Schnitzler's Century

Peter Gay. Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

This history of the Victorian bourgeoisie is framed by the life and writings (both published and private journals) of Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. Gay acknowledges that Schnitzler was anything but a typical middle-class man in many ways. However, his peculiarities were those of his time, he grappled with and commented on the cultural and social anxieties of his age, and while he was certainly exceptional he was also very much a man of his time and class. He is a larger presence earlier in the book than in later chapters, but by that point he will have served his purpose as a guide.

Class, more than chronology, shapes this study. The Victorian bourgeoisie certainly varied across time and space (although centered in Europe, the United States is included in this study) but Gay is interested in common attributes and broader themes. The book is organized thematically, and works from the outside in--beginning with a look at the class as a whole in the wider world, and ending with an extended examination of the interior life, ending with a chapter devoted to the very Victorian notion of privacy and a private life.

Beyond this broad survey (made up of discrete thematic parts) this book does have a larger argument--historians and critics then and now have been far too harsh to the Victorian middle class. They were, in Gay's account, much less hypocritical, petty and middle-brow than their reputation. They were, he argues, much more responsible for the best of their era--the reform movements, artistic and cultural innovations, increase in democracy, and regard for the life of the mind--than they have been given credit. Sober and temperate, they may not have been romantic revolutionaries but neither were they smug, provincial vulgarians. Schnitzler had many faults as a young man (snobbishness and relentless womanizing) but in the end he put the best of himself in  his art and seemed to grow as a person as he aged and "settled down." His trajectory, and his life, were not a terrible analogy for the best of the middling class who were responsible for much of the best of the Victorian age.

A House Dividing

John Majewski. A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000

In order to examine the role that slavery played in retarding the economic development in the antebellum South, Majewski has written a work of comparative history contrasting Albemarle County, Virginia, and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Both counties were somewhat inland but directly connected to the Atlantic economy, and both were settled in the colonial era. Furthermore, Virginia and Pennsylvania shared certain characteristics that the latter wouldn't share with a Deep South state--they were both former colonies, and both had a trans-Allegheny hinterland which proved a challenge for early transportation improvements to surmount. In fact, Pennsylvania's efforts were expensive and not always successful in that endeavor, and Virginia's were complete failures.

Both states utilized "developmental corporations", with both private and public (State) financing, to build turnpikes and canals originally. However, issues with canals--which were much more expensive than turnpikes per mile--put a high strain on local financing. Getting statewide political support for transportation initiatives which would favor one county, town, or region over another proved very difficult. In the end, Pennsylvania was able to get the Mainline Canal (which also included rail sections) built largely because of the critical mass of interested investment capital in Philadelphia and also Pittsburgh.

Virginia, on the other hand, did not have any cities anywhere near as big in absolute or relative (to the rest of the state population) as Philadelphia. While Majewski cites geography as part of the reason, he argues that slavery was the root cause. The plantation economy encouraged low population density growth, and the minimal processing needs of the tobacco industry discouraged the development of central places and towns. Rather than a Boston or a Philadelphia or a New York City--or even a Charleston, SC or New Orleans--Virgina had several relatively small urban centers along the fall line from north to south, none of which had as diverse a manufacturing economy as Philadelphia did.

Every step of the way, Virginia's structural weaknesses compounded the issue, as a lack of development led to lagging growth, which could not fund further needed development, and so on. Majewski makes a strong case but further examination into the developmental possibilities and limitations of slave labor would strengthen his argument.