Varieties of Victorianism: The Uses of a Past (review)

Abstract

Margaret Thatcher's use of the phrase "Victorian values" in the election campaign of 1983 gave a new--and in some circles unwelcome--currency to Britain's Victorian past. Many of the Prime Minister's opponents were contemptuous of her references to the period and her claim that Britain's decline could be reversed by a return to self-reliance and individual [End Page 661] charity and a repudiation of the welfare state. What Thatcher sometimes spoke of as the lost world of her grandmother entered the political landscape as a much-debated alternative to the presumed evils of post-Victorian collectivism. The obvious simplifications of this narrative (it downplays or ignores, for example, the Victorian origins of the welfare state) are part of its appeal. Whatever one thinks of Thatcher's policies, one measure of her success lies in the continuing popularity in British politics of the language of individual responsibility and the challenge her use of the period has posed to academic historians and literary critics. Varieties of Victorianism is a case in point; Thatcher's narrative of Britain's fall and redemption continues to haunt many of the contributors to Gary Day's fine collection of essays.