12 - Victorian Attitudes and Values 

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first English monarch to see her name given to the period of her reign whilst still living.(2) The Victorian Age was characterised by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere - from advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Over time, this rapid transformation deeply affected the country's mood: an age that began with a confidence and optimism leading to economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's place in the world. Today we associate the nineteenth century with the Protestant work ethic, family values, religious observation and institutional faith. 

For the most part, nineteenth century families were large and patriarchal. They encouraged hard work, respectability, social deference and religious conformity. While this view of nineteenth century life was valid, it was frequently challenged by contemporaries. Women were often portrayed as either Madonnas or whores, yet increasing educational and employment opportunities gave many a role outside the family.

During the Victorian heyday, work and play expanded dramatically. The national railway network stimulated travel and leisure opportunities for all, so that by the 1870s, visits to seaside resorts, race meetings and football matches could be enjoyed by many of this now largely urban society. Increasing literacy stimulated growth in popular journalism and the ascendancy of the novel as the most powerful popular icon. 

The Victorian Age had the following 2 strands underlying everything. 

a) Racist attitudes 

b) Attitudes over feelings including sex 

----------------- a) Racist attitudes ------------------
Theories abound at to why racism or prejudice exists. What psychological needs did racism fulfill in Victorian England? According to one psychological explanation, racism results from transferring or projecting fears of an "in-group" upon a convenient "out-group." In the age of Lyell, Spencer, Wallace, and Darwin, the close relationship between man and nature (or between man and ape) became increasingly apparent. (The gorilla created a sensation when it was first brought to England in 1861.) 

Victorians might fear their sexuality or dread the animal within, but many claimed that, compared to those "beneath" us, just look how we have suppressed and controlled them, how advanced and civilized we are. Thus to denigrate or point up the bestial, brute, savage nature of an outside group is to point up our own advanced state and protect ourselves against inner fears or tensions. Racism and class prejudice, in other words, not only serve as agents of political power, but also serve as buffers between a community and a nature that seems to be getting too close to it for psychological comfort.

So this is why polygenism (belief in separate or unequal creations) gained ground. According to Stepan, "the story of racial science in Britain between 1800 and 1850 is the story of desperate attempts to refuse polygenism and the eventual acceptance of popular quasi-polygenist prejudices in the language of science" (30). Polygenism was a revolt against the liberal, evangelical, humanitarian spirit exemplified by the motto of the Aborigine Protection Society (which inspired the later Ethnographical Society): Ab Uno Sanguine -- From One Blood. The polygenists stressed that, unlike the abolitionist evangelicals, they were scientifically observing nature as it was, placing man in nature and viewing him primarily as a biological entity. In particular, they claimed they were returning British science to its pragmatic, Baconian traditions and rescuing it from the idealism and wishful thinking of the monogenists who viewed all mankind, optimistically as being derived from one stock. 

In much of the pseudo-scientific literature of the day the Irish were held to be inferior, an example of a lower evolutionary form, closer to the apes than their "superiors", the Anglo-Saxons . Cartoons in Punch portrayed the Irish as having bestial, ape-like or demonic features and the Irishman, (especially the political radical) was invariably given a long or prognathous jaw, the stigmata to the phrenologists of a lower evolutionary order, degeneracy, or criminality. Thus John Beddoe, who later became the President of the Anthropological Institute (1889-1891), wrote in his Races of Britain (1862) that all men of genius were orthognathous (less prominent jaw bones) while the Irish and the Welsh were prognathous and that the Celt was closely related to Cromagnon man, who, in turn, was linked, according to Beddoe, to the "Africanoid". The position of the Celt in Beddoe's "Index of Nigrescence" was very different from that of the Anglo-Saxon. These ideas were not confined to a lunatic fringe of the scientific community, for although they never won over the mainstream of British scientists they were disseminated broadly and it was even hinted that the Irish might be the elusive missing link! Certainly the "ape-like" Celt became something of an malevolent cliche of Victorian racism. Thus Charles Kingsley could write 

I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . ." (Charles Kingsley in a letter to his wife, quoted in L.P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts, p.84). 

Even seemingly complimentary generalizations about the Irish national character could, in the Victorian context, be damaging to the Celt. Thus, following the work of Ernest Renan's La Poésie des Races Celtiques (1854), it was broadly argued that the Celt was poetic, light-hearted and imaginative, highly emotional, playful, passionate, and sentimental. But these were characteristics the Victorians also associated with children. Thus the Irish were "immature" and in need of guidance by others, more highly developed than themselves. Irish "emotion" was contrasted, unfavorably, with English "reason", Irish "femininity" with English "masculine" virtues, Irish "poetic" attributes with English "pragmatism". These were all arguments 

Racism and Perceptions of the Lower Classes: Parallel Views
Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

When Philip Mason returned to England from India he discovered that attitudes towards the servants were similar to those towards Ayahs and other servants in India: "their mental processes really are unbelievable," or "You've got to face it. Their minds don't work like ours." Mason comments: "I was struck more than ever -- I think any Englishman is bound to be struck -- by the parallels between the way people speak and feel about those who belong to a different class and the way they speak and feel about those of a different race. " (Mason, P. Prospero's Magic. Some Thoughts on Class and Race. London: Oxford University Press, 1962, 2).

In The Governor Eyre Controversy (1962), Semmel writes that in the 1860s the contentious working classes and the rebellious Jamaicans were viewed in a similar fashion: in each case they were treated as "thoroughly undisciplined, with a tendency to revert to bestial behaviour, consequently requiring to be kept in order by force, and by occasional but severe flashes of violence; vicious and sly, incapable of telling the truth, naturally lazy and unwilling to work unless under compulsion." (Semmel, p. 135; also quoted in Biddis, M. ed., Images of Race, 1979, 26). Juan Comas (Racial Myths, Paris: Unesco, 1951) argues that "Racist doctrine becomes more dangerous still when it is applied, not to separate ethnic groups, but to different social classes within the same group" (18).

Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

Both Victorian science (pseudosciences such as phrenology), and popular literature assigned similar characteristics to the Irish, Blacks and members of the lower classes. Both were seen as:

Unreasonable, irrational, and easily excited

Childlike

Having no religion but only superstition.

Criminal: no respect for private property, no notions of property

Excessively sexual

Filthy

Sharing physical qualities

Inhabitants of unknown dark lands or territories ( Mayhew).

Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

Africans and other supposedly inferior groups, such as Irishmen, Indians, Maoris, and women, all displayed, it was held, childlike characteristics. Thus the Saturday Review of 8 September 1866 could refer to the Indian as "childish and impulsive," the term impulsive referring to lack of weighed, considered thought. Similarly, Francis Galton's "Hereditary Talent and Character" in the 1865 Macmillan's Magazine argued that "the Negro has strong impulsive habits, and neither patience, reticence, nor dignity." This prejudice had behind it the scientific theories of arrested development and recapitulation, the second of which held that the children of more advanced peoples recapitulate the adults of more primitive ancestors. If Irish adults, for example, display "child-like" emotions or conduct, then they are clearly closer to primitive early man. (What effect would such theories have upon etiquette and codes of behavior? upon attitudes towards art and literature? dress? sexuality?)

Herbert Spencer similarly argued that "the intellectual traits of the uncivilized . . . are traits recurring in the children of the civilized." This emphasis upon the childlike qualities of supposedly lower races certainly parallels the frequent references one comes across of the immature working classes. Repeatedly one reads that they had no thought for the morrow, that they wallowed in instant gratification, and that they were irresponsible, impulsive, and self-indulgent, spending a week's wages on ribbons or a hat. 

The Irreligion of the Poor and of Savages
Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

By Victorian definition, savages have no true religion but only superstition. Thus Charles Mackay could generalize that Blacks practice fetishes and "mumbo jumbo." Contemporaries similarly remarked on the irreligion of the working classes, particularly what Mayhew termed their "rude idea of the Creator."



-------------------------- b) Attitudes over feelings including sex --------------------------------

Victorian attitudes are best exemplified by taking a global picture which paints one of control of emotions, consideration for others and codes of ethics that would be really suitable for running large scale operations. As a "Club Rule Book" the Victorian values below are not too bad. The dreadful racism mentioned above even could be considered to an extent inevitable if the pervading belief was that mankind came from different root stocks. 

Rules of Etiquette

The following rules, published some time ago as a receipt for that beauty of expression so much more lasting and attractive than mere beauty of feature, were written originally for the guidance of woman, but they are equally applicable to the needs of man.

Learn to govern yourself and to be gentle and patient.

Guard your temper, especially in seasons of ill-health, irritation, and trouble, and soften it by a sense of your own shortcomings and errors.

Never speak or act in anger.

Remember that, valuable as is the gift of speech, silence is often more valuable.

Do not expect too much from others, but forbear and forgive, as you desire forbearance and forgiveness yourself.

Never retort a sharp or angry word. It is the second word that makes the quarrel.

Beware of the first disagreement.

Learn to speak in a gentle tone of voice.

Learn to say kind and pleasant things when opportunity offers.

Study the characters of those with whom you come in contact,
and sympathize with them in all their troubles, however small.

Do not neglect little things if they can affect the comfort of others
in the smallest degree.

Avoid moods, and pets, and fits of sulkiness.

Learn to deny yourself and prefer others.

Beware of meddlers and tale-bearers.

Never charge a bad motive, if a good one is conceivable.

Courtesy, charity and love are one, and, when all good deeds are done the warning comes: "If ye have not charity," all is naught. Therefore:
"A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The linaments of gospel-books." 
Do ye all things courteously, founding precept and practice upon that old rule, the Golden Rule, which is the Alpha and the Omega of all good manners and the very Essence of all Etiquette.