THE VICTORIANS

The Victorian era - period of Queen Victoria's reign (1837 – 1901)

• period of peace, prosperity, refined culture, great advancement in mechanization and technology, 

• Britain was the world's most powerful nation. • British empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth's surface. 

• England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture.  

• Lower class misery and urban degeneration.

VICTORIAN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT- The British Empire- The Industrial Revolution

- Impact of the Industrial Revolution I. Overcrowded Cities

II. Child Labor- Political Thought : Smith, Darwin, and Mill

LITERATURE- Literature of Social Protest- The Victorian Novel- Victorian Poetry- Victorian Drama

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONEