I remember reading an article in the Smithsonian about the history of photography. We all know the facination of the V's with death, but they took it to the nth degree. There were photos of people in coffins (one with the surviving twin posed in front). If I remember correctly and I may not, Lewis Carroll enjoyed photographing pre-adolsecent girls nude. That was kinda accepted as a symbol of purity of somesuch nonsence. The general overall view I got (with my modern day view) was that he was one sick c eature, and because of the repression he was not alone! Note: this was later in the age. You might be able to find the article, I know it was within the past 3 years. Also, (later in the age) is another Smithsonian article on Jack the Ripper... It really does not focus too much on the horrors of the crime but on the motivation of the killer. He was a drug addict and had a bad marriage. He was not convicted of murder, but his wife was convicted of killing him!! Very twisted... There is a book about about Queen Victoria called something like the "and the Queen laughed". Prince Charles endorsed it. We all know about her advice to her daughter "grit your teeth and think of England", but her husband removed her stocking on their wedding night! Racey beginning for such a repressive time! Of course they cultured the language of flowers. I find that facinating. and after the gruesome beginning (from me above) hard to believe in the same era!! I think the Victorian Age is so very interesting because is it so contridictory. Supposedly very moral, yet the number of prostitutes reached the greatest number ever in English History! Whew!

Also having the same double standard for men & women as in the Regency. The attitude toward women was just unbelievable. This is what the Brontes struggled against their entire careers (and had to employ pseudonyms as well, as did "Geroge Eliot."). One review of JANE EYRE said that it was exemplary if written by a man; and odious if written by a woman! My favorite is Robert Southey's advice to Charlotte (he was Poet Laureate) in a letter: "Literature is not the business of a woman's life, nor should it be." Uh huh. And whose name do we remember now, Charlotte Bronte or Robert Southey?

Uh huh. And whose name do we remember now, Charlotte Bronte or Robert Southey? Too funny!!! Had not read that review of Jane Eyre!! How revolting those men were!

It was really nasty. Even Charlotte's friend & admirer, G.H. Lewes (later 'George Eliot's' illicit lover) accused her of being 'unladylike' etc. in a review of SHIRLEY (his wife had just given birth to a child by his best friend, so I guess he had an ax to grind). The criticisms against JE during Charlotte's own time were that it was "coarse" (a.k.a, she talked about feelings & passion from a woman's P.O.V.) & that the author "must stand outside her own sex" or some such nonsense. Here's something that s really bizarre (and it ain't PG-13): there was a belief in the 17th-19th century that the closer a woman came to orgasm, the more the risk of her spreading V.D. Hence, the lid clamped down on women either experiencing or discussing passion. Poor Charlotte!

oh my.... (clear throat) Poor all the other women...!;-p but I wonder how many really bought into that c---? Sex is the most powerful drive, supposedly, we humans have. (Perhaps that does not include the need to eat chocolate.);-) I think I have a book (if its in print it must be true) that talks aobut this...its in the attic...I'll get back with you...

I wonder too about the Victorian age in general. Even though the popular myth is that it was a very repressed, clamped-down time, I have seen Victorian pornography (pretty tame); and what about all that fascination with mesmerism & the occult? Sometimes I wonder whether Charlotte herself was oblivious to her own sexuality. You could kind of draw this inference from her reaction to the whole M. Heger affair ( she wrote him torrid letters which could be construed as adulterous, then professed shock when his wife got suspicious). Or was she just covering up? You really have to read between the lines w. these Victorians...

A few months ago a friend emailed me a long article written by a certain parson's wife (a victorian) all about the marital duties of young women. I didn't keep it but I can get it again if your interested. I remember feeling particularly sorry for the parson.

Sherry -- sure, that would be great! There was this movement afoot during the Victorian era re: "the angel in the house" -- i.e., this was the alloted role for women -- divinity of the kitchen & nursery, I guess. Independent-minded women like Charlotte's friend Mary Taylor couldn't stand it, & ended up emigrating to New Zealand, where she could at least run a business without shame. For women of genius, like Charlotte, it must have been hell on earth! Women were supposed to be self-effacing & self-sacrificing -- men conceded that they were "morally superior," but I'm not sure what that won them, besides death in childbirth. The patriarchy just ran so deep -- even Charlotte's friend & admirer, Thackeray, felt uncomfortable around her, because she was "a clever woman." And M. Heger, Charlotte's "only real literary master" paid lip service to all the 'woman's place' mumbo jumbo of th time. Matthew Arnold said that Charlotte's work was filled with "rage and hate." Can we wonder why?

