SOURCE: Tuttleton, James W. “Rehabilitating Victorian Values.” Hudson Review 48, no. 3 (autumn 1995): 388-96.

In the following review of The De-Moralization of Society, Tuttleton comments that Himmelfarb's historical analysis is effective, but notes that she fails to provide solutions to today's social problems.

I had not realized—until I read Gertrude Himmelfarb's The De-Moralization of Society—how thoroughly Victorian my parents happened to be. Both were born at about the turn of the century and came to their majority in the twenties and so technically were children of … well, the Jazz Age. But Modern Times must have arrived later in the Midwestern farm community where they were born because, so far as values were concerned, they were (in Gertrude Himmelfarb's definition) perfect Victorians.

Ms. Himmelfarb, Distinguished Professor of History Emerita of the Graduate Center of CUNY, is well equipped to define Victorian values for contemporary readers. Aside from books on...