Victorian Morality

Victorian morality is a rigid perspective developed during the Victorian era that included a great deal of censorship, secret lives, double standards, and a lack of pro-life discourse. Ultimately, references to the Bible itself seemed to result from the lack of freedom of speech. Part of Victorian morality was a liberal denial about Jesus welcoming sinners. Anglophilia is a central part of Victorian morality.

Victorian morality is based more in a pretension of Rule of Law than in the Bible, which was rarely quoted publicly or by writers in England during this period or afterwards. When atheism replaced faith in England, Victorian morality became liberal censorship. In colonial America, the Salem Witch Trials in the late 1600s and later The Scarlet Letter can be understood as the result of excesses of Victorian morality.

Charles Dickens, perhaps the most prominent author of the Victorian era, felt compelled to keep completely secret from the London public a Christian story that he wrote, and a mistress that he had after his marriage fell apart. Mary Shelley, one of the most popular novelists from the era who was pro-life and penned classics including Frankenstein and The Last Man, personally lived contrary to Victorian morality.

Capital punishment -- not merely imprisonment -- was the over-the-top Victorian era penalty for bigamy. Debtor's prison was another example of injustice resulting from excessive expansion of Victorian morality.

Judicial supremacy that increased in unchecked power in England, far beyond biblical values, may have worsened the censorship and other tyranny associated with Victorian morality.

Bowdlerizing[edit]

"Bowdlerize" means to censor material to a ridiculous extent, supposedly to make it suitable for women and children. Englishman Dr. Thomas Bowdlerize did this first to the works of Shakespeare in the early 1800s, and then to the classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons, as well as to other works.

Feminism[edit]

Roots of feminism can be traced to a distortion of Victorian morality, diverging far from the Bible and ultimately even against it.