The Pinnacle of Duality

1832-1914

VICTORIANISM

PART I: DR. JEKYLL

THE HISTORY OF

ENGLAND IS

EMPHATICALLY THE

HISTORY OF PROGRESS.

—THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

Pax Britannica (Latin for "the British

Peace", modelled after Pax Romana)

was the period of relative peace in

Europe and the world (1815–1914) during

which the British Empire became the

global hegemon and adopted the role of

global policeman.

PAX BRITTANICA

The Victorian era was a time of relative peace

and economic growth. The British Empire

grew steadily, the Industrial Revolution

expanded, and political power was extended

to the middle and working class.

In 1900, Queen Victoria was queen-empress

of more than two hundred million people

living outside Great Britain.

EMPIRE/IMPERIALISM

1886 MAP OF BRITISH EMPIRE

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

ROMAN EMPIRE 117 CE

BRITISH EMPIRE 1713 CE

BRITISH EMPIRE 1850 CE

BRITISH EMPIRE 1914 CE

THE PROGRESS OF ENGLAND

THE LONDON EXHIBITION OF 1851

VICTORIA STATION

EIFFEL TOWER

1912 TITANIC

RISE OF SPORT

Middle-class Victorians prided themselves on the

material advances of the nineteenth century and

on their ability to solve human problems.

Thrift, responsibility and self-reliance were

important aspects of Victorian middle-class

culture that could be used to define a society in

which success was contingent on individual

perseverance and energy.

THE VICTORIAN MIDDLE CLASS

The Victorian emphasis on decorum

grew from the conviction that life

would be improved if it steadily

became more refined, more

rationally organized, better policed,

and therefore safer.

DECORUM, AUTHORITY

AND MORALITY

VICTORIAN MIDDLE CLASS

HUSBAND AND WIFE

VICTORIAN BRIC-A-BRAC

REFLECTED OBSESSION WITH

MATERIAL POSSESSIONS

VICTORIAN OUTING

DRAWING ROOMS

VICTORIAN FASHION AS A

SIGN OF SOCIAL STATUS

WOMEN’S FASHION

MEN’S FASHION

THE MIDDLE CLASS IDEAL

BECOMES

THE CULT OF DOMESTICITY

Piety – Religion was valued because unlike intellectual pursuits

it did not take a woman away from her "proper sphere," the

home, and because it controlled women's longings.

Purity – Virginity was seen as a woman's greatest treasure which

she could not lose until her marriage night.

Submission – True Women were required to be as submissive

and obedient "as little children" because men were regarded as

women's superiors "by God's appointment".

Domesticity – A woman's actual sphere was the home where a

wife created a refuge for her husband and children; Needlework,

cooking, making beds, and tending flowers were considered

actual feminine activities whereas reading of anything other than

religious biographies was discouraged.

"TRUE WOMEN" WERE TO HOLD

THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES:

VICTORIAN MOTHERS

VICTORIA, MOTHER & QUEEN

VICTORIAN WIVES

VICTORIA, WIFE & QUEEN

MANY RETURNS OF THE DAY (1856)

BY PAUL FIRTH

Sentimental, bathetic, maudlin, mawkish, mushy, romantic, schmaltzy

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

—Oscar Wilde

SENTIMENTALITY

Little Nell’s Death

SENTIMENTALITY CONTINUED

LITTLE NELL GOING TO THE ANGELS

Mr. Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing

the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and

consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him.

PODSNAPPERY: AN ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE

MARKED BY COMPLACENCY AND A REFUSAL TO

RECOGNIZE UNPLEASANT FACTS

PART II: MR. HYDE

The materialism, secularism, vulgarity and

sheer waste that accompanied Victorian

progress led some writers to wonder if their

culture was really advancing by any measure.

Marxism

Darwinism

Freudianism

CRITIQUES OF THE AGE

PART II. A:

MR. HYDE AS A MARXIST

• Serious Problems surfaced during the early years of Victoria’s

reign: economic depression, widespread unemployment,

famine in Ireland, and deplorable living and working

conditions brought on by rapid urbanization and a lack of

measures safeguarding young workers.

• In 1830, revolutions failed in France (i.e. Les Miserables).

• In 1848 revolutions failed in all of Europe (i.e. France,

Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire).

• In 1870 revolution temporarily succeeded in the Paris

Commune.

