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

by Peter Gay

Hardcover and jacket - very good, with no significant faults; pages are clean and sound. TS

Genres: History, Nonfiction, 19th Century, European History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Peter 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".

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd read this book because it promised to be a description and comparison of middle class life across European cultures during the nineteenth century and while I know a fair amount about British culture, I did not have a clear idea of how it compared to say, German or Italian culture at the time. Despite promises, differences between cultures were barely addressed, so I guess they were mostly the same? Kinda?

This is an immensely frustrating book in which the author is prone to stating several anecdotes and then making a sweeping generalization which is frequently either contradicted by or irrelevant to his data. For example, in trying to prove his thesis that Victorians, especially Victorian women, were not as frigid as we imagine, he presents several pages of evidence of why people might think Victorians prized frigidity, including quotes from multiple medical textbooks. Then he has about a page of short quotes from private letters in which women allude to sex. One single line, mostly contextless, appears at least three times, which does not do much for his argument that plenty of women liked sex since he clearly has so little evidence that he has to repeatedly present the same evidence. Now, I think it's unlikely that anyone genuinely believes that female biology has changed in two hundred years. But regarding the argument that Victorian women were expected to be frigid, he seems to have disproven his own thesis.

Or, after several pages documenting the condemnation of masturbation, at the very end of the chapter, he suddenly asserts that near the end of the century, doctors' level of respect in society suddenly increased. Since the fight against masturbation also tapered off in the same time period, he declares that clearly doctors had fought against masturbation because of their anxiety over their social status and with their status secure, they were no longer threatened. No evidence whatsoever given. No acknowledgement that correlation does not imply causation.

One particular passage, about the increase in art dealers, stuck out with a phrase roughly "the only thing surprising about this number is its size". What else is there to be surprising or not?

Gay's framing story is that of the titular Schnitzler, an Austrian playwright who was apparently famous but whom I have never heard of. I still know barely anything about him--Gay tells us almost nothing of use. Mostly what he establishes is that the man was an insecure asshole who compulsively slept around, demanded his women be virgins, called them worse than whores if they had so much as ever kissed another man, cheated on them, and dumped them with depressing regularity. Also, lazy, useless, and mean to his parents. There is not a single piece of evidence that is presented that makes him remotely sympathetic. But what I really do not understand is why this particular man was chosen, out of all middle-class Victorians. Random incidents in his life are used as springboards for introducing each topic (actually, one irritatingly minor incident is used over and over), but there's nothing about his life that makes him more suitable than everyone else. In fact, because he was not family-oriented, not business-oriented, and Jewish, he's the opposite of most of the trends that the author pinpoints. Almost anyone would be better. We are shoved into an unpleasant man's life without explanation--very little background on him other than his number of orgasms (which he faithfully recorded) and no explanation of why he is significant, what his influence on the culture was, or why he was chosen as our guide.

Here, too, we find many sweeping generalizations. I particularly liked how Gay dissects Schnitzler's Oedipal relationship with his mother by admitting that there's basically no evidence of anything and he never talked much at all about her, but that the fact he doesn't mention her much clearly means that he was obsessed with her. Or something.

The conclusions inform us that the Victorian middle class values were responsible for the peace of the nineteenth century. (Actually, I think the Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe gets the credit for that. Also, the Franco-Prussian War, the revolutions of 1848, the liberation of Italy, the American Civil War, and the multiple atrocities in Africa scarcely count as a total lack of war.) Of course, their ungrateful descendents mucked it all up. Also, the Victorians get credit for the birth of the Modernist movement, which he heralds as if it is the greatest period of art ever and the summation of all humanity. Of course, their ungrateful descendents (who actually executed most of the movement) would have never accomplished it without the Victorians. Umm.

There are some interesting tidbits here and there, and I do feel like it rounded out some of my knowledge of the time period. The sources he cites are interesting; it's the conclusions I find to be muddle-headed and unsubstantiated. It feels very much as if he decided on his conclusions well ahead of time, and then just shoved a bunch of evidence in whether or not it supported his ideas. The evidence itself is sometimes fascinating, but the editorializing is unworthy of a Yale professor.

[Norman Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

IKulturgeschichtlich angelegte DArstellung mit großen Linien und nteressenaten Details, ansprechend und gut lesbar präsentiert. Lohnende Lektüre! Mitunter allerdings, wenn die Libido im Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit steht, gerät Peter Gay für meinen Geschmack an den Rand der Geschwätzigkeit.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Arthur Schnitzler forms the hook for this book as the representative Victorian as we say today, it is not all about him. Peter Gay uses Schnitzler as an example of the many conflicting attitudes of the Victorians, to society, religion, work, the poor and of course sex.

His thesis is the the Victorians left the best of themselves in 1914 and something went seriously wrong. He is generally positive about the Victorian bourgeoisie, and claims claims that they simply received a bad press and are the victims of scandal mongers. Es kann sein.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

The rhetorical strategy of using Schnitzler as a vehicle for an exploration into the Victorians employed herein seems forced. In many instances, the prose itself is simply flat. I find Gay's deification of Freud to be utterly contemptible and do not recommend this book to anyone. Perhaps his larger works, of which this is a distillation, do not suffer from the same infirmities; however, I am not inclined to find out.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love history. I especially love Victorian history. It baffles me why I hated this book. The analysis in this book was forced and dry and next to impossible to read without my mind wandering somewhere else. The only thing I got out of it was what a jerk Schnitzler was...which I am pretty sure was not the goal of the author. I had to read it all for a class but I really really wanted to chuck it across the room.

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are all Viennese now.

[Jemma · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit disappointing as the gist is that Victorians were less "victorian" than we might imagine. Well I knew that and that the later in the period (especially if you are talking of the long 19th Century as here) was even more like the 20th.

This is good on detail about Victorian taste in arts, sexuality and privacy though. Indeed, this book would probably be ideal for anyone who says they hate History as it is purely a cultural history. Sadly, those people will probably never find their way to this book and those who have already read widely on this subject will find it a little disappointing and thin.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting enough that I pulled out the first volume of Gay's five-volume history of the bourgeois experience when I was done. I've had it for decades. He shows how diverse the middle class experience was and how many of its members lived very un-stereotypical lives in everything from sex to art patronage. Definitely a good start for people who are intimidated by the five-volume history.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using Arthur Schnitzler's writings as a centerpiece Peter Gay narrates a cultural history of the century that ended with the conflagration of the "Great War". This is a depiction of the Victorian era and middle classes that is different and surprisingly entertaining.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thesis: the Victorian middle classes were not as boring or as prudish as we think they are. Is there anything novel about that assertion?

The author is too attached to Freud and psychoanalysis, and curious about matters best left alone. Also, surprisingly positive interpretation of the nineteenth century as vastly better than the twentieth, and does not take colonialism into consideration (except for two brief pages that give European colonialism a rather simplistic overview).

I had to read this for a class or I would not have finished (if I'd even bothered to check it out).

[Suzanne Hess · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is no difference between Victorian and the twenty-first century middle class, only that the middle class came more into existence and given its label. The depravity is not as spectacularly written as in My Secret Life: An Erotic Diary of Victorian London. Diaries are still kept today, but more and more are making their private lives known online. When is oversharing too much? Some things should be private as was shown in Gay's book.

[Jennifer Pullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a scholar of Victorian Lit. this was pretty much a review. However, if you are someone who thinks that Middle Class Victorians were all uptight uncultured people, this book would be a good overview of the diversity in worldview and behavior in the middle classes of Europe and the US in the long 19th century.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seeing how Peter Gay spent five books on the Victorian middle class already, to cover the same ground in a single book, clocking in at just under 300 pages, seems like an editing project I don't wish on anyone. But sometimes you need a book of manageable length to introduce the period to readers lacking the gumption to down five volumes on the Victorian Age (I confess my interest in Victorian history doesn't run that deep). For this reason, I'm willing to cut Gay some slack on how quickly he moves through his subject and how, even while trying to dig into the particulars and the complexities, he has to gloss over some things.

That being said, Gay at times reveals a certain annoying admiration for the Victorian bourgeoisie that causes him to completely sidestep some rather important aspects of that time and culture. The biggest transgression might be the complete omission of the Victorian era's colonial exploits, which most certainly connected to middle-class society -- Gay goes to great pains to assert how important the middle-class was to all other aspects of Victorian life, so by that logic, they would have also been involved in colonial issues as well. This seems a convenient negation given that he calls the twentieth century a far more barbaric century than the nineteenth. Such comparisons often seem boring anyway and just a way of praising one era at the expense of another -- a lazy tactic.

The other point that I found rather suspect was some of his praise of marital sexual relationships. He wants us to debunk the perception of Victorians as stuffy prudes who hated sex, so he goes to great lengths to show just how sexually active they were and how open they were about (among other things) bodies, sex, and birth control. This seems fair and I really enjoyed portions of this discussion. But he refrains from really taking to task some of the blatantly sexist and misogynistic attitudes relating to sexual relationships. He needles it a bit, acknowledging women's oppression in rather "safe" (superficial) ways, but never really rips into the subject. Several of his references reveal that, yes, women clearly weren't frigid and most men knew that, but it still shows that women were hardly allowed to be as sexually experienced as men (certainly not before marriage) and that it was a man's job to awaken a woman's sexual feelings (translate: dude, break her in!). How's a man to do that? Oh, because he's allowed to be sexually active before marriage, unlike a woman. Woulda been nice if Gay had actually interrogated that. Also, his talk about wedding nights sounded so clearly one-sided to the male perspective that it was embarrassing. As did his evasion of aggression, be it physical or emotional, dealt out on women. Instead he'll talk at length about the death penalty (which was interesting) and just avoid violence against women all together (I thought he'd address it since he opens that chapter by pointing out Schnitzler's own repeated "conquests" with the ladies and the violence contained within that word -- but that's where the discussion of violence against women began and ended). For a book published in 2002, I expect a bit more from him on these issues.

But there are good parts to this book, obviously. The part on birth control is very interesting, as is the part on masturbation. With both of these subjects we see the religious and political powers as being the primary crusaders against such examples of indecency. With both these sections I couldn't help but think about the current debates happening in America over birth control and women's reproductive health and the ongoing fear and distorted understanding of masturbation -- in both cases the opposition is largely spearheaded by conservative powers, be they political or religious. What we consider to be a very oppressive conservative climate in the Victorian age, could be us looking more at the controlling powers than at the attitudes of the middle and lower class. Several of Gay's points on these issues were good ones.

Overall I liked this book as an entry point to this period. I didn't mind the book being, however loosely, framed around Arthur Schnitzler. But I'm a student of Germanic culture, so I would be fine with such an approach. I do think such an approach would have perhaps been more fruitful if Gay had in turn used the history he was unfolding to illuminate Schnitzler's own art a bit more -- show more strongly how his work was informed by Victorian bourgeois culture. But that wish is the art critic in me, not the historian, and this is primarily a history book. Gay's use of Freud throughout might be a problem in that we've moved quite a ways past Freud in the last hundred years. But since Freud was also working during this period, his theories a product of the times, it was interesting to see Freud applied to his own. I really liked portions of this book, didn't like spots where I thought Gay was evading responsibility, and then was kind of ho-hum about other sections. But overall it was good and worth a read if you're curious about this peculiar historical period.

[Jocelyn Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read this for class. Not something I would have picked up on my own, but I did enjoy reading about the Victorian middle-class and Schnitzler's crazy antics.

[Chris S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of what middle-class people thought in the 19th century. As usual, many things are more complicated than they seem.

[ROBERT]

middle class between waterloo and the great war. a lot of information new to me. a very worth while read

[Dries Cromheecke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boeiend, maar nogal vaag. Over het persoonlijk leven van “mensen” in het verleden valt moeilijk in algemene termen te spreken en dan krijg je al snel losse anekdotes en talrijke nuanceringen.

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a lot of reviews on this book that said it focuses too much on Schnitzler.
Well, yeah. Okay, it does revolve around Schnitzler a lot. But come on - the guy's name is in the title, so that is not that big a surprise, right?
In fact, I think applying the theory of Victorian bourgeoisie to an actual person works rather well as an illustration, plus it stops the book from becoming too dry.

I do have an objection, though.
This book was written after 'The Bourgois Experience' series which Gay also wrote. In his introduction he says that this volume is sort of a summary and emulation of that series. But 'The Bourgois Experience' has multiple (five, from the top of my head?) volumes, all with a substantial amount of pages.
'Schnitzler's Century' is barely 300 pages and encompasses the notion of 'bourgoisie' in the entire Victorian Age and throughout the Western world (Europe, America, the UK, etc.). That's a pretty big scope.
The result? I get the feeling Gay is trying to cram too much information into a very small volume and that does make it a little tiring to read at times, because it's a lot to process.

Still, very useful little book when you want to look up something.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

from the library
page to copy: title and ToC
pages copied preface xx thru xxiii, 4 thru 9, 18, 19, 22 thru 35, coda 286,287



essential reading to understand the history of women's rights and the history of sexual mores in Western countries.

from the library computer:
Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
xi
Preface xix
Overture xxvii
Part I FUNDAMENTALS
Bourgeoisie(s)
3 (32)
Home, Bittersweet Home
35 (28)
Part II DRIVES AND DEFENSES
Eros: Rapture and Symptom
63 (34)
Alibis for Aggression
97 (32)
Grounds for Anxiety
129 (28)
Part III THE VICTORIAN MIND
Obituaries and Revivals
157 (34)
The Problematic Gospel of Work
191 (30)
Matters of Taste
221 (32)
A Room of One's Own
253 (28)
Coda 281 (10)
Notes 291 (24)
Bibliography 315 (2)
Acknowledgments 317 (4)
Index 321

[Celeste · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mr. Gay seems unsure as whether he is writing a biography of Schnitzler or an overview of the "bourgeois" of the Victorian era. The jumping between and weak comparisons are distracting and unnecessary. He should have picked one or the other.

The information provided in this book is neither new nor interesting to someone who has already read books on this time period. On top of that, Mr. Gay seems to have a determination to view most of what he is writing through the lens of sexuality a la Freud.

A most disappointing and boring read.

[Christopherseelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fraught with anecdotes presented as case studies, generalized out into laws. Letting go of the need for water-tight argumentation, this is an interesting examination of a culture and a problematic class category. One wishes Peter Gay would have mediated a conversation between Luis Bunuel and William F. Buckley in follow-up to this book.

[Geoffrey Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a bit too breezy but Gay, an esteemed intellectual and cultural historian, makes a strong case that the roots of what we think of as "Modernism" were very much rooted in the Victorian age.

[Marijean Miyar · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book by a major cultural historian, what Schnitzler has to do with it is slim.