One of England's grand masters of history provides a clear and
persuasive interpretation of the creation of "respectable society"
in Victorian Britain. Integrating a vast amount of research
previously hidden in obscure or academic journals, he covers not
only the economy, social structure, and patterns of authority, but
also marriage and the family, childhood, homes and houses, work and
play.
By 1900 the structure of British society had become more
orderly and well-defined than it had been in the 1830s and 1840s,
but the result, Thompson shows, was fragmentation into a
multiplicity of sections or classes with differing standards and
notions of respectability. Each group operated its own social
controls, based on what it considered acceptable or unacceptable
conduct. This "internalized and diversified" respectability was not
the cohesive force its middle-class and evangelical proponents had
envisioned. The Victorian experience thus bequeathed structural
problems, identity problems, and authority problems to the
twentieth century, with which Britain is grappling.
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