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Inventing the Victorians

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'Inventing the Victorians' by Matthew Sweet explores the myths and stereotypes surrounding the Victorian era, challenging popular misconceptions about the time period. The book delves into various aspects of Victorian society, including sex scandals, media circus, interior decoration, and serial killers, providing a different perspective on Queen Victoria's reign. Sweet's writing style is described as entertaining and thought-provoking, using anecdotes and examples to present a vivid portrait of the Victorians.

Writing/Prose:

The writing is accessible yet can be uneven, blending informal prose with sections of more academic analysis.

Plot/Storyline:

The narrative contests established views on Victorian society while drawing parallels with contemporary issues.

Setting:

The setting encompasses late 19th-century Britain, connecting its influences to modern societal norms.

Pacing:

The book's rhythm fluctuates, leading to parts that can feel sluggish despite moments of engaging narrative.

Notes:

Matthew Sweet argues that Victorians were not so different from modern people.
The Victorians laid the groundwork for today’s industrialized urban society.
Many modern phrases and phenomena have their roots in the Victorian era.
Sweet challenges the stereotype of Victorian prudishness regarding sex.
He notes contradictions in historical assumptions about Victorian society, specifically about prostitution.
The book discusses the sensationalism present in Victorian media and how it mirrors today’s celebrity culture.
Sweet provides evidence that some aspects of modern society, like advertising tactics and the cult of celebrity, originated in the Victorian period.
Sweet claims that the Victorian society was full of vibrant events and cultural phenomena, contradicting the myth of their dullness.
The author highlights the role of scandal in Victorian journalism, drawing parallels to modern media.
Victorian attitudes towards issues like drugs and sexuality can surprisingly resonate with contemporary views.

From The Publisher:

"Suppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong." So begins Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet, a compact and mind-bending whirlwind tour through the soul of the nineteenth century, and a round debunking of our assumptions about it. The Victorians have been victims of the "the enormous condescension of posterity," in the historian E. P. Thompson's phrase. Locked in the drawing room, theirs was an age when, supposedly, existence was stultifying, dank, and over-furnished, and when behavior conformed so rigorously to proprieties that the repressed results put Freud into business. We think we have the Victorians pegged-as self-righteous, imperialist, racist, materialist, hypocritical and, worst of all, earnest.

Oh how wrong we are, argues Matthew Sweet in this highly entertaining, provocative, and illuminating look at our great, and great-great, grandparents. In this, the year of the centenary of Queen Victoria's death, Sweet forces us to think again about her century, entombed in our minds by Dickens, the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and by images of unfettered capitalism and grinding poverty.

Sweet believes not only that we're wrong about the Victorians but profoundly indebted to them. In ways we have been slow to acknowledge, their age and our own remain closely intertwined. The Victorians invented the theme part, the shopping mall, the movies, the penny arcade, the roller coaster, the crime novel, and the sensational newspaper story. Sweet also argues that our twenty-first century smugness about how far we have evolved is misplaced. The Victorians were less racist than we are, less religious, less violent, and less intolerant. Far from being an outcaste, Oscar Wilde was a fairly typical Victorian man; the love that dared not speak its name was declared itself fairly openly. In 1868 the first international cricket match was played between an English team and an Australian team composed entirely of aborigines. The Victorians loved sensation, novelty, scandal, weekend getaways, and the latest conveniences (by 1869, there were image-capable telegraphs; in 1873 a store had a machine that dispensed milk to after-hours' shoppers). Does all this sound familiar?

As Sweet proves in this fascinating, eye-opening book, the reflection we find in the mirror of the nineteenth century is our own. We inhabit buildings built by the Victorians; some of us use their sewer system and ride on the railways they built. We dismiss them because they are the age against whom we have defined our own. In brilliant style, Inventing the Victorians shows how much we have been missing.

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About the Author:

Matthew Sweet recently completed his thesis on sensation fiction. His work appears regularly in "The Independent "and "The Guardian." He lives in London.

 
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