Victorianism vs. Postmodernism

One of the classes I'm taking is called 'Cultural and Intellectual History of the US post civil war' and we've been studying the Victorian age since the semester started. Admittedly, before this class, the most I knew about the Victorian era was from the Samantha books that went along with the American Girl dolls (I had Kirsten).

Something that I've noticed is that in the Victorian age, the main objective of the cultural movement was to socially pressure people into being virtuous. All the heroes from the age are praised because of their abstinence from things. The typical hero story is where someone came from the country and moved to the city and resisted the temptations of the big bad city and through hard work and virtue succeeded in life. It's so different from the narratives of success for postmodernism.

However, I was thinking about the similarites between the two because I'm also taking a class on postmodernism. Aren't the two kind of doing the same thing? Postmodernism is trying to get people to be skeptical and open-minded. Both cultural movements kind of are trying to get people to have better character in specific areas.

The Victorian age crashed when people realized that they were faking all the time, trying to value things that they didn't (see The Awakening by Kate Chopin). Maybe the postmodern age will go out in a similar fashion, when people realize that they need metanarratives, no matter how flawed they are.

Also, around the time that the Victorians were beginning to crack, America was getting richer and "a rising standard of living was endangering self-denial" (Screening out the Past, Larry May). Maybe the opposite effect will end postmodernism. Everyone needs to consume less world-wide because of environmental issues. Perhaps it will be the introduction of self-denial that will make postmodernism begin to crack.