SOURCE: Daly, Carson. “Victorian Solutions to Modern Problems.” World & I 10, no. 7 (July 1995): 262.

In the following review, Daly comments that The De-Moralization of Society is persuasively argued, providing discussion of Himmelfarb's perspective on Victorian society and the distinction she makes between virtues and values.

If the Victorians were so inhibited, repressed, and old-fashioned, why did they manage their social problems much better than we do?

“Victorian”: The very word is a condemnation. In modern parlance, it conjures up a host of images—all of them bad. One thinks of begrimed urchins roaming the streets of London and the rural poor turned out of work, while complacent capitalists dine on turtle soup. One envisions large, dark rooms full of heavy furniture—rooms stuffed with bureau scarves, antimacassars, and samplers—spelling out pious platitudes in cross-stitch. One imagines a whole nation laboring under the tyranny of innumerable rules and regulations, strangled...