“THE SUN NEVER SETS ON

THE BRITISH EMPIRE” - Roby Vincent

The Victorian Period: 1833-1901ARISE ROBY

Queen Victoria’s Reign• 1837-1901• Booming economy• Rapid expansion• Growth of two classes

– Industrial working class– Modern middle class

• Imperialist Urge• Expansion of British

Empire

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Victorian England• Parent of the modern• Sense of social

responsibility• Common connotations:

– Prudish– Repressed– Old fashioned

• Considered second English Renaissance– Expansion of wealth,

power, and culture

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Modern Beginnings• Science and technology

– Invented the modern idea of invention• Religion

– Great age of doubt• Ideology, politics, and society

– Democracy, feminism, unionization of workers, socialism & other “modern” movements took form

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Social Responsibility• Victorians confident in

humanity’s ability to better itself

• Reformers had great faith that hard work could make all right

• Writers exposed problems of manufacturing economy

• Two key issues: trade policy & electoral reform

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Industrial Revolution• Textiles, railroads, steel• Changes in the making of

goods• Created profound

economic and social changes

• Migration to industrial towns

• Wages were low and hours long

• Stirred conflicting feelings

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Etiquette and Manners• Influences on public behavior

– Social background– Religious beliefs– Ethnic heritage– Geography– Profession– Wealth

• Victorian Videos:– Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLV-WQfc8VQ– How to buy a book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WSrtNGQAmo– Manners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM9rAH4JnlY

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Courting & Marriage• Dating was not free

and unregulated• Couples had to follow

strict rules in all aspects of their relationships

• Young ladies would use fans to communicate with gentlemen

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Victorian Women• “The Woman Question”• Industry created new

opportunities and challenges for women

• Recruited to work in factories

• Unable to vote until 1918• Chastity and innocence

imperative• Educated in social living

and decorum

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Victorian Literature• Poetry

– A large and diverse body of poetry– Tennyson, the Brownings, Kipling, Hardy

• Drama– At first playhouses few in number, but by end of

century, theater showed some sparkle– Oscar Wilde

• Fiction– Novels became popular– Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens

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Victorian Thinkers• Romanticism

– Vestige of Romantic Era

– Value in the individual– Romantic view of

nature– Optimism associated

with radical reform– Seeks to find the

Absolute and the Ideal by transcending the actual Tennyson

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Victorian Thinkers• Realism

– Reaction to romanticism

– Describes the common, the average, the everyday

– Writing centered on characters & common actions of middle-class society

– Finds values in the actual Rudyard Kipling

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Victorian Thinkers• Naturalism

– Basic assumption: everything real exists in nature

– Strives to be objective in the presentation of material

– Humans seen as victims of destiny or fate

– Humans driven by fundamental urges Thomas Hardy

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Victorian Thinkers• Aestheticism

– aka Anti-Realists– Art has no utility (“art

for art’s sake”)– Separation of art and

morality– The study of the

beautiful in nature, art, and literature

Oscar Wilde

ARISE ROBY