ABSTRACT
After briefly relating emotionality and the middle class tendency to social distinction, the author looks at the three discursive mainstays of the Victorian middle class habitus in relation to the feelings: religion, social order, and gender. Thus, religion is based on and likened to feeling, as the following discussion shows, thereby creating a permitted space for the emotions. The author intends to focus on the similarities among them in order to explain the shared values and implicit rules that are specific for the Victorian discourses on emotions. The author illustrates Cooke's conviction that Divine revelation provides for mankind as wanderers from the path of righteousness, and for their being restored by a progressive work, admirably adapted to the development of those sentiments and emotions which ennoble our nature, and lead to the most beneficent actions. There is a danger of falling for the Victorian construction of clearly divided spheres of occupation for middle class men and women.
