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Gertrude Himmelfarb, the wife of neoconservative godfather Irving Kristoland mother of William Kristol, is a scholar whose work has focused on issues of virtue, morality, Victorian society, and modern values.[1]

A prolific author on English history and what she has called “the history of ideas,” Himmelfarb has long advocated “the reintroduction of traditional values (she prefers the term ‘virtues’), such as shame, responsibility, chastity, and self-reliance, into American political life and policy-making,” according to a profile published by the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA). In myriad writings, Himmelfarb has attributed everything from communist totalitarianism to inner-city poverty to the decline of Victorian moral sensibilities.[2]

In a 1995 Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, Himmelfarb offered a summation of her views on the links between poverty and personal morality. “In Victorian England,” she said, “moral principles were as much a part of public discourse as of private discourse, and as much a part of social policy as of personal life. Every measure of poor relief, for example, had to justify itself by showing that it would promote the moral as well as the material well-being of the poor.” Comparing that approach to more modern sensibilities, Himmelfarb lamented, “Having made the most valiant attempt to see the problem of poverty as the product of impersonal economic and social forces, we are now discovering that the economic and social aspects are inseparable from the moral and personal ones. And having made the most determined effort to devise policies that are ‘value free,’ that do not stigmatize the recipients of relief or the ‘style of life,’ we find that these policies imperil both the moral and the material well-being of their intended beneficiaries.”[3]

Himmelfarb’s moralistic politics and historiographical methods have at times placed her at odds with academic colleagues, who prefer a more “value-neutral” approach to studying history influenced by the social sciences,[4] as well as among cultural critics who have derided her seemingly old-fashioned views.

For example, in a scathing review of Himmelfarb’s 1999 book One Nation, Two Cultures, Newark Star-Ledger columnist Charles Taylor wrote, “The intellect on display here is about the caliber of the village biddy who sticks her blue nose into everyone else's business, offering opinions nobody asked for about how everybody else should live. Like ‘99 Bottles of Beer,’ the tune Himmelfarb sings throughout One Nation, Two Cultures is repetitive and seemingly endless, and you always know exactly what's coming next.” Himmelfarb, Taylor wrote, “doesn't take long to get to the wicked plot: the destruction of the Victorian virtues of ‘work, thrift, temperance, fidelity, self-reliance, self-discipline, cleanliness, godliness’ (in her view, America's traditional strengths) by the Kryptonite of the '60s.”[5]

Himmelfarb has written dozens of books, including Marriage and Morals among the Victorians, De-moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Victorian Minds, The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians, and The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age.[6] In 2011, she released an updated version of her late husband’s collection of essays titled The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009, which included a foreword by William Kristol.

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.