Chapter 7 Great Transformation

"Moral censorship enjoyed support not merely from elite men but from others as well, including women - indeed for a long time it hardly met with any opposition" (p. 242)
- Since the new republican ideology required informed citizens, newspaper reading exceeded the province of an enlightened elite and became a duty for all white men. Soon, universal access to knowledge appeared to be a prerequisite for an independent, virtuous white population, which had to include well-informed republican women. Virtuous women were, then, the target of advice on what to read and what not to readA plausible explanation for this trend seems to be that an orientation to reform through individual rehabilitation, rather than social change, was congenial to the affluent. However, that orientation was a survival of religious attitudes that were waning in a secular age. It was a reflection of, rather than a substitute for, tradition, and was widely diffused through the product of elite manipulation.