Moral Disciplines

Abstract

It is impossible to define Victorian morality or Victorian values with any precision, if only because the Queen's reign was an extremely long one. This chapter focuses on the mid-Victorian period of the 1850s and 1860s when, correctly or otherwise, the state was perceived to operate at minimum strength, and individual citizens were (at least in theory) trusted to discipline themselves. In particular, it looks at the odyssey of politician W. E. Gladstone, whose own mind changes, and when this happens provides a clue as to why the shift took place at all.

State Prayers, Fasts and Thanksgivings: Public Worship in Britain 1830-1897

“…132 There might be 31 much in such explanations, but a difficulty is that they may be too general: they do not always fit the chronology of special acts of worship, nor take full account of other types of change -including longer-term adaptations of church and state arrangements, which produced new forms of national prayer.…”