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