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The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud #1
Education of the Senses: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud
“The most learned, as well as the wittiest survey of human sexuality ever to be published.” ― New York Times Education of the Senses draws on a vast array of primary sources to reexamine nineteenth-century sexual behavior, overturning a number of stereotypes, especially about women and sexuality.
580 pages, Paperback
First published January 12, 1984
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524 people want to read
About the author
Peter Gay
150 books153 followersPeter Joachim Gay was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997–2003). He received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He authored over 25 books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, a two-volume award winner; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968); and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 24, 2007
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...
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...
April 27, 2020
Positives: more evidence that there is no way the Victorians were as repressed as we think. Negatives: SO. MUCH. FREUD. SHUT. UP.
August 31, 2023
This book, by the author of “Weimar Culture,” one of my go-to resources on European history, was something of an eye-opener for me. It turns out that Gay was a leading figure in “psychohistory” and an advocate of applying Freudian psychoanalytical technique to the study of history. In a way, it’s not surprising if the 1980s was the time of the rise of such an approach, it maps with the rising trend of applying psychoanalysis to fields other than psychology, such as art, literature, and film. Cynically, I suspect that this trend mirrors the decrease in Freud’s reputation among psychologists, but I accept that I don’t know enough about psychology to say for sure. This book, written in 1984, is ahead of the “Cultural Turn,” and thus is not deconstructionist, post-modernist, or post-structuralist; it is fairly typical intellectual history with a certain amount of delving into “subconscious” motivations on the part of its subjects. On the whole, it seems fairly balanced and reasonable, even if some conclusions better than others.
This methodology is applied to the study of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, a hard-enough entity to define, across essentially all of Europe and the United States, but with a definite preference for England, France, Germany, and the USA; other nations just put in cameo appearances. Gay is not blind to the problem of his very broad subject matter, and trying to nail down just what it is he’s studying takes up considerable space in this volume. Part of the problem is that “bourgeois” became as much an epithet as an identity partway through the century, and many of its most obvious members were in denial of their status. Another is that the class structure of different countries varied nationally; there was already considerable difference between being “middle class” in Germany and England in 1850, and this only became more stark as time went on.
Nevertheless, Gay’s analysis has a lot to offer. In some ways, this is the foundational study of “mainstream” heterosexuality during its formative period that Queer Studies critics have long been calling for (but didn’t realize it was already there). Gay has devoted this volume to the question of whether “Victorians” were really as uptight as everyone claims. His answer is both yes and no. In some areas – such as their demonization of the natural function of masturbation – they were shockingly repressed and repressive. But, looking deeply at diaries and letters between married couples and lovers, he comes to the conclusion that many people had fully satisfying, healthy sex lives. And, despite all the public outrage and concern about eroticism and “degeneracy,” they also produced some highly erotic expressions, primarily nudes, primarily female, in sculpted and painted forms, which he analyzes in detail. Gay comes out pretty sure that the 19th century was as horny as any other, and no more neurotic than most, for what that is worth.
As a pretty serious critic of Freud, it’s no surprise that I found several points of disagreement with Gay. Not least was his willingness to accept Freud’s about-face on the original Seduction Theory, which postulated that hysteria was widespread among middle class European women because so many of them were, in fact, sexually abused as children by their fathers. Given what we know today about child sexual abuse and its traumatic effects, this theory resounds even more strongly now and Freud’s odd notion that the women created their own trauma by fantasizing about sex with their fathers seems like classic victim-blaming. But the 1980s is starting to seem almost as distant as the 1880s now, and it seems easier to accept that “people just thought differently then” and not to be quite so dismissive of other insights based on one mistake. Folks who are interested in the historiography of sexuality would do well to see where it was coming from at this early point in history.
This methodology is applied to the study of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, a hard-enough entity to define, across essentially all of Europe and the United States, but with a definite preference for England, France, Germany, and the USA; other nations just put in cameo appearances. Gay is not blind to the problem of his very broad subject matter, and trying to nail down just what it is he’s studying takes up considerable space in this volume. Part of the problem is that “bourgeois” became as much an epithet as an identity partway through the century, and many of its most obvious members were in denial of their status. Another is that the class structure of different countries varied nationally; there was already considerable difference between being “middle class” in Germany and England in 1850, and this only became more stark as time went on.
Nevertheless, Gay’s analysis has a lot to offer. In some ways, this is the foundational study of “mainstream” heterosexuality during its formative period that Queer Studies critics have long been calling for (but didn’t realize it was already there). Gay has devoted this volume to the question of whether “Victorians” were really as uptight as everyone claims. His answer is both yes and no. In some areas – such as their demonization of the natural function of masturbation – they were shockingly repressed and repressive. But, looking deeply at diaries and letters between married couples and lovers, he comes to the conclusion that many people had fully satisfying, healthy sex lives. And, despite all the public outrage and concern about eroticism and “degeneracy,” they also produced some highly erotic expressions, primarily nudes, primarily female, in sculpted and painted forms, which he analyzes in detail. Gay comes out pretty sure that the 19th century was as horny as any other, and no more neurotic than most, for what that is worth.
As a pretty serious critic of Freud, it’s no surprise that I found several points of disagreement with Gay. Not least was his willingness to accept Freud’s about-face on the original Seduction Theory, which postulated that hysteria was widespread among middle class European women because so many of them were, in fact, sexually abused as children by their fathers. Given what we know today about child sexual abuse and its traumatic effects, this theory resounds even more strongly now and Freud’s odd notion that the women created their own trauma by fantasizing about sex with their fathers seems like classic victim-blaming. But the 1980s is starting to seem almost as distant as the 1880s now, and it seems easier to accept that “people just thought differently then” and not to be quite so dismissive of other insights based on one mistake. Folks who are interested in the historiography of sexuality would do well to see where it was coming from at this early point in history.
March 20, 2019
Dense and yet eclectic, a deep dig into the mental processes of the period. Probably not the first book you should pick up about the period but excellent.
August 20, 2014
Gay loses a star for the formulaic (okay, sometimes not so formulaic) Freudianism of his readings. I found these an irritant and, frankly, unnecessary. This volume covers sexuality in all its manifestations. He discusses birth control, female emancipation, death in childbirth, sex education, etc. and concludes that experience was both diverse and often un-"Victorian." I am definitely going on to the second volume when it arrives.
October 5, 2019
When you think “psychoanalytic history of the Victorian period” you think “let’s get a load of these repressed freaks,” right? Well, that’s not what Peter Gay provides in this, the first of his five volume psychoanalysis-inspired cultural history of the “bourgeois century.” Instead of Victorians having freakouts because table legs were too sexy, we have Gay excavating the diaries and letters of bourgeois Europeans and Americans and finding them surprisingly frank about sexual matters- euphemistic, “proper,” but not neurotically avoidant… in private, anyway.
Gay emphasizes that many of the insistences of the bourgeois at that time were coping mechanisms directed towards anxiety over rapid social change. The ideology of separate gendered spheres of activity, as both a societal and a medical necessity, was the keystone of these. Along with it came the divide between the public and private sphere. So did idealism- Gay discusses pornography (in classic Freudian fashion dismissing it as essentially immature) but doesn’t touch on sex work extensively, or really any kind of sexuality that doesn’t have love attached to it, even where it’s extra-marital. His Victorians are forever searching out a higher, perfect love, which is expressed physically as well as emotionally.
In short, Gay’s Victorians are good Freudian patients, with plenty of issues to chew on analytically but essentially in agreement with what I understand to be the psychoanalytic definition of what makes a whole person. There’s an overdetermined quality to Gay’s portrait here. For one thing, focusing solely on the bourgeoisie robs us of the perspective of that class’ interaction with those outside, which I think would make things look altogether different and cleaner than the picture of sensuality Gay gives us. Maybe that comes in later volumes? But it also seems like a weakness of “inner history.” Where does the inner end and the navel begin, as far as the gaze goes?
I came to this several years after reading Gay’s two-volume history of the Enlightenment, which is considered pretty dodgy these days but is a classic of its type and much less psychoanalytic than his Victorian work. I appreciate Gay’s historical spadework and sympathetic depth analyses of cultural figures. That said, this took a lot to get through, in part due to stuff going on in my own life, unlike the Enlightenment books which I remember enjoying more. I don’t think he’s quite knocked Lytton Strachey off of his pedestal as guy who defines the inner history of the Victorian upper/middle classes, though I guess I’ve only seen a fifth of Gay’s attempt. ***
Gay emphasizes that many of the insistences of the bourgeois at that time were coping mechanisms directed towards anxiety over rapid social change. The ideology of separate gendered spheres of activity, as both a societal and a medical necessity, was the keystone of these. Along with it came the divide between the public and private sphere. So did idealism- Gay discusses pornography (in classic Freudian fashion dismissing it as essentially immature) but doesn’t touch on sex work extensively, or really any kind of sexuality that doesn’t have love attached to it, even where it’s extra-marital. His Victorians are forever searching out a higher, perfect love, which is expressed physically as well as emotionally.
In short, Gay’s Victorians are good Freudian patients, with plenty of issues to chew on analytically but essentially in agreement with what I understand to be the psychoanalytic definition of what makes a whole person. There’s an overdetermined quality to Gay’s portrait here. For one thing, focusing solely on the bourgeoisie robs us of the perspective of that class’ interaction with those outside, which I think would make things look altogether different and cleaner than the picture of sensuality Gay gives us. Maybe that comes in later volumes? But it also seems like a weakness of “inner history.” Where does the inner end and the navel begin, as far as the gaze goes?
I came to this several years after reading Gay’s two-volume history of the Enlightenment, which is considered pretty dodgy these days but is a classic of its type and much less psychoanalytic than his Victorian work. I appreciate Gay’s historical spadework and sympathetic depth analyses of cultural figures. That said, this took a lot to get through, in part due to stuff going on in my own life, unlike the Enlightenment books which I remember enjoying more. I don’t think he’s quite knocked Lytton Strachey off of his pedestal as guy who defines the inner history of the Victorian upper/middle classes, though I guess I’ve only seen a fifth of Gay’s attempt. ***
August 11, 2023
Informational.
September 16, 2017
It's really good. Gay has several thesis that go against popular myths about Victorians; and they're valuable because this period was actually modern despite it being 100 plus years ago. There were huge changes that affected people much the same way our rapid changes during the past 30 years are affecting us right now in 2017. For example, the transatlantic cable, the germ theory of disease, railroads, Darwin, and the advent of mass politics were only a few of the things that made people feel disoriented, worried, and anxious. I recommend highly.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews