Past Featured Title

 

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Featured Title:

"The Victorian Frame of Mind"

 

by

Walter E. Houghton

 

 

 

ISBN#0300001223

$25.00 (PB)

(Check Amazon.com for pricing--discounts may vary.)

 

Acknowledgements

 

Preface

 

1. Character of the Age

     The State of Society

     The State of the Human Mind

 

PART I: EMOTIONAL ATTITUDE

 

2. Optimism

     Reconstruction and History:

     Two Utopians of Science

     Applied Science and Bigger Business

     Liberation from the Burdens of the Past

 

3. Anxiety

     Fear of Revolution

     The Danger of Atheism

     Worry and Fatigue

     The Strain of Puritanism

     Ennui and Doubt

     Isolation, Loneliness, and Nostalgia

 

PART II: INTELLECTUAL ATTITUDES

 

4. The Critical Spirit--and the Will to Believe

     Rise of the Critical Spirit

     The Will to Believe

     Recoil to Authority

     Reliance on Authority

     Tension

 

5. Anti-Intellectualism

     Business

     Democracy, Evangelicalism, and Doubt

 

6. Dogmatism

     Opportunity for the Ego

     The Rationale of Infallibility

     The Attraction of Dogmatism

 

7. Rigidity

     Sectarian Fervor

     Puritan Judgment

     The Need for Rigidity

     The Open and Flexible Mind

 

PART III: MORAL ATTITUDES

 

8. The Commercial Spirit

     Respectability

     The Bourgeois Dream

     Success

 

9. The Worship of Force

     Machines and Men

     The Squirearchy

     The Major Prophet

     Darwinism, Chauvinism, Racism

     Puritanism

     Disillusion

 

10. Earnestness

     Intellectual Earnestness

     Moral Earnestness and the Religious Crisis

     Moral Earnestness and the Social Crisis

 

11. Enthusiasm

     Idealism and the Education of the Feelings

     Sympathy and Benevolence

     Nobility

     Self-Development

     Aspiration without an Object

     Moral Optimism

 

12. Hero Worship

     Messiah

     Revelation

     Moral Inspiration

     Patriotism

     Politics

     Compensation

 

13. Love

     Home, Sweet Home

     Woman

     Sex

     Love

 

14. Hypocrisy

     Conformity

     Moral Pretension

     Evasion

     Anti-Hypocrisy

 

Bibliography

 

Index

 

SYNOPSIS: In order to write believable fiction, it is necessary to know your characters.  What is their background?  What are their moral beliefs?  What was their religious upbringing?  All these, and more, affect the way they will act and react to any given situation in your novel.  This is much easier in contemporary settings because we are living in the social attitudes of the day.  To write historicals, however, one must know how the Victorian mind thought. How the Victorian mind was shaped by social mores of the day.  This book is an excellent reference on the topic.  You can learn how the Victorians lived and how their outside world influenced their lives.  A great resource for digging deep into your characters.

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