Death in the Victorian Family by Pat Jalland (review)

358book reviews work toward a reconcUiation with Newman. Others wiU puzzle at the assertion (p. 29) that the No-Popery agitation tended to diminish after 1850. Some have argued just the opposite, and it would be hard to surpass Pusey's Eirenicon (1865) or Gladstone's Vaticanism (1874) for sheer bUe. The Magisterium adds to the more than 800 books, articles, dissertations, and coUections of essays on Newman written since the centennial of his death in 1990. The various collections have been the result of various Newman "friends"—though several of these coUections are overtly hostUe—inviting friends, pubUshing their work, and sometimes reviewing the results of these convocations. Since most of these meetings are by invitation only, dissent and contrary opinions are excluded, save for a hostile reference or footnote. Since Dr. Peter Benedict Nockles and some ofthe others have made a Hvely career for themselves in chaUenging my own work, I can only invite readers to choose for themselves. On the positive side, graduate students ought to read this volume. The essays are jargon-free, without any innuendo about Newman's modernism or ecumenism , and without any of the shabby attacks that characterize several of the most recent coUections. John R. Griffin University ofSouthern Colorado Death in the Victorian Family. By Pat JaUand. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xii, 464. $45.00.) Victorian England is often perceived in the popular mind as a period of cultural repression and reUgious hypocrisy. Much ofwhat that age valued has been denied Ui the more permissive atmosphere of late twentieth-century culture to the point that accurate analyses ofVictorianism—and particularly Victorian reUgion —must bear the burden of popular bias and an inteUectual climate far removed from the world of the Victorians. Historians like Gertrude Himmetfarb have sought to temper our perceptions with studies of Victorian society and thought that point to the common virtues held by most Victorians which transcended class,gender, and ideology. These transcendent virtues provided a core of beUefs which blended traditional ideas with new socio-economic realities. Pat JaUand's work on death in Victorian England foUows in a simUar vein. Drawing on detaUed personal accounts of the deaths of close family members found in fifty-five diaries and memoirs (the same sources used in her earUer work, Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914), JaUand offers a revealing picture ofthe process and perception ofdeath in middle-classVictorian society. JaUand chaUenges PhilUpe Aries' view, Included in his ground-breaking study The Hour of Our Death, that nineteenth-century death and dying conformed to a Romantic ideal of the "beautiful death."JaUand, instead, insists that Victorians blended earUer Christian traditions of the ars moriendi with a prevaU- book reviews359 ing EvangeUcal influence, resulting in the ideal of the "good Christian death." Trie "good Christian death" prevaUed most often Ui Victorian Uterature and reUgious tracts, requiring as it did "a rare combination of good luck, convenient Ulness and pious character" (p. 38). However, JaUand's case studies reveal an honest perception of the reality of human suffering and the reUgious ideal of a better afterlife, aided by a medical profession which recognized the limits of its science and worked to befriend and comfort the dying patient. This dominant EvangeUcal approach did change after 1870, and was shattered after 1914 when the Great War presented overwhelming instances of "bad deaths" (sudden, violent, or suicidal deaths). In the meantime, however, PatJaUand's descriptions ofthe varieties ofdeath experiences in nineteenth-century England offer a valuable contrast to current controversies over the ethics of death and dying. This book deserves a wide audience for its thoughtful and thoroughly professional approach to a topic of vital contemporary concern and interest. RichardJ.Janet Rockhurst College Kansas City, Missouri Christentum und Revolution. Die christlichen Kirchen in Württemberg 1848-1852. By StefanJ. Dietrich. [Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Forschungen, Band 71.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1996. Pp. 490. DM 98, -.) Carl Becker once wrote that a historian does not stick to the facts; the facts stick to him. But surely he did not have Stefan Dietrich's Christentum und Revolution Ui mind. For here is a historian who does nothing U...