From Victorian Virtues To Moden Values

The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values. Berger, Peter L. "The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values. " Commentary. 99.n5 (May 1995): 66(3). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. University of Cincinnati Libraries. 11 July 2009 . Full Text:COPYRIGHT 1995 American Jewish Committee Gertrude Himmelfarb is probably the most distinguished American historian working on 19th-century England. In recent years she has also written as a critic of miscellaneous social and cultural developments in today's Western world. The present volume continues both activities. It will interest those who like to read about the last century, and those who worry about the current one. Himmelfarb returns here to a subject she has dealt with extensively in earlier works: the moral fabric of Victorian society and the undeservedly bad press it has received from later commentators. Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918) can be seen as the prototype of the sour view of that period of English history, supposedly marked by social oppression and moral hypocrisy. As a result of such pejorative interpretations, the very term "Victorian" is still widely used today to indicate repressed sexuality, bourgeois stuffiness, and a generally retrograde world view. Himmelfarb is a "revisionist" with regard to this school of interpretation; she does not idealize the Victorians, but she insists on a balanced picture. More, she argues that there are important aspects of Victorian culture that merit our emulation. One common opinion about Victorian society, widely shared for obvious reasons by historians on the Left, is that there were wide cleavages between middle-class and workingclass culture. To the contrary, Himmelfarb argues: one of the more remarkable features of Victorian society was the commonality of moral beliefs throughout most of the population. The middle classes and the lower classes generally agreed on what constituted respectability, in the basic moral sense of behavior worthy of respect. Similarly, Himmelfarb criticizes the notion that Victorian women were particularly oppressed - they were very active, she demonstrates, in important social and political movements, even if denied the vote and deemed properly to belong to the household rather than to the world of gainful employment. She is equally skeptical of the conventional view of profound sexual repression - the Victorians were a jollier lot than is commonly assumed. Nor, she shows, were the wealthier elements of the population callously indifferent to the sufferings of the lower orders - the Victorian age was one of ongoing reforms, virtually without exception initiated by middle-class politicians and movements often inspired by Protestant moral convictions. On the last of these points, Himmelfarb returns to an argument that she has advanced repeatedly before. The Victorians, she shows, drew a distinction between the poor and "paupers." The former were considered "de, serving" of benevolent interventions because their poverty could not be blamed on them; by contrast, the latter either had brought their misfortune on themselves by their own destructive behavior or had refused to improve their

condition by giving up that behavior. Here, if nowhere else, the Victorians hold out lessons of great relevance to our current debate over the nature, the ethos, and the limits of the modern welfare state. But above all we can learn from the Victorian understanding that society is at bottom a moral entity. That insight, not necessarily based on the specific moral ideas of the Victorians, is as true today as it was then, and indeed here the common sense of the Victorians coincides with the most sophisticated sociological theories. (One thinks especially of Emile Durkheim and his view of human society as based on a "collective conscience.") If the insight has been blurred in more recent times, that is due in part to a misunderstood social-science view of human actions, and particularly to an increasing reluctance to use moral language in thinking about social justice and the welfare state. As Himmelfarb writes, "It is this reluctance to speak the language of morality, far more than any specific values, that separates us from the Victorians." There were, to be sure, dissenters even at the time from the class-transcending morality of Victorian society. They came to the fore with some fanfare toward the end of the era, in the notorious fin-de-siecle. These were the writers, artists, and intellectuals who made it their business to outrage the moral sensibilities of their contemporaries; Oscar Wilde may be regarded as their doyen. These people did indeed foreshadow the moral relativism of our own time. But there is an important difference that once again Himmelfarb sums up succinctly: "A century ago the `advanced' souls were just that, well in advance of the culture, whereas now they pervade the entire culture." In other words, the de-moralizing avant-garde has become an amoral establishment. Himmelfarb's subtitle, "From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values," suggests the core of her critique of our post-Victorian world. "Virtues" are moral norms that are deeply held and believed to be of the very order of things. "Values" are not much different from opinions more or less arbitrary preferences that one is not too sure about, does not know how to defend, and certainly cannot seek to impose on anyone else. The shift between them is analogous to a related shift in the nature of religious adherence. Thus, there is a world of difference between saying that one is "of the Protestant confession" a statement that implies total commitment and even a readiness for martyrdom - and saying, as is common today, that one has a Protestant "religious preference" ("preference" being a term derived from the language of consumer behavior, as in "I prefer brand A over brand B, but I might change my mind tomorrow"). Himmelfarb places much blame for the change from virtues to values on Nietzsche and Max Weber. About Weber one begs to differ: he was a messenger of moral relativism, but that was hardly his own message. And one wonders whether Nictzsche had all that much influence in Britain or in this country. Be that as it may, however, Himmelfarb is certainly right about the nature of the shift. To be sure, there are still many people who profess taken-for-granted "virtues," just as there are people with taken-for-granted religious convictions (probably more of both kinds in America than in England). But in the elite culture, and on both sides of the North Atlantic, a relativism has invaded most of the remaining fortresses of moral and religious certitude. One does not have to be either a Victorian or a Durkheimian social theorist to find this state of affairs disturbing.

In her epilogue, Himmelfarb turns to present-day society, enumerating the widely-known facts of rising social pathology: crime, drugs, illegitimacy, welfare dependency. The facts are more dramatic in this country than in Britain, but the rates curve upward in very similar fashion there, too. These symptoms of decay, Himmelfarb argues convincingly, cannot be ascribed to economic recession or to mounting inequality, as analysts on the Left keep on saying. Rather, we are confronting a moral revolution, one which has so thoroughly succeeded that anyone daring to address these pathologies in moral terms is promptly accused of "blaming the victim" (one of the most obfuscating mantras invented by social scientists in recent years). Himmelfarb gives credence to Myron Magnet's thesis (in The Dream and the Nightmare) that the revolution has been a dual one, occurring both in middle-class culture and in the so-called "culture of poverty" - but with greatly different consequences in the two milieus. Thus, for example, a middle-class professional woman having a child outside marriage (Murphy Brown, if you will) certainly faces problems and may put her child at some disadvantage, but there are means at hand to mitigate the consequences. By contrast, a poor woman in the same circumstance lacks those mitigating resources, whether social or financial, and the consequences both for her and for her child are likely to be disastrous. The face of today's "underclass" is the collective result of this disaster, which is rooted in a vast moral deformation (or, literally, a moral "deconstruction"). The data cited by Himmelfarb draw attention to a very intriguing fact: that the abrupt change occurs in the 1960's. In all Western societies, that one decade, roughly between 1965 and 1975, becomes the watershed. One is almost tempted to say somewhat ahistorically Himmelfarb might not agree with this - that the Victorian age really lasted until the mid1960's! There is great uncertainty as to what really happened during this brief but ominous span of years. Although Himmelfarb points to the notion of a moral transformation, one must still ask what caused that, and why ideas voiced but not taken up widely in, say, 1865 were suddenly adopted with a vengeance by large numbers of people a hundred years later. Whatever the answer, Himmelfarb rightly insists that it is impossible to deal with a moral crisis unless it is recognized as such. She recommends a serious rethinking of previously held positions across the political spectrum, and concludes with the modest hope that we may be ready for "a new reformation." Gertrude Himmelfarb has long given pleasure to anyone curious about our history. Increasingly, she has been providing insight for those concerned about our own times. Her new book does both, splendidly. Gale Document Number:A16886220