The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“My life was not without periods of excessive, unreasoning discipline, usually imposed capriciously by those responsible for laxity in the first place. That combined with my historical studies led me, as many others, to the conclusion that there was little in the previous century worthy of emulation, and that we must look to the nineteenth century instead for stable social models.”

Hackworth explains to Finkle-McGraw why he chose to become a neo-Victorian. His rationale is rooted in nostalgia for the Victorian Age, which he and Finkle-McGraw associate with a glorious age of orderliness and discipline. This reading of the Victorian Age ignores that it was underwritten by inequality and imperialism and that the laxness of the age after was a reaction to those problems. That Hackworth conflates abusive parenting with the excesses of 1990s shows that his identify is the result of neo-Victorian indoctrination.

“It was too late for Hackworth to change his personality, but it wasn’t too late for Fiona [....] How could he inculcate her with the nobleman’s emotional stance—the pluck to take risks with her life, to found a company, perhaps found several of them even after the first efforts had failed? He had read the biographies of several notable peers and found few common threads between them.”

Hackworth is aware that something about neo-Victorian indoctrination places a limit on how far he can rise through the neo-Victorian power structure, but he still doesn’t challenge the neo-Victorian power structure itself. His longing for Fiona to surpass him is couched in economic terms, reflecting how deeply his identity, including as a father, is victim to neo-Victorian indoctrination.

“When the Coastal Republic arose, a judicial system was built upon the only model the Middle Kingdom had ever known, that being the Confucian. But such a system cannot truly function in a larger society that does not adhere to Confucian precepts. ‘From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.’ Yet how am I to cultivate the persons of the barbarians for whom I have perversely been given responsibility?”

Judge Fang recognizes that governing in Shanghai presents a challenge to rigid separation between the phyles and cultural traditions because Shanghai is a city where boundaries are constantly breached or even broken. In his court, he tries to deal with this problem through the consistent application of Confucian traditions. The question he asks himself is one that no neo-Victorians ask, showing that neo-Victorian culture is so focused on profit and power that they fail to consider the issue of inequality.