18 The Victorians Make the Modern

1880–1917

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed clashing paradigms as Victorian sentimentality based on genteel ideas of refinement and religion bumped uneasily into modern notions of hard-nosed progress and science. These caricatures, of course, belie the complexity of cultural conflict during these years, but aptly summarize what many considered the stakes as an industrializing economy and society transformed before their eyes. Darwinism provided a frame of reference for understanding these changes, justifying as it did the endemic competition and struggle witnessed over these years. This theme was bold-faced in the thinking of some, like Theodore Roosevelt, who praised the effects on self and society of a life “strenuously” lived. For others, it lurked in the recesses, shaping perceptions about society that helped them challenge Victorian domesticity. This was true for women and their advocates whose spirited claims on their behalf opened educational and career possibilities previously closed to them. African Americans continued to face discrimination, now cloaked in scientific interpretation, but they too pushed an agenda for change, though the means to realize in full the freedoms they sought remained a point of dispute within reform circles. As new ideas eclipsed American Victorianism, old certainties passed away, making room for a modern American culture.