Contemporary Literary Criticism | Gay, Peter - P. E. H. Hair (review date April 1988)

P. E. H. Hair (review date April 1988)

SOURCE: Hair, P. E. H. Review of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume I: Education of the Senses and Volume II: The Tender Passion, by Peter Gay. English Historical Review 103, no. 407 (April 1988): 443–47.

[In the following positive review of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume I: Education of the Senses and Volume II: The Tender Passion, Hair comments that Gay's series is “on the whole as sensible and well-balanced as it is good-hearted and thoughtful.”]

As the gamekeeper mounted Lady Chatterley, he had momentary doubts: was it a transcendental exercise or a cosmic joke on humanity? The candid reviewer of Professor Gay's first two volumes of [The Bourgeois Experience] a projected six-volume study of Victorian sexuality must confess to an occasional urge to giggle. But, as one would expect from so distinguished an author, this...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass