Victorianism

plural Victorianisms

1. countableuncountableThe behaviour or beliefs of the Victorians, especially prudery.

   It is simply the imposition of more Victorianism into community standards.

   1997 January 9, Morton Kondracke, “TV won't slow 'slouch to Gomorrah'”, in The Greenwood Index-Journal

   2 more examples

   These [sex manuals] reflect an age in which, it appears, the only hope for heterosexual love is technical know-how. Supposedly designed to free the reader from Victorianism and guilt, these books constitute clumsy, self-conscious attempts to liberate the reader.

   1976 February 7, L. S. Eneri, “New Sex Manual”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 32, page 12

   As [Virginia] Woolf, a founder of the Bloomsberries, famously declared, human nature changed “in 1910, on or about December 10.” That, she thought, was the day that Victorianism died and a new order arose.

   2022, Robert P. Vande Kappelle, Deeper Splendor: Spirituality and Personality in Modern Literature, Wipf and Stock, →ISBN

2. countableuncountableAn expression or idiom characteristic of Victorian times.