The Victorian Age

1837-1901

Queen Victoria’s reign

Victoria ruled England

from 1837-1901, it was a

very special age.

Positive aspects:

On one hand there were

prosperity and

economical power

Free trade had brought

economic recovery and

prosperity to industry.

London became the world

center of finance and

shipping.

The railway system was

bettered and greatly

influenced trade and

social life. The train

transformed England’s

landscape, supported the

growth of commerce, and

shrank the distance

between cities.

In 1851 the Great

Exhibition was organized

and the huge Crystal

Palace was erected in

Hyde Park to display

technical and industrial

products from all over the

world and to highlight

English supremacy.

Negative aspects:

• Social unrest: widespread industrialization had brought

with it a lot of severe social problems.

• Starvation and illnesses: terrible living conditions in the

industrial and cool mining towns.

• Poverty: workers were forced to live in horrible crowded

and unhealthy slums.

• Exploitation: women and children were exploited.

Respectability:

a strict social and moral code

of behaviour limited and

influenced the Victorian

society, pushing people to

reach the wished social

position and respectability.

It was often an apparent veil

of economical, moral and

social prosperity.

The term included social

acceptance, the possession

of good manners, and

conformity to accepted social

norms.

This double reality of the same period lays at the

base of the Victorian Compromise. The Victorian

period was a time of contradictions.

The Victorian Compromise:

on the one hand there was the progress brought

about by the Industrial Revolution, the rising

wealth of the upper and middle classes and the

expanding power of Britain and its empire;

on the other hand there were the poverty, disease,

deprivation and injustice faced by the working

classes.

The Reform Bills Transformed English

voting class structure.

The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the vote to

the male middle class.

The Reform Bill of 1837 offered universal

male vote, but only to town workers.

In 1884 agricultural workers and miners

received the right to vote.

Women‘ had to wait until 1918.

(Remember the Suffrages, who formed a movement to

fight for women's right to vote. It finally succeeded

through two laws in 1918 and 1928. It became a

national movement in the Victorian era. Women were

not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until

the 1832 Reform Act)

The British Empire

In 1857, Parliament took over the government of India and Queen Victoria became Empress of India.

Many British people saw the expansion of the empire as a moral responsibility.

Missionaries spread Christianity in India, Asia and Africa.

Utilitarianism

The doctrine that actions are right if they

are useful or for the benefit of a majority.

The idea that an action is right in so far as

it promotes happiness, and that the

greatest happiness of the greatest number

should be the guiding principle of conduct.

It derived from the ideas of Jeremy

Bentham and his disciple James Mill, the

father of John Stuart Mill

Unfortunately Utilitarianism failed to

recognize people’s spiritual needs

The Role of Women The woman Question was a critical matter during this period. Lots of women were compelled to work for long hours.

The Custody Act 1839 gave a mother the right to petition the court for access to her minor children and custody of children under seven and later sixteen.

Educational Opportunities for

Women: the first women’s college

was established in 1848 in

London.

By the end of Victoria’s reign,

women could take degrees at

twelve university colleges.

Working Conditions for Women

Bad working conditions and underemployment drove thousands of women into prostitution.

The only occupation at which an unmarried middle-class woman could earn a living and maintain some claim to gentility was that of a governess.

Victorian Women and the Home

Victorian society was

preoccupied with the very

nature of women.

Protected and enshrined

within the home, her role

was to create a place of

peace where man could

take refuge from the

difficulties of modern life.

Literacy, Publication, and Reading By the end of the century, literacy was almost universal.

Compulsory national education required to the age of ten.

Due to technological advances, an explosion of things to read, including newspapers, periodicals, and books.

Growth of the periodical

Novels and short fiction were published iin serial form.

The reading public expected literature to illuminate social problems.

The Victorian Novel While the Romantic Age was one of poetry,

The Victorian was mainly one of prose

.Newspapers and magazines had already

entered the middle classes homes and the

coffee houses as common reading materials;

so novels continued to be issued, and the

instalments remained the only popular and

cheap way to widen the reading audience.

VICTORIAN NOVELS

REALISTIC NOVEL

C. Dickens, Oliver Twist,

David Copperfield

Hard Times

AESTHETIC NOVEL

O. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

SELF DIVIDED Novel

R. L. Stevenson,

Doctor Jelyll and Mr Hyde

NOVEL for CHILDREN

L. Caroll, Alice’s

wonderland

The Victorian Novel The novel was the dominant form in Victorian literature.

Victorian novels seek to represent a large and comprehensive social world, with a variety of classes.

Victorian novels are realistic.

Major theme is the place of the individual in society, the aspiration of the hero or heroine for love or social position.

The protagonist’s search for fulfillment is emblematic of the human condition.

For the first time, women were major writers: the Brontes. Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot.

The Victorian novel was a principal form of entertainment.

Victorian Poetry Victorian poetry developed in the context of the novel. Poets sought new ways of telling stories in verse.

All of the Victorian poets showed the strong influence of the Romantics, but they cannot sustain the confidence the Romantics felt in the power of the imagination.

Victorian poets often rewrote Romantic poems with a Dramatic monologue – the idea of creating a lyric poem in the voice of a speaker ironically distinct from the poet.

Victorian poetry is pictorial; poets use detail to construct visual images that represent the emotion or situation the poem concerns. It developped the conflict between private poetic self and public social role.

Victorian Drama

The theater was a

flourishing and popular

institution during the

Victorian period.

The popularity of theater

influenced other genres.

Bernard Shaw and Oscar

Wilde transformed British

theater with their comic

masterpieces.

Images of the Victorian Period

Sitography http://www.victorianweb.org/

http://www.victorian-era.org/victorian-era-literature-

characteristics.html

https://www.biography.com/people/queen-victoria-

9518355