The culture of love : Victorians to moderns
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The culture of love : Victorians to moderns
Harvard University Press, 1992
- : hbk
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
: hbk ISBN 9780674179585
Description
In "The Culture of Love" Stephen Kern asserts that love itself merits its own history. Kern examines love over a period of profound change that bridges the years from "Jane Eyre" to the mid-1930s. The great 19th century novels of the Brontes, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, and Thomas Hardy and the modern classics of Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence, and James Joyce serve as sources of insight into the contrasting ways of loving. Paintings and sculptures by Jessica Hayllar, Courbet, Gerome, and William Frith, in juxtaposition with works by Kokoschka, Picasso, Magritte, and Picabia, offer evidence of historic transformation as well. Kern draws on philosophy, especially the work of Heidegger, to interpret change across this period. He takes as his theme certain basic elements of love: embodiment, desire, language, sex, and power, along with specific situations: waiting, proposing, jealousy, wedding, ending. This is an original history of love, informed by the author's interpretation of literature and art.
He shows how the courting ground expanded beyond the parlour to places where women study or work, how both men and women became more willing to disclose their past loves, even how modern lovers explored new possibilities of kissing beyond the sudden, blind and disembodied Victorian kiss. "The Culture of Love" reveals the language of Victorian love, constrained by cliches and rhetorical formalities, and it explores innocence and the price often paid for it. In contrast to recent studies that have emphasized the richness of Victorian sexuality, at least in the privacy of the home, Kern argues that, compared with the sexuality of the early 20th century it was also anatomically constricted, spatially confined, morally suspect, less satisfying, deadly serious, and abruptly over. Above all, he affirms the value of authenticity in love: "The moderns may have lost some of the Victorians' delicacy and poignancy, perhaps even some of the heroism, but in exchange they became more reflective of what it means to be a human being in love and hence better able to make that loving more their very own".
Table of Contents
- Waiting
- meeting
- encounter
- embodiment
- desire
- language
- disclosure
- kissing
- gender
- power
- others
- jealousy
- selfhood
- proposal
- wedding
- sex
- marriage
- ending. Appendix: ages of fictional characters.
- Volume
-
: pbk ISBN 9780674179592
Description
The Culture of Love interprets the sweeping change in loving that spanned a period when scientific discoveries reduced the terrors and dangers of sex, when new laws gave married women control over their earnings and their bodies, when bold novelists and artists shook off the prudishness and hypocrisy that so paralyzed the Victorians. As public opinion, family pressure, and religious conviction loosened, men and women took charge of their love. Stephen Kern argues that, in contrast to modern sex, Victorian sex was anatomically constricted, spatially confined, morally suspect, deadly serious, and abruptly over.
Kern divides love into its elements and traces profound changes in each: from waiting for love to ending it. Most revealing are the daring ways moderns began to talk about their current lovemaking as well as past lovers. While Victorians viewed jealousy as a "foreign devil," moderns began to acknowledge responsibility for it. Desire lost its close tie with mortal sin and became the engine of artistic creation; women's response to the marriage proposal shifted from mere consent to active choice. There were even new possibilities of kissing, beyond the sudden, blind, disembodied, and censored Victorian meeting of lips.
Kern's evidence is mainly literature and art, including classic novels by the Brontes, Flaubert, Hugo, Eliot, Hardy, Forster, Colette, Proust, Mann, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Musil as well as the paintings and sculptures of Millais, Courbet, Gerome, Rodin, Munch, Klimt, Schiele, Valadon, Chagall, Kandinsky, Kokoschka, Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi. The book's conceptual foundation comes from Heidegger's existential philosophy, in particular his authentic-inauthentic distinction, which Kern adapts to make his overall interpretation and concluding affirmation of the value of authenticity: "The moderns may have lost some of the Victorians' delicacy and poignancy, perhaps even some of their heroism, but in exchange became more reflective of what it means to be a human being in love and hence better able to make that loving more their very own."
Table of Contents
1. Waiting 2. Meeting 3. Encounter 4. Embodiment 5. Desire 6. Language 7. Disclosure 8. Kissing 9. Gender 10. Power 11. Others 12. Jealousy 13. Selfhood 14. Proposal 15. Wedding 16. Sex 17. Marriage 18. Ending Conclusion Appendix. Ages of Fictional Characters Primary Works Cited Notes List of Illustrations List of Fictional Characters Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
