Post on 28-Dec-2015
THE VICTORIAN AGE
1837-1901
THE VICTORIAN AGEQUESTIONS TO KEEP IN MIND
How were Britain and the British Empire changing
during the Victorian age?
What conditions helped stimulate Victorian
optimism?
How did the mood of later Victorian writers
change?
REIGNED FOR 64 YEARS
During her reign Britain
experienced unprecedented
economic and technological
growth and dramatic
politicial and social change.
1847-Emily Bronte publishes
Wuthering Heights
1850- Alfred Lord Tennyson
becomes England’s poet
laureate
Dickens publishes Great
Expectations
Lewis Carroll pub. Alices’s
Adventures in Wonderland
EVENTS IN BRITISH LIT.
1884 – First Oxford
English Dictionary published
1895- The Importance of
Being Earnest published
1896- Housman publishes
A Shropshire Lad
1897- Stoker publishes
Dracula
1837- Victoria is crowned
1840- Victoria marries Albert
1841- Hong Kong comes
under British rule
1845- Irish Potato Famine
begins
1854- Britain enters Crimean
War
BRITISH EVENTS
1865- Great Eastern lays
first successful transatlantic
cable
1869- Debtors prisons
abolished
1899- Boer War begins in
South Africa
1901 Commonwealth of
Australia established
1901- Victoria dies, Edward
VII becomes King
1837- John Deere invents the
steel plow in U.S.
1848- Marx and Engels write
the Communist Manisfesto
1861 – Alexander II
emancipates Russian serfs
WORLD EVENTS
1865- Civil War begins in US
1866- Alfred Nobel invents
dynamite
1876- A.G.Bell invents the
telephone in the U.S.
1885- Leopold II of Belgium
acquires Congo in Africa
1900- Boxer Rebellion occurs
in China
VICTORIAN IDEALS
Britain had become a world power, covering ¼ of the
world’s population.
A strong middle class had formed defined by rigid
standards and a strict moral code.
CLASS AND EDUCATION
Victorian upper class saw no benefit to sharing
education with the masses and lower class families
needed their children’s wages. Child labor was rampant.
Half the funerals in London were for children younger
than 10 years old.
Servants were the mark of middle-class respectability.
In 1891 16% of British workforce were servants.
INTERESTING FACTS
Australia was settled by criminals from the ages of 9-84.
By 1891, around 7% of men and women still could not sign their
own names- a great decrease from the beginning of the century.
The British Empire included Canada British Guiana,7 countries in
Africa, India, and Australia
After Prince Albert died, Victoria became a remote figure.
Electric lights, vaccines, and pasteurization of milk improved life.
MORE INTERESTING FACTS
Karl Marx moved to London in 1849 after being exiled from
Paris for his radicalism. In 1886, he published Das Capital.
He believed class warfare was inevitable
In 1895 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the
Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Social Darwinism and the phrase Survival of the Fittest,
embraced by the rich, were not words of his. He did not wish
to apply his theories to human social policy.
BIG IDEAS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
1. Optimism and the Belief in Progress
2. The Emergence of Realism- a reaction to Romanticism
(focused on individuals dealing with everyday problems,
Victorian Realist writers often sought to reform society.)
3. Disillusionment and Darker Visions: Naturalism
developed out of Realism. Naturalists tended toward
pessimism, suggesting that fate was predetermined and
meaningless.
OPTIMISM AND THE BELIEF IN PROGRESS
Victorian ideals preached a gospel of thrift, hard
work, and patience.
“Honorable industry travels the same road with
duty; and Providence has closely linked both with
happiness.” Samuel Smiles
Tennyson’s “In Memorium” became a favorite of
Queen Victoria after the death of Prince Albert.
THE EMERGENCE OF REALISM
In the mid-1800s, a reaction to Romanticism began
to appear in both art and literature. Known as
Realism, this new movement aimed to explore
contemporary life and ordinary experience. Focusing
on individuals, dealing with everyday problems,
Victorian Realist writers often sought to reform
society.
VICTORIAN PROGRESS
Middle classes spend a lot of money on books and
reading for self-improvement
Periodicals were crammed with serialized novels
and other educational pieces.
Many British workers were literate and able to
improve because of cheaper books and lending
libraries.
EXPANSION OF DEMOCRACY
1832 brought the vote to middle-class men.
1867 enfranchised many workingmen, doubling the
electorate.
By the end of the 19th century, women could vote in
most local elections.
It was not until the end of WWI that all men over
21 and women over 30 could vote.
IMPERIALISM
Although British colonial rule could be officious and insensitive,
many people in Victorian Britain truly believed they were
bringing their colonial subjects the benefits of Western culture.
Mohandas Gandhi was admitted to the British bar in London in
1889.
His work to end discrimination against Indians in South Africa,
another British colony, started him on his path to become the
leader of the movement for Indian independence.
WRITERS
Thomas Carlyle – one of the most influential critics
of Victorian culture – historian and essayist.
He said…All true work is sacred; in all true Work,
were it but true hand-labor, there is something of
divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit
in Heaven…sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart…
all Sciences, all spoken Epics,..which all men have
called divine!...
THEORY OF UTILITARIANISM
Bentham and Mill – the view that the ethical value
of an activity is measured by the extent of its
usefulness. Utilitarianism strongly influenced the
ethical decisions that Victorians made in political
and economic life. Many factory owners and
businessmen, particularly in the industrial north of
Britain, became strong advocates for putting free-
market and Utilitarian doctrines into practice. How
did this practice negatively effect the poor?
VOICES OF REFORM
Carlyle, Marx, and Dickens were among the
writers who disagreed with the whole theory of
Social Darwinism.
Other reformers included doctors, ministers,
journalists, and private philanthropists who
organized many charitable organizations.
Among them the YMCA, Ladies’ Society for the
Education and Employment of the Female Poor, the
SPCA.
DISILLUSIONMENT AND DARKER VISIONS
One of the most admirable characteristics of the
Victorians was their capacity for self-criticism. Even
at the height of Victorian optimism-when
technological and material progress seemed to many
to be limitless-doubting voices were already heard.
THE NOVEL
Victorian novels proved to be powerful instruments
for instructing middle-class readers. As they sat in
their parlors, these readers began to imagine the
humanity of those whom they might never meet.
Examples: Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Two Nations – Benjamin Disraeli
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
PESSIMISSM AND NATURALISM
The Realist novel, which had proved itself so effective in rousing
emotion, began to seem too good at raising falsely comforting feelings
such as sentimentality or smugness. A new generation of novelists
were influenced in part by Darwinism to look for inevitable natural,
rather than spiritual, forces guiding the course of human life.
Emila Zola, in France, wrote Naturalism, a grim, fatalistic view of
the world in which mostly lower-class characters are trapped by
circumstances beyond their control for reasons that they cannot
determine.
ZOLA AND HARDY
Zola’s goal was to use the novel almost as a scientific
instrument. By subjecting his fictional characters to “the
same analytical examination that surgeons perform on
corpses.” For novelists following in the path of Zola, clinical
knowledge of the human condition replaced teary sympathy.
Although Thomas Hardy did not necessarily share all the
views of the naturalists, he does share the somber tendency
of life’s randomness. Give an example of his work.
DECADENT LITERATURE
A new mood that arose at the end of the 19th century as a
reaction to the optimism of the Victorian Age (like Naturalism)
was Decadence. Naturalists hoped that their works would
influence people’s opinions. Decadent writers rejected the idea
that works of art had to serve any useful purpose. One of the
most famous of these writers was Oscar Wilde, an Iris-born
comic genius who enjoyed upending Victorian values-but
always with a subversively serious intent.