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The Victorian Period (1832-1901)
* Many Victorians thought as themselves as living in a time of great change
*Queen Elizabeth’s reign (1837-1901) occurred in a period of relative political and social stability
Peace and Economic Growth : Britannia Rules
*After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Britian was not involved in a major war until World War I
*Victoria was queen-empress of more than two hundred million people living outside Great Britian
*The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century greatly expanded
*Over the course of the century it steadily created new towns, goods, new wealth and new jobs for tens of thousands of people
*The Victorian era was a time of relative peace and economic growth
The Idea of Progress: “A acre in Middlesex”
*Historian Thomas Babington Macaulay voiced the middle class Victorian attitude toward government , history and civilization
*Macaulay admired cleanliness and order
*He wanted the London streets free of garbage, drained, paved , lighted at night and patrolled by a sober police
*Many Victorians regretted or disputed Macaulay’s confident tone and materialistic standards
*Middle-class Victorians prided themselves on the material advances of the 19th century and on their ability to solve human problems
The “Hungry Forties”
*The first decade of Victoria’s reign was full of troubles
*The period became known as the hungry forties
*Victoria came to the throne in the first year of a depression
*By 1842 it had put a million and a half unemployed workers and families on some form of poor relief
*Government learned of children mangled when they fell asleep at machines working 12 hour days
*They discovered boys and girls hauling coal through narrow mine tunnels
*In Ireland the potato blight (1845-1849) caused a famine that killed a million people
*It also forced 2 million others, 20% of Irelands population to emigrate
*The rapid growth of cities often made them filthy and disorderly
*Nearly 2 million people lived in London during the 1840s
*Manchester and Liverpool (Industrial cities) grew rapidly
*The Thames River was polluted by sewage, industrial waste, and drainage from gravestones
*Some serious problems during Victorias reign were economic depression, unemployment and a famine in Ireland
The Movement for Reform : Food ,
Factories, and Optimism
*In the 1840s violence broke out at massive political rallies protesting government policies
*1848, British politicians got army ready to petition Parliament and Queen
*Prices on food dropped
*Diets improved as meat,fruit and margarine began appearing in working class households
*Factories and railroads made postage, newspapers, clothing, furniture, and travel cheap
*1832 First Reform Bill gave men who owned property worth 10 pounds the right to vote
*Series of factory acts limited child labor and reduced the usual working day to 10 hours and half-holiday on Saturday
*State supported schools were established in 1870
*In 1859, 40% of couples couldn’t write their names on their marriage certificates
*1900 more than 90% of the population was literate
Decorum and Authority
*Victorians thought of themselves as progressing morally , intellectually as well as materially
*Book publishers and magazine writers deleted words or episodes that might bring a blush to the cheek
*Victorian decorum also supported powerful ideas about authority
*Many Victorians were uneasy about giving strong authority to a central government
*In Victorian private lives the autocratic father of middle class households is a vivid figure in fact and fiction
*Women were subject to male authority
*Middleclass women especially were expected to marry and make their homes a comfortable refuge for their husbands
*Working class women could find jobs as servants in affluent households, while unmarried women could be governesses or teachers
*Many middle class women remained unmarried because men would postpone marriage until they reached financial security
*The codes and barriers of decorum changed slowly because they were part of the idealogy progress
*Prudery and social order were intended to control the licentiousness that Victorians associated with the political revolutions of the 18th century and the social corruption of the Regency of George IV (1811-1820)
Intellectual Progress : The March of Mind
*The intellectual advances of the Victorian period were dramatically evident to those living in it
*Humans began understanding the earth its creatures and its natural laws
*Charles Darwin and other biologist theorized about the evolution of species
*Reformers belived that the world offered a challenging set of problems that could be understood by human intellegence
*Some writers complained that materialist ideas of reality completely overlooked the spirit that made life beautiful
*Charles Dickens lived out one of the favorite plots of Victorian progress
*He rised through his own enormous talents and energy to become a wealthy and famous man
*Most of Dickens memorable scenes showed decent people neglected, abused and exploited
*In 1871 the art historian John Ruskin noted a new phenomenom that we call smog
*Victorian culture led some writers to wonder if their culture was really advancing by any measure
From Trust to Skepticism and Denial
*Trust was a characteristic of the early Victorian writers
*Highest purpose of a poet was to make readers aware of the connection between earth , heaven and the body
*Algeron Charles Swinburne and Rudyard Kipling celebrated a relation between humans and the natural world that could be joyous and even redemptive
*Early and mid Victorian novelist dramatized an human ideal achieved through sympathy and unselfishness
Revealing Reality , Creating Coherence
*Victorian writers had purposes as various as the ideas of reality they belived in
*Some writers wanted to scare or shame readers into effective moral and political actions
*Some writers wanted readers to see what it is like to live in a pleasureable moment of intense feeling
*Victorian literature entertained informed , warned and reassured
*Its important to remember that these purposes and effects happened first to readers who were living Victorian lives
*Victorian literature needs to be read not just as a comment on the complexity of its culture , but also as an important part of that culture
*Writers sent their words to work in the world to alter , reinforce, to challenge, to enlarge, or temper with ideas and feelings
*Writers reflected the dangers and benefits of rapid industrialization
Social and Material Changes
the marked the reign of Queen Victoria
*Industrialism, mechanized factory system extensive railways
*British population moved from rural areas to rapidly growing cities
*Expanded educational opportunities increaded literacy
*Advances in science and technology gave Victorians hope that all social problems could be resolved
*Cost of Industralization was heavy : abuses of child labor , unsafe conditions in factories , diseases , contanimanted air and water
Approximate Word count = 975
Approximate Pages = 3.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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