• In 1917 the Russian revolution succeeded.

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

AND FAILED REVOLUTIONS

VICTORIAN SLUMS

OVERCROWDING AND POVERTY

CHILDREN IN POVERTY

THE URBAN SLUM

VICTORIAN ALLEY

Children as young as four were put to work. In coal mines

children began work at the age of 5 and generally died before

the age of 25. Many children (and adults) worked 16-hour days.

As early as 1802 and 1819, Factory Acts were passed to limit the

working hours of workhouse children in factories and cotton

mills to 12 hours per day. These acts were largely ineffective

and after radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time

Committees" in 1831, a Royal Commission recommended in

1833 that children aged 11–18 should work a maximum of 12

hours per day, children aged 9–11 a maximum of eight hours,

and children under the age of nine should no longer be

permitted to work.

CHILD LABOR

CHILD LABOR

Capitalism (according to Marxist theory) can no longer

sustain the living standards of the population due to its

need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving

down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing

military aggression. The socialist system would succeed

capitalism as humanity's mode of production through

workers' revolution. According to Marxism, especially

arising from Crisis theory, Socialism is a historical

necessity.

MARXISM

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a

heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the

opium of the people.”

“The production of too many useful things results in too

many useless people.”

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the

rope.”

Proletarier aller Länder vereinigt Euch!

MARXISM QUOTATIONS

PART II.B:

MR. HYDE AS

A DARWINIST

"Darwinism" soon came to stand for an

entire range of evolutionary (and often

revolutionary) philosophies about both

biology and society. One of the more

prominent approaches, summed in the 1864

phrase "survival of the fittest" by the

philosopher Herbert Spencer, later became

emblematic of Darwinism.

DARWINISM AND

SOCIAL ORDER

What is now called "Social Darwinism" was, in its day, synonymous with "Darwinism" — the application of Darwinian principles of "struggle" to society.

Another interpretation, one notably favoured by Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton, was that "Darwinism" implied that because natural selection was apparently no longer working on "civilized" people, it was possible for "inferior" strains of people (who would normally be filtered out of the gene pool) to overwhelm the "superior" strains, and voluntary corrective measures would be desirable — the foundation of eugenics.

DARWINISM AND

SOCIAL ORDER

19TH CENTURY

CATEGORIES OF RACE

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,

having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;

and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to

the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless

forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are

being, evolved.”

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive

but those who can best manage change.”

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not

discovered the value of life.”

DARWINIAN

QUOTATIONS

PART II.C:

MR. HYDE AS A FREUDIAN

Freud initially attempted to subdivide the

mind purely in terms of different levels of

consciousness, emphasizing the

unconscious. Though he abandoned that

theory in favor of his tripartite division of

the id, ego, and superego, he held that the

different functions of the mind operated at

different levels.

FREUDIANISM

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

ID, EGO, SUPEREGO

ENNUI: THE BOREDOM OF LIFE

PRE-RAPHAELITE ART:

SENSUALITY

THE AWAKENING

CONSCIOUSNESS

• “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive

and will come forth later in uglier ways.”

• “No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters

with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”

• “Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most

crazy.”

• “Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many

pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it

we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are

perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which

cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions,

which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us

insensible to it.”

FREUDIAN QUOTATIONS

VICTORIAN

DUALITY

• Pax Britannica

• Scientific Progress

• Social Progress

• Rise of the Middle

Class

• Class Conflict &

Revolution (Marxism)

• Doubt from Scientific

Advancement (Darwin)

• The Aware of

Subconscious Desires

(Freud)

Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde

THE DUALITY OF

THE VICTORIANS

As the nineteenth century progressed, living conditions gradually

improved. Food and other commodities became more readily available,

most adult males had the right to vote, laws regulated the use of child

labor, and compulsory education brought about widespread literacy.

However, the beginning of the 20th century with World War I and the

Russian Revolution would destroy the 19th century European world

order. Equally significant, the sense of intellectual doubt begun in the

19th century would come to full fruition in the 20th century.

“We are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

—Oscar Wilde

FINAL EVALUATION

APPENDIX:

FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW

TO SHOW THE DUALITY OF THE

VICTORIAN AGE

APPENDIX:

FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW

APPENDIX:

FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW

APPENDIX:

FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW

APPENDIX:

FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW