In this work, Peter Gay draws on an array of primary sources to re-examine 19th-century sexual behaviour, overturning a number of stereotypes, especially about women and sexuality.
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One of the major historical enterprises of the decade. . . . A grand investigation of the bourgeois experience and consciousness in the nineteenth century, an enterprise requiring a daring and breadth of knowledge possessed by few other contemporary historians, and one which [Peter Gay] has carried to its term with inexhaustible energy and patience and an exuberance of spirit. -- Gordon A. Craig, New York Review of Books
[Education of the Senses is] the most learned, as well as the wittiest survey of human sexuality ever to be published. -- New York Times
[Education of the Senses is] the most learned, as well as the wittiest survey of human sexuality ever to be published. -- New York Times
About the Author
Peter Gay is director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Social/Cultural History of the Bourgeois (vol 1),
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This review is from: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud Volume 1: Education of the Senses (v. 1) (Paperback)
Seems to me that the reviews Amazon has above do not refer to volume one of this landmark five volume history of the bourgeois. Same goes for at least one of the reviews below.
This series by Peter Gay chronicles the "Bourgeois Century", roughly 1820 to the first world war. Gay's approach is anchored by a commitment to Freudian theory and a cross-cultural approach that takes in British, French, German and American culture with equal interest. His scholarship is careful and nuanced. He draws equally adeptly from primary and secondary materials and this volume see saws between able synthesis and novel (re) interpretations of primary sources. As the subtitle states, this volume focuses on "the education of the senses", which is a euphimism for the process by which a young victorian (man) learns about sex. That is not to say that Gay focuses exclusively on the experience of men, far from it. Education of the Senses begins with a general introduction that I assume applies to all five volumes. Gay is careful to explain the background of the nineteenth century: i.e. that it was a period of ferocious change and that people were greatly affected and disturbed by that change. The subtitle of Education of the Senses is "Bourgeois Experiences, I: An Erotic Record", and that it precisely the territory covered by this volume. First off, he discusses the diary of Mabel Loomis Todd, an east coast American bourgeois. Her story is that of the woman who marries and is unfaithful to her husband. Gay uses her experience to demonstrate that the sex life of the Victorian was more complicated then previous scholars thought (this is the overriding theme of all of his work in this area). Gay marches through Bourgeois attitudes towards sex within marriage (i.e. women were not sexually anthesthic), the role of feminism in Victorian culture, the place of birth control and birth, the role of the medical establishment in promoting half truths about sex, the place of pornography and the place of private family life, among several other topics. Gay is judicious in his use of Freudian theory, I found it interesting, not overwhelming or dogmatic. His writing style is fluid. First rate cultural history. Can't wait for volume two, though I probably will wait for a while...
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
A WORRYING though often barely visible ingredient in the experience of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie was anxiety over its very definition: its internal rank orders, its status in society, its relation to other classes, its political future, its moral character. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
bourgeois century, bourgeois sexuality, birth controllers, middling orders, bourgeois experience, journal intime Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mabel Todd, Mabel Loomis, David Todd, United States, Sigmund Freud, Austin Dickinson, Carey Thomas, New York, Joseph Lyman, Laura Lyman, Charles Dickens, Saturday Review, George Sand, Victoria Benedictsson, Greek Slave, William Ewart Gladstone, Gustave Flaubert, Heinrich Heine, Henry James, Lester Ward, Millicent Todd, Queen Victoria, Catherine Gladstone, Effie Ruskin, Eleanor Rogers New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
A WORRYING though often barely visible ingredient in the experience of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie was anxiety over its very definition: its internal rank orders, its status in society, its relation to other classes, its political future, its moral character. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
bourgeois century, bourgeois sexuality, birth controllers, middling orders, bourgeois experience, journal intime Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mabel Todd, Mabel Loomis, David Todd, United States, Sigmund Freud, Austin Dickinson, Carey Thomas, New York, Joseph Lyman, Laura Lyman, Charles Dickens, Saturday Review, George Sand, Victoria Benedictsson, Greek Slave, William Ewart Gladstone, Gustave Flaubert, Heinrich Heine, Henry James, Lester Ward, Millicent Todd, Queen Victoria, Catherine Gladstone, Effie Ruskin, Eleanor Rogers New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
46
books
cite this book:
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- Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History by Peter Fritzsche in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment: Attention, Wonder and Astonishment by Matthew Riley in Front Matter, page 79, and Back Matter
- Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage by Alan Kahan in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Scriptures of Charles Dickens: Novels of Ideology, Novels of the Self (The Nineteenth Century Series) by Vincent Newey on page 173, and Back Matter
- Music in Other Words: Victorian Conversations (California Studies in 19th-Century Music) by Ruth A. Solie on page 65, and page 127
See all 46 books citing this book
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