Print

Preface The Victorian World: Facts and Fictions explores specific myths from a period associated with one of the United Kingdom’s longest-serving mon- archs, Queen Victoria. Though she ruled from 1837 to 1901, the values, ideologies, and tendencies of her time began before her accession and did not end until after World War I. The following chapters will focus on the 19th century broadly defined (approximately 1815–1914) whenever this is necessary for clarity and completeness. Given the geographical reach of the British Empire in this period, the list of possible topics is endless, so I have also limited the focus primarily to the United Kingdom, defined as England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Most of the material, though, centers on Great Britain. Ireland had an entirely different economy, society, religion, and legal system, making generalizations that include it difficult to justify—at least if one wants to avoid perpetuating, rather than puncturing, myths about the Victorians. The myths covered in this book are in three parts. The first section involves social history, specifically women and the family. Chapter 1 deals with an issue that receives more attention than any other—the view of Victorians as straight-laced prudes who never discussed sex. The term “Victorian” in modern times is often a reference to sexual repression to paraphrase H. L. Mencken (about the Puritans), many modern people assume that the typical Victorian was always worried that somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone was having a good time. Indeed, the Victorians’ reputation for hypocrisy also stems largely from issues of sex- uality, including the supposed denial of sexual feelings in women and the criminalization of homosexual acts between men in 1885. Hypocrisy