As much as I like subject-delimited histories [i.e., about sex and gender roles in the U.S. in the late Victorian Era], I actually prefer thematically based overviews, such as Battleground of Desire, which takes a general subject — controlling the body/emotions/sexual expression in the Victorian bourgeoisie — and shows how the concepts of this struggle for self-control distribute themselves through all aspects of daily life. When I read about the many ways in which the fight for self-control could manifest itself — in diary entries chastising oneself for being too passionate [something Mary does frequently], in the schoolroom punishment to “go sit in the corner and think about the consequences of your actions,” to the widespread horror of masturbation, called “self-abuse,” to the huge obsession with correct posture, to the intractable debate about restrictive corsets vs. “healthier” clothing with room to breathe– I get a better sense of what  it might have been like to live  during that period with those things on my mind. While Battleground does not go into lots of detail on any subject, it’s a learned synthesis of many individual cultural trends, and it’s based on solid research.