#victorianism

“The Victorians believed passion to be deviant; thoughts of sexuality would cause insanity and thus repression was necessary. With the strong societal enforcement of these beliefs, many Victorians lived with great shame, guilt, and fear of damnation. […]; for it was often considered unthinkable that a woman would have sexual thoughts or desires.”

— Hae-In Kim; “The Pre-Raphaelite Women destroyed by Love in all its Forms and Fates” (2004)

and all the boards did shrink

water, water everywhere

nor any drop to drink

I recently had the honor of attending a lavish reception at the Clemente Castle. Lady Rebecca's family is gathered here. Personally, I have known her since childhood, and, to be honest, there was a time when I was in love with her. She's beautiful. But, unfortunately, Rebecca is secretly in love with her servant Albert. We are on good terms with him... he just doesn't know the truth. My sister Clarissa was with me. She likes to attend such events.

Everything was fine, but something told me that something would happen tonight... Three silhouettes appeared in the window. Maybe it's another guest?

Destroying the machinery in unsafe factories. Pouring red paint on the houses of industrial magnates from cobbled together airships. Advocating cleaner burning fuels in smog-choked London. Sabotaging weapons shipments to Imperialist armies in occupied lands. Championing early era civil rights and sufferage. Aiding American slaves in the underground railroad. Pushing for a fight against growing anti-queer sentiments. Promoting the protection of natural resources. Fighting the early stages of police militarization. Supporting the discovery of self-identification in a society that oppresses the value of the individual worker. Pursuing a post-scarcity, post-capitalist future with science and social awareness. Emma fucking Goldman.

“To the Victorians the family was a symbol of order, social stability and progress. The family was a unifying and universal norm (Nead 1988: 36) and marriage was its conventional starting point. However, Thompson (1988: 85) states many early Victorians felt that they were witnessing a 'crisis of the family' that threatened to undermine society. Despite other grave social problems, the disintegration of the family was considered the most serious and it was assumed that it was caused by the factory system, city living, irreligion and weakening traditional moral and social bonds.

Feminine rebellion against the duties and functions of childbearing and home-keeping was also considered a danger by many. The demise of parental, particularly paternal, authority signalled to [middle class] moralists and reformers the end of the family as basic unit of education and social training, and conveyer of moral habits and standards. […] these perceptions induced various reform movements and strengthened the ideology of respectability, aimed at reforming the material and cultural environment for the preservation of the family.

The middle class felt that they had to protect family ideals by guarding morality, modesty, reticence, sexual segregation, parental discipline and authority and male dominance. Middle-class privacy and property had to be protected from the decadent aristocracy or the vulgarity of the masses. These defences may also reflect the need to protect the middle class family from its own potentially self-destructive appetites and desires.”

— Catherine Lemmer; “Victorian Respectability: The Gendering of Domestic Space” (2007)