cruel and should be illegal; the Utilitarian element added government inspectors to provide enforcement. The owners had no more use for their dogs, and killed them.
[. Chapter: 'A Left-handed Blow: Writing the History of Animals' by Erica Fudge] Cart dogs were replaced by people with handcarts.
Historian
Harold Perkin writes:
Child labour
Evangelical religious forces took the lead in identifying the evils of child labour, and legislating against them. Their anger at the contradiction between the conditions on the ground for children of the poor and the middle-class notion of childhood as a time of innocence led to the first campaigns for the imposition of legal protection for children. Reformers attacked child labor from the 1830s onward. The campaign that led to the
Factory Acts was spearheaded by rich philanthropists of the era, especially
Lord Shaftesbury, who introduced bills in Parliament to mitigate the exploitation of children at the workplace. In 1833, he introduced the
Ten Hours Act 1833, which provided that children working in the cotton and woollen mills must be aged nine or above; no person under the age of eighteen was to work more than ten hours a day or eight hours on a Saturday; and no one under twenty-five was to work nights. The
Factories Act 1844 said children 9–13 years could work for at most 9 hours a day with a lunch break. Additional legal interventions throughout the century increased the level of childhood protection, despite the resistance from the
laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( , from , ) is a type of economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies or regulations). As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' ...
attitudes against government interference by factory owners. Parliament respected laissez-faire in the case of adult men, and there was minimal interference in the Victorian era.
Unemployed street children suffered too, as novelist
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
revealed to a large middle class audience the horrors of London street life.
Sexuality
Historians
Peter Gay and Michael Mason both point out that modern society often confuses Victorian etiquette for a lack of knowledge. For example, people going for a bath in the
sea
A sea is a large body of salt water. There are particular seas and the sea. The sea commonly refers to the ocean, the interconnected body of seawaters that spans most of Earth. Particular seas are either marginal seas, second-order section ...
or at the
beach
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from Rock (geology), rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle beach, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological s ...
would use a
bathing machine. Despite the use of the bathing machine, it was still possible to see people
bathing nude. Contrary to popular conception, however, Victorian society recognised that both men and women enjoyed copulation.
Regular sex was seen as important to male health. Married women were expected to agree to sex whenever their husbands wished for it, though it was seen as immoral for men to ask for sex in certain situations, such as when their wife was sick. Too much sex was seen as unhealthy, which led to a moral panic about
masturbation
Masturbation is a form of autoeroticism in which a person Sexual stimulation, sexually stimulates their own Sex organ, genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. Stimulation may involve the use of han ...
, especially its perceived prevalence among middle class adolescent boys. Women were expected to be faithful to their husbands, or if unmarried, to refrain from sexual activity. There was more tolerance for men employing prostitutes or engaging in extramarital affairs. In the early Victorian period, a traditional idea that married women had an intense sex drive which needed to be controlled by their husband was still common. As the period progressed, this changed, with wives expected to control the sexual behaviour of men.
Victorians also wrote explicit
erotica, perhaps the most famous being the racy tell-all ''
My Secret Life'' by the pseudonym Walter (allegedly
Henry Spencer Ashbee), and the magazine ''
The Pearl'', which was published for several years and reprinted as a paperback book in the 1960s.
Victorian erotica also survives in private letters archived in museums and even in a study of women's orgasms. Some current historians now believe that the myth of Victorian repression can be traced back to early 20th-century views, such as those of
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...
, a homosexual member of the
Bloomsbury Group, who wrote ''
Eminent Victorians
''Eminent Victorians'' is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biography, biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreve ...
''.
Homosexuality
The enormous expansion of police forces, especially in London, produced a sharp rise in prosecutions for illegal sodomy at midcentury. Male sexuality became a favorite subject of study especially by medical researchers whose case studies explored the progression and symptoms of institutionalized subjects.
Henry Maudsley shaped late Victorian views about aberrant sexuality.
George Savage and
Charles Arthur Mercier wrote about homosexuals living in society.
Daniel Hack Tuke's ''Dictionary of Psychological Medicine'' covered sexual perversion. All these works show awareness of continental insights, as well as moral disdain for the sexual practices described.
Simeon Solomon
Simeon Solomon (9 October 1840 – 14 August 1905) was a British painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelites who was noted for his depictions of Jewish life and same-sex desire. His career was cut short as a result of public scandal following h ...
and poet
Algernon Charles Swinburne, as they contemplated their own sexual identities in the 1860s, fastened on the Greek lesbian poet
Sappho. They made Victorian intellectuals aware of Sappho, and their writings helped to shape the modern image of lesbianism.
The
Labouchere Amendment to the
Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, for the first time, made all male homosexual acts illegal. It provided for two years' imprisonment for males convicted of committing, or being a party to public or private acts of homosexuality. Lesbian acts—still scarcely known—were ignored. When
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
was convicted of violating the statute, and imprisoned for such violations, in 1895, he became the iconic victim of English puritanical repression.
Prostitution

During Victorian England, prostitution was seen as a "great social evil" by clergymen and major news organizations, but many feminists viewed prostitution as a means of economic independence for women. Estimates of the number of prostitutes in London in the 1850s vary widely, but in his landmark study, ''Prostitution'',
William Acton reported an estimation of 8,600 prostitutes in London alone in 1857.
The differing views on prostitution have made it difficult to understand its history.
Judith Walkowitz, a professor emerita at the department of history of the
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
, has multiple works focusing on the feminist point of view on the topic of prostitution. Many sources blame economic disparities as leading factors in the rise of prostitution, and Walkowitz writes that the demographic within prostitution varied greatly. However, women who struggled financially were much more likely to be prostitutes than those with a secure source of income. Orphaned or half-orphaned women were more likely to turn to prostitution as a means of income.
While overcrowding in urban cities and the amount of job opportunities for females were limited, Walkowitz argues that there were other variables that lead women to prostitution. Walkowitz acknowledges that prostitution allowed for women to feel a sense of independence and self-respect.
Although many assume that pimps controlled and exploited these prostitutes, some women managed their own clientele and pricing. It is evident that women were exploited by this system, yet Walkowitz says that prostitution was often their opportunity to gain social and economic independence.
Prostitution at this time was regarded by women in the profession to be a short-term position, and once they earned enough money, there were hopes that they would move on to a different profession.
The arguments for and against prostitution varied greatly from it being perceived as a mortal sin or desperate decision to an independent choice. While there were plenty of people publicly denouncing prostitution in England, there were also others who took opposition to them. One event that sparked a lot of controversy was the implementation of the
Contagious Diseases Acts. This was a series of three acts in 1864, 1866 and 1869 that allowed police officers to stop women whom they believed to be prostitutes and force them to be examined.
If the suspected woman was found with a venereal disease, they placed the woman into a
lock hospital. Arguments made against the Acts claimed that the regulations were unconstitutional and that they only targeted women.
In 1869, a National Association in opposition of the Acts was created. Because women were excluded from the first National Association, the Ladies National Association was formed. The leader of that organization was
Josephine Butler.
Butler was an outspoken feminist during this time who fought for many social reforms. Her book ''Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade'' describes her oppositions to the Contagious Diseases Acts. Along with the publication of her book, she also went on tours condemning the Acts throughout the 1870s.
Other supporters of reforming the Acts included Quakers, Methodists and many doctors.
Eventually the Acts were fully repealed in 1886.
Prostitutes were often presented as victims in
sentimental literature such as
Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood (23 May 1799 – 3 May 1845) was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs (poem), The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for ''The London Magazine'', '' ...
's poem ''
The Bridge of Sighs'',
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel ''
Mary Barton'', and
Dickens' novel ''
Oliver Twist''. The emphasis on the purity of women found in such works as
Coventry Patmore's ''
The Angel in the House'' led to the portrayal of the prostitute and fallen woman as soiled, corrupted, and in need of cleansing.
This emphasis on female purity was allied to the stress on the homemaking role of women, who helped to create a space free from the pollution and corruption of the city. In this respect, the prostitute came to have symbolic significance as the embodiment of the violation of that divide. The double standard remained in force. The
Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 allowed for a man to divorce his wife for adultery, but a woman could only divorce for adultery combined with other offences such as incest, cruelty,
bigamy
In a culture where only monogamous relationships are legally recognized, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. A legal or de facto separation of the couple does not alter their mar ...
, desertion, etc., or based on cruelty alone.
The anonymity of the city led to a large increase in prostitution and unsanctioned sexual relationships. Dickens and other writers associated prostitution with the mechanisation and industrialisation of modern life, portraying prostitutes as human commodities consumed and thrown away like refuse when they were used up. Moral reform movements attempted to close down brothels, something that has sometimes been argued to have been a factor in the concentration of street-prostitution.
The extent of prostitution in London in the 1880s gained national and global prominence through the highly publicised murders attributed to Whitechapel-based serial killer
Jack the Ripper, whose victims were exclusively prostitutes living destitute in the
East End. Given that many prostitutes were living in poverty as late as the 1880s and 1890s, offering sex services was a source of desperate necessity to fund their meals and temporary lodging accommodation from the cold, and as a result prostitutes represented easy prey for criminals as they could do little to personally protect themselves from harm.
Crime and police
After 1815, there was widespread fear of growing crimes, burglaries, mob action, and threats of large-scale disorder. Crime had been handled on an ad-hoc basis by poorly organized local parish constables and private watchmen, supported by very stiff penalties, including hundreds of causes for execution or deportation to Australia. London, with 1.5 million people—more than the next 15 cities combined—over the decades had worked out informal arrangements to develop a uniform policing system in its many boroughs. The
Metropolitan Police Act 1829, championed by Home Secretary
Robert Peel, was not so much a startling innovation, as a systemization with expanded funding of established informal practices. It created the
Metropolitan Police Service, headquartered at
Scotland Yard. London now had the world's first modern police force. The 3000 policemen were called "bobbies" (after Peel's first name). They were well-organized, centrally directed, and wore standard blue uniforms. Legally they had the historic status of constable, with authority to make arrests of suspicious persons and book offenders before a magistrate court. They were assigned in teams to specified beats, especially at night. Gas lighting was installed on major streets, making their task of surveillance much easier. Crime rates went down. An 1835 law required all incorporated boroughs in England and Wales to establish police forces. Scotland, with its separate legal system, was soon added. By 1857 every jurisdiction in Great Britain had an organized police force, for which the Treasury paid a subsidy. The police had steady pay, were selected by merit rather than by political influence, and were rarely used for partisan purposes. The pay scale was not high (one guinea a week in 1833), but the prestige was especially high for Irish Catholics, who were disproportionately represented in every city where they had a large presence.
By the Victorian era,
penal transportation
Penal transportation (or simply transportation) was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies bec ...
to Australia was falling out of use since it did not reduce crime rates. The British penal system underwent a transition from harsh punishment to reform, education, and training for post-prison livelihoods. The reforms were controversial and contested. In 1877–1914 era a series of major legislative reforms enabled significant improvement in the penal system. In 1877, the previously localized prisons were nationalized in the Home Office under a Prison Commission. The Prison Act of 1898 enabled the Home Secretary to impose multiple reforms on his own initiative, without going through the politicized process of Parliament. The Probation of Offenders Act of 1907 introduced a new probation system that drastically cut down the prison population, while providing a mechanism for transition back to normal life. The Criminal Justice Administration Act of 1914 required courts to allow a reasonable time before imprisonment was ordered for people who did not pay their fines. Previously tens of thousands of prisoners had been sentenced solely for that reason. The Borstal system after 1908 was organized to reclaim young offenders, and the Children Act of 1908 prohibited imprisonment under age 14, and strictly limited that of ages 14 to 16. The principal reformer was Sir
Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, the chair of the Prison Commission.
Causation
Intellectual historians searching for causes of the new morality often point to the ideas by
Hannah More,
William Wilberforce, and the
Clapham Sect
The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were a group of social reformers associated with Holy Trinity Clapham in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Despite the label "sect", most members remained in the Established Church, established (and do ...
. Perkin argues this exaggerates the influence of a small group of individuals, who were "as much an effect of the revolution as a cause." It also has a timing problem, for many predecessors had failed. The intellectual approach tends to minimize the importance of
Nonconformists and Evangelicals—the
Methodists, for example, played a powerful role among the upper tier of the working class. Finally, it misses a key ingredient: instead of trying to improve an old society, the reformers were trying to lead Britain into a new society of the future.
Victorian era movements for justice, freedom, and other strong moral values made greed, and exploitation into public evils. The writings of
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
, in particular, observed and recorded these conditions.
Peter Shapely examined 100 charity leaders in Victorian Manchester. They brought significant cultural capital, such as wealth, education and social standing. Besides the actual reforms for the city they achieved for themselves a form of symbolic capital, a legitimate form of social domination and civic leadership. The utility of charity as a means of boosting one's social leadership was socially determined and would take a person only so far.
The
Marxist
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
intellectual
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
connected Victorian morality to the rise of the
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...
. Benjamin alleged that the shopping culture of the
petite bourgeoisie
''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, ; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a term that refers to a social class composed of small business owners, shopkeepers, small-scale merchants, semi- autonomous peasants, and artisans. They are named as s ...
established the sitting room as the centre of personal and family life; as such, the English bourgeois culture is a ''sitting-room culture'' of
prestige
Prestige may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Films
*Prestige (film), ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnett: woman travels to French Indochina to meet up with husband
*The Prestige (film), ''The Prestige'' (fi ...
through
conspicuous consumption
In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen c ...
. This acquisition of prestige is then reinforced by the repression of emotion and of sexual desire, and by the construction of a regulated social-space where
propriety is the key personality trait desired in men and women.
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
, ''The Halles Project''.
See also
*
''The New Life'' (2022 historical fiction) by Tom Crewe
References
Further reading

* Adams, James Eli, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era'' (4 vol. 2004). articles by scholars
* Bartley, Paula. ''Prostitution: Prevention and reform in England, 1860–1914'' (Routledge, 2012)
* Boddice, Rob. ''The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution, and Victorian Civilization'' (2016)
* Briggs, Asa. ''The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867'' (1959).
* Churchill, David. ''Crime control and everyday life in the Victorian city: the police and the public'' (2017).
*
* Emsley, Clive.''Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900'' (5th ed. 2018)
* Fraser, Derek. ''The evolution of the British welfare state: a history of social policy since the Industrial Revolution'' (Springer, 1973).
*
Gay, Peter. ''The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud''
*
* Merriman, J (2004). ''A History of Modern Europe; From the French Revolution to the Present'' New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
*
* Searle, G. R. ''Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain'' (1998)
* Woodward, E. L.
The Age of Reform, 1815–1870' (1938); 692 pages; wide-ranging scholarly survey
{{Queen Victoria, state=collapsed
Morality
Social philosophy
Victorian culture
Middle class culture