Pleasure Wars (Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud/Peter Gay, Vol 5)

Rating:
Summary: An introduction for undergraduates
Review:
Peter Gay's book "Pleasure Wars" is dedicated to the "bourgeois experience" of the Victorian age. Compared with other cultural studies that are dedicated to the second half of the 19th century it lacks of theoretical insights. The chapters accumulate historical information but don't go beyond this accumulation. The "Baudelaire"-Essay of Walter Benjamin will tell a reader more about this period than the piles of information that Peter Gay presents. The book might be good for undergraduates as an introduction. It is one of many and not a convincing one - at least for me.