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

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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.

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.

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.

Although I haven't read Peter Gay's five volume history of the victorian era, I just might check it out after reading "Schnitzler's Century". You have to be suspicious of any book where the offer admits that one might notice a more then faint resemblance between the current volume and the author's prior output(as Gay does in his foreword).

Regardless of any repetition, Gay is a more then capable writer, and I found the contentn of this book fascinating. Gay uses the framework of Freud to discuss the mind set of the Victorian bourgeois. Along the way, he debunks many myths perpetrated about the Victorians, particularly those relating to Victorian prudishness and fridigidity.

As we all know from our histriography books, the past is more complicated then historians of prior era's gave it credit for. I never get tired of searching out the origins of "modernity", and for that reason, I would recommend this book to any with a similar interest in knowing why the world is the way it is today.

Wonderful seller. The book was shipped in a timely manner, and was received in three business days. The book was as described.

Peter Gay gives the reader a quick breeze over the psyche of the middle classes across industrialized Europe during the latter half of the long 19th century (despite the years given on the cover.) The book categorizes the various aspects that historians often consider the main themes of bourgeois experience, and then expounds upon each of them in a concise manner (albeit filled with detail and two-sentence anecdotes.) The reader should be prepared with a wealth of resources - namely Google - if he or she is unfamiliar with 19th century European literature, because Gay makes frequent references to works that extend beyond the basic oeuvre of common knowledge. Overall, it is a fairly light read and incredibly enlightening not just about people of the past but also about the becomings of our own psychosocial state, all without making one feel he or she is reading a textbook.

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



Entertaining but flawed


Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was an Austrian physician, author and playwright whose works were widely read, criticized for their frank sexuality during his lifetime, and is virtually unknown today. A contemporary of Sigmund Freud, he dealt with human sexuality and the psyche at a time when such matters were taboo. Indeed, Freud remarked that Schnitzler seemed to have learned more about sex through intuition than Freud had through decades of psychoanalysis. That is one of the central theses of Peter Gay's "Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle Class Culture 1815-1914." Schnitzler's century...the 19th... roughly coincides with the reigns of Victoria and Edward... the Victorian and Edwardian eras, or Eros.
Peter Gay is a distinguished historian of The Enlightenment who has stepped somewhat out of his area of expertise with this entertaining but flawed "biography of the Middle Class."

Schnitzler began keeping a diary when he was sixteen, and kept at it until his death. As an adolescent, already sexually experienced (he kept up his insatiable appetite for sex all his life), he was devastated when his father, a prominent otolaryngologist, discovered his little red book in his dresser. Schnitzler chronicled not only his sexual exploits, but his psychological self-analysis and observations of the world around him. That world was undergoing industrial, social, cultural and intellectual changes throughout his life. (And he lived a long time -- Victoria was relatively young in 1862 when he was born, and the American Civil War and World War I had come and gone when he died)

Peter Gay uses Schnitzler's diary as a stepping stone for his own interpretation of the Victorian world. Much of what he says in this book he has said elsewhere, in his massive five-volume History of the Enlightenment, and said it better. Many of the over-simplifications and misinterpretations of the Victorian world .... primarily that the Victorians were prudes...have already been discarded by Havelock Ellis, Sir Richard Burton, Michel Foucault, Steven Marcus, and others. Class-consciousness, imperialism, and racism (See: "Bury The Chains" The British Struggle to Aboliah Slavery" by Adam Hochschild have all been dealt with as well. The late Roy Porter chronicled medical and scientific innovations in the English Enlightenment. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
One new element ...or at least new to me...that Peter Gay introduces is the relatively radical concept of privacy, or "personal space" as we call it today. He also distinguishes among and between classes within the Bourgeoisie... the "High" and "low", like our middle class and upper middle class. His notes and bibliography are well worth reading, but I can't give this "synthesis" as he calls it, a rave review. It's simply a good overview.
See Also:


The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction
The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England
Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery
Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and SoulAmerican Privacy: The 400-Year History of Our Most Contested Right

I was unable to get very far into this unorganized book.
Perhaps the author should consider plaigarism.