Victorian Restraint: Rivets and Corsets

The Victorian Era (Queen Victoria’s Reign 1839-1901) is still synonymous with social "restraint", or, in more Freudian, "repression" .  This is the era during which "cursing" or using swear words and any references to sexuality or, really, anything "distasteful",  became taboo in "nice" society.  It gave us, for example, the terms "white and dark meat" so that people would not have to refer to "breasts" or "legs" at the supper table; even chair legs were covered with clothe so that they would not be unseemly;  candle snuffers were used so that women would not be seen blowing out candles -- even a woman's pursed lips was too suggestive;  terms like "retiring" were used so that people would no longer say they were "going to bed". 

Much of Heart of Darkness plays off of the dichotomy between this prudish obsession with cleanliness, godliness and politeness at the very time that one in three of all women aged 15-25 living in London was a prostitute.  Meanwhile, the British and Europeans were also exploiting and, essentially or actually, enslaving brown people all around the world and growing fat off of child labor in factories etc..

This is also the period of time during which Freud wrote so much about how the Superego "represses" or "restrains" the Id.

Marlow's: "What I really wanted was rivets, by heavens!  Rivets. To get on with the work. To stop the hole. Rivets I wanted....  Instead of rivets there came an invasion, and infliction, a visitation" (1512-1513).

Kurtz's: "...Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was wanting [missing/lacking] missing in him -- some small need which when the pressing need arose could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.  ... I think [the wilderness] has whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude -- and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed in him because he was hollow to the core."

The "Natives": "And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play here" (when they were nearly starving) ... Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear -- or some kind of primitive honor? ... Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the battlefield...but here it was" (1522-1523).

On Kurtz: "I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, and yet struggled blindly with itself."