A Victorian Love Affair.
I think that anyone who writes about
a particular period in history needs to be a little bit in love with it. That
doesn’t mean one would actually want to live there – just think about Victorian
dentistry for a start – but it should exert a fascination. I am often asked ‘Do
you have to do lots of research?’ as if that is a problem – but of course the
research is sheer pleasure, as I am constantly discovering new things about a
subject that enthralls me.
It all started around 1998 when
I began writing (as distinct from just reading) about Victorian crime. I always
want to know why a crime has taken place, and I realised very quickly that if I
was going to understand the crime I was going to have to learn about the
Victorians, not just the basics of what they ate and wore, and how they
travelled, but how they thought and spoke. Vitally, I needed to know not only
what they said but also the hidden meanings beneath those words. I had to somehow
delve below the layers of euphemisms, subtle allusions and the need for
‘delicacy’ and find out what they were really saying.
I have always believed that as
people we have never really changed over history. That is one reason why the
plays of Shakespeare still give us so much enjoyment, all human desire is
there; love, hate, jealousy, ambition, we still recognise ourselves. But the
expectations of Victorian society, especially for the respectable middle
classes meant that much had to be hidden or repressed. Pomposity, hypocrisy and
duplicity abound. It is that struggle between the fundamental instincts of
human nature and how the Victorians were schooled to behave, a struggle that
many failed to win, or only won at some cost, that interests me. The idea of
scandal lurking behind the lace curtains still excites us.
The best way of understanding
the Victorians is to read as much as possible of what they said, especially
under conditions where they were obliged to speak openly, and thanks to the
wonderful stenographers who reported inquests, trials, public meetings and
parliamentary proceedings, examples of actual Victorian speech as it was spoken
by every level of society is there in abundance. I can lose myself in the rhythm of the spoken
word which is so much more rounded and less jerky than nowadays, the satire and
sarcasm, the little hints of impropriety, the circumlocutions, the evasions and
the excuses they made for bad behaviour.
Their prejudices shock us now. Racism
and sexism were accepted norms of thought, and it is uncomfortable, when reading
works by writers we admire to find these casually expressed in their books and
letters. I have just been reading a speech by a noted Professor, a good kind
intelligent man, explaining why he thought women should not enter the medical
profession. But he was merely a man of his time, trying to rationalize why things
should stay as they were, and there were many like him, as well as others who
were more enlightened and far-seeing.
Victorians were often, by our
standards, very naïve about the motivation to commit crime, and what constituted
scientific proof, but these were fields that were in their infancy, slowly developing
throughout the nineteenth century which was a glorious age of discovery. They
naturally assumed, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that in
any crime where there was collusion, a female was directed by a male, a younger
person by an elder and a servant by the master.
They were adventurous and
reckless, narrow-minded and unthinkingly cruel, yet it was easy to arouse a spirit
of kindhearted chivalry, a determination to be useful to society and charity to
the less fortunate. More than any
preceding age they looked forward, and saw the achievements of society in terms
of progress, of what could be done to make life better.
They built machines to do the work of men, they looked for cures for disease,
and they rationalized the law. Not all their ideas worked, but you can’t fault
them for trying.
Linda Stratmann 2013
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