Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914 [Paperback]

Peter Gay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

"This is cultural history of the first order, and it is liberal and humane history at its very best."—David Cannadine

An essential work for anyone who wishes to understand the social history of the nineteenth century, Schnitzler's Century is the culmination of Peter Gay's thirty-five years of scholarship on bourgeois culture and society. Using Arthur Schnitzler, the sexually emboldened Viennese playwright, as his master of ceremonies, Gay offers a brilliant reexamination of the hundred-year period that began with the defeat of Napoleon and concluded with the conflagration of 1914. This is a defining work by one of America's greatest historians. 12 b/w illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Prolific author Peter Gay describes the rise of the middle class in the 19th century through an unexpected lens: the life of Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler. Yet Gay's themes are much larger than the somewhat obscure Schnitzler: "If we may call [my book] a biography at all, it is one of a class," he writes. Schnitzler's Century necessarily focuses on the Victorians--a term often applied only to the British, but here extended to all of Europe and the United States--and Gay seeks to portray them in their complexity and diversity. "There are many people who think they have grasped the Victorian mentality when they have smiled at gushy keepsakes, maudlin poems, shy euphemisms, silences about matters that matter," he writes. In fact, "they lived with their eyes open." Gay has written a history of habits, with close attention paid to sexual ones. It is the sort of provocative book that the stereotypical Victorian would want to see removed from the storefront window--but also would want to peek at when nobody else was looking. --John Miller --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Though distinguished historian Gay declares in the preface that his new work is not "merely a Reader's Digest condensation of the bulky texts that preceded it," readers of his five-volume study, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, will find most of the material decidedly familiar. As in the series' first book, Education of the Senses, he argues here that the Victorian middle classes were much less inhibited about sex than modern stereotypes suggest. As in the last, Pleasure Wars, he finds that bourgeois philistinism has been vastly overstated and that there were plenty of respectable patrons for avant-garde art and music. Indeed, as Gay admits, some of the actual examples here are drawn from his former work. So what's new? Interweaving incidents from the life of Austrian playwright and novelist Arthur Schnitzler, "sometimes briefly as an impetus to broader investigations, sometimes as a participant," Gay begins his main text with Schnitzler's father breaking into the 16-year-old's locked desk to find, and vehemently reproach Arthur for, a diary indiscreetly recording the boy's erotic exploits; he closes with the diary's August 5, 1914, entry about the "dreadful and monstrous news" of WWI's outbreak. In between, the incident with Schnitzler's diary turns up several more times: as a demonstration of conflicted bourgeois notions about privacy, as an illustration of more lenient treatment of children (Dr. Schnitzler lectured his son, but didn't beat him). As is always the case with Gay, the prose is graceful, the insights solid, the specific examples vivid and illuminating. Fellow historians and longtime readers will feel (correctly) that the author really isn't saying anything he hasn't said before; for those who lack the stamina for The Bourgeois Experience, this is an agreeable one-volume summary with some additional nuance. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393323633
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323634
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Biography as History, History as Biography, March 27, 2004

By 

Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914 (Paperback)

Peter Gay's choice of Arthur Schnitlzer is an interesting one. After all when we think of Victorian literary figures we usually think of the essayists Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold; poets Tennyson and Browning; and novelist Dickens. "Schnitlzer" is not a name that readily comes to mind to most readers when speaking of the Victorians. He wrote plays and stories and novels which are rarely read today but Gay is not really interested in taking a measure of Schnitzlers literary achievements. What interests Gay about the Viennese author is not his official output but his private output as Schnitlzer kept extensive diaries. For Gay these diaires offer a glimpse into the private life of the Victorian. Gay quotes liberally from Schnitzlers diaries because after all its the unofficial history of the Victorians that Gay is really interested in. We are all familiar with the public record of the time and the cliches about the Victorian mind set but Gay wants to peel back those cliches and have a look at the Victorian with his gaurd down -- he wants to tell us what the middle-class Victorians really thought and how they really behaved. The diary gives Gay access to the private mind and conscience behind the Victorian facade. One of Gay's points is that there is no typical "Victorian" really and that the much disparaged middle-class is really a much more diversified and conflicted group than many historians would lead you to believe. Schnitzler is not exactly a representative Victorian. In many ways he is a figure (roughly contemporary with Freud) who tells us more about the century to come than the one he was born into. Like Freud he is concerned less with the general goings-on within society than he is with the goings-on within his own and his characters minds -- their hidden motivations etc.....
Schnitzler's mind appeals to Gay because Gay himself is a Freudian and his history is an attempt to reveal the hidden motivations(anxieties , fears, aggressions, desires) driving the age. Gay is a consummate historian however and he never lets his Freudian interests lead him into speculative corners -- he supports every point with lively data and convincingly shows us that the Victorians are a largely misunderstood people. We assume they were overly shy about sex but Gay gathers plenty of evidence to counter this assumption. Schnitlzer himself seems to have thought of little else as he moved from one conquest to another. Whether we are to assume that Schnitzler is a typical Victorian or not seems to be beside the point because what Gay wants us to see is that any generalization that we make about the Victorians will quickly be undone by evidence to the contrary. This is not a "biography" of Schnitzler and it is not a typical "history" of the Victorians or middle-class. Rather this is an interdisciplinary work which blends biography and history. Schnitzler's Century uses one discipline to challenge the other and in so doing offers fresh insight into both.

In addition to "sex" two other topics are given extensive consideration: the "gospel" of work, and religion.

A rewarding work.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Victorians Unmasked, April 21, 2002

By 

lvkleydorff - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914 (Hardcover)

The title is misleading: Schnitzler lived from 1861 to 1931; The book covers the period from 1815 to 1914. The author uses the life of Schnitzler as a hook on which to hang his tales of the Victorian bourgeoisie.

Mr. Gay discusses the moral atmosphere during the 19th century and shows us that the bourgeoisie was not as constipated as they are claimed to be. Next he discusses the Victorian family, their religious habits as well as their culture and work. Shaping the century is the fact that it was relatively free of wars and thus gave people a chance to better themselves in peaceful times. But probably the most important factor was the arrival of the industrial age. The railroads not only created riches for some bourgeois, but enabled the speedy transport of goods, just as the telegraph cut down on the transmittal time of news. Especially the second half of the 19th century was a time of upheaval, with people trying to find their place in a rapidly changing environment. This continued long into the 20thh century before it settled down to a more comfortable pace.

Mr. Gay had previously written a five-volume explanation of the bourgeois experience in the 19th century. I must assume that his research for such a massive undertaking served as the basis of the present book. Unfortunately, too many authors recycle their leftover research. That is definitely not the case here. The writing is fresh and of new interest.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Creative approach to a difficult topic., November 27, 2002

By 

Bob Blum (Crofton, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914 (Hardcover)

An enjoyable journey to an expanded perspective. Peter Gay's work requires some initial persistence on the part of the reader to settle into the paradigm for digesting this treatise - but the persistence rapidly bears fruit. The book uses the life of Arthur Schnitzler only tangentially as a point of entry into the lifestyle, attitudes, passions, obsessions, and, most importantly, the contributions of the Victorian middle class. In developing this panorama, Gay refutes many of the cliché-ridden perceptions of the Victorian bourgeoisie to provide insight into its achievements in laying the foundations for much that is positive in the twentieth century. As the depiction approaches completion, the persistence of the reader in traversing the opening chapters is amply rewarded. The perspective gained from this excellent, enjoyable treatise is magnified by reading it in conjunction with Arthur Herman's superb work, The Idea of Decline in Western History - a work which approaches a nearly contemporaneous period from a different, darker, but complementary direction.