Abstract
Even in the twenty-first century we inhabit Victorian urban space. The streets and buildings are a palimpsest, but these reinscriptions never effect the full erasure of the past and this, at times, produces a ‘shock of recognition’ (Himmelfarb, 1995: 15–16). The past exists in the present in the shape of buildings and urban spaces and in residual customs, beliefs, institutions and practices. Since the spatial distance between the present and the past is negligible, this can sometimes make the past seem close, as though very little separates it from the present at all. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, for much of the twentieth century and, at times, today, the Victorians and their culture have been characterised in terms of their absolute otherness. Rather than the shock of recognition we experience the terror (and sometimes pleasure) of alterity, the fright (and satisfaction) of estrangement. We feel keenly, and assert strongly, our indomitable distance from the Victorians.
The jumble brick and stone of the city’s landscape is a medley of style in which centuries and decades rub shoulders in a disorder that denies the sequence of time …
(Penelope Lively, City of the Mind, 1991)
the Victorians have been made and remade throughout the twentieth century, as successive generations have used the Victorian past in order to locate themselves in the present.
(Miles Taylor, Introduction to The Victorians since 1901, 2004)
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2010 Kate Mitchell
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mitchell, K. (2010). Contemporary Victorian(ism)s. In: History and Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283121_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283121_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31016-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28312-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)