The Naked Heart: The Bourgeois Experience Victoria to Freud: 4

At the very time that industrialists inventors statesmen and natural scientists were conquering new objective worlds Gay writes the secret life of the self had grown into a favorite and wholly serious indoor sport.Following the middle classs preoccupation with inwardness through its varied cultural expressions (such as fiction art history and autobiography) Gay turns also to the letters and confessional diaries of both obscure and prominent men and women. These revealing documents help to round out a sparkling portrait of an age.