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Saw a thing on TikTok and I have to agree:
The more you learn about history, and the more you study the period, the more any rational and decent person should ***loathe*** the Victorian era, anything from it, and anything that calls back to it.
Truly the nadir of human civilization.
They ruined historical artifacts of every possible variety, wiped out scores of civilizations, did monstrous things to their own fucking children--there is literally not a single thing from the Victorian era that is an unmitigated good.
No, not that thing.
Yes, including literature.
And before you ask:
Yes, I studied this dumpster fire of an era at the doctoral level. Specifically, my specialization in lit was the Enlightenment (which was also awful, but has A FEW decent things, such as the Irish independence movement), and the frickin MOMENT that The Castle of Otronto appears is the end of anything remotely redeemable about England especially and the entirety of Europe for the most part for a good century or so.
The volume of what was annihilated by the Victorians as immoral, and which are now lost forever, with only references in biography and journals and history, is truly beyond measuring.
So, like... Keep that in mind when you watch a costume drama next time, okay? Because all those pretty gowns and tasteful parties only existed because they gave little boys scrotal cancer at 7 from chimneysweeping so the houses wouldn't burn down and little girls dying from mercury poisoning for making the hats they wore.
And before someone calls toward the birth of modern feminist literature in the era:
Go read the Xtian Mystics. Seriously. Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen (who was sainted!), and dozens of others who came centuries earlier--that feminist lit only had to premiere because IT HAD BEEN WIPED OUT! BY THE VICTORIANS!!
Even the worst of the women Mystics were vastly more feminist than the costume fiction authors in the Victorian era, and they wrote CENTURIES before it.
Also also, personal gripe:
Boarding schools, which only became common in the Vic era, are one of the most horrific commonplace forms of child abuse and, I believe, is responsible for much of the worst of toxic masculinity and patriarchy we deal with today.
So like
That's why I hate boarding school dramas and novels and refuse to read themmmmm.
And if I try it and your novel has even mild boarding school abuse I will almost for sure DNF it regardless of what else is going on.
Eveb college-age stuff I'm touchy on, if there's frequent abusive acts.
The only one I can think of that did it well is The Magicians, where the very plot of the book and setting is that magic comes *from* trauma and abuse, and which made the entire series into a critique of boarding schools and holding trauma close instead of working to heal it.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15533198/