Whenever I think about analysing the Victorian era, John Fowles's "The French Lieutenants Woman" comes to mind. Although a novel, it almost reads as a series of essays on everything from Victorian prostitution to the emergence of palaentology. It reveals as much about our own age as it does about the Victorians. I think we're only begining to begin to reappraise the Victorian world. Each generation goes through a sort of oedipal situation where, in establishing their own identity, they react to the previous era. Victorian art, poetry and literature has been considered over-sentimental and just downwrite trashy for much of the 20th century. The Pre-Raphaelite artists were dismissed, poets such as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti lowered in estimation, and even the novels of Dickens have waxed and waned in academic (if not mass) popularity. Fortunately, we're going through a reassesment - a great relief for someone like myself who always loved the Pre-Raphaelite, even when my choices raised eyebrows at University (after all, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the first to really appreciate WH and prefer it to JE).

The popular conception of the Victorian age is that it was an incredibly repressive time & sex was a dirty word. What was actually going on beneath the surface isn't hard to imagine. I've read that Victorianism was a reaction to the prior, more lenient Regency period. Just got a book called REVIEWING SEX: Gender and the Receptio nof Victorian Novels, which should be interesting. I've kind of gone through the ebb & flow you describe above: when I was in high school, I ADORED Dickens, but I'm much les of a fan now, due to the sentimentality & waxwork female "child-women" (yech!). Still love Thackeray & Elliot though, that's for sure. And I'm going to see OLIVER! the musical while I'm in London, so I guess I haven't strayed that far from the mold. At least there are no female waifs in it!!

Yeah, Dickens can make you grind your teeth that way. Must be why I always barracked for Estella - bitter and twisted she might have been, but at least she got to stand up for herself. In a misguided way. Then she gets effectively punished for it! "A Tale of Two Cities" was my favourite (go Sydney Carton!), but I couldn't stand Lucy Manet. I used to wail at the end...what a way to go, but did you have to sacrifice yourself for that vapid piece of baggage?! The Ronald Coleman version was gorgeous, save for the fact that Lucy had my teeth grinding all the time. I much preferred Madame Defarge - she was a woman with direction! Let her have the Darnays, I say! Um, yeah. So that's my rant for the moment.

I think that Lucy & Madame Defarge with her knitting show Dickens' 2 conceptions of women: Sweet angelic thing, or vampire. Something like BLEAK HOUSE made me run screaming even in high school. And all those "littles": Dorrit & Nell -- blech! I appreciate that Dickens had a sweeping epic grasp as a novelist & did some good work to expose social evils, but I just can't wade through his female characters. Nancy in Oliver Twist is kind of cool though -- she's not an angel/she's not a vampire -- she's a 'bad' woman with a heart of gold, I suppose. And I always felt bad when Bill Sykes killd her....

Okay Amy, you wanted someone to comment on ANYTHING. Well, to save you wandering the moors Emily style, how about the subject of some great Victorian novelistic preoccupations. For example, syphyllis. Which I'm not even sure I've spelt correctly, but anyroad.. This seems to have been a tremendous preoccupation. Witness the legislation that allowed any woman walking the street to be brought in and held in hospitals to determine if they were carriers. It was aimed, of course at prostitutes, not at the men who were their customers. Anxious to avoid STDs, men even went to the most vile ends imaginable - procuring children for intercourse, in the hope that they were disease free. I've heard it argued that "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is not unconnected to these preoccupations. But of course, when it comes to bodily fluids and contagious conditions, the ultimate expression from the period is the one and only "Dracula: (Which I forgot to add to my top ten books list). And it's now a century since Bram Stoker penned it. Now there's a novel with a subtext. Several of them. What a product of the subconcious! It's a very fertile (pardon the pun) ground for an exploration of Victorian sensuality and repression.

Wow! That's interesting, Elena -- I had no idea. And what of Charles Dodgson's obsession with little girls? And Dickens' too? I love Charlotte's comments that the women in books were like no women she had ever seen -- half angel; half painted doll. I was also reading recently that in the Victorian period, women were supposed to be completely nonsexual & to take no pleasure in the act if they were to be considered "good." Speaking of Nancy in OLIVER -- there seems to be some implication that she was a prostitute as well as a pickpocket. Am I misreading this from the musical (which I just saw in London?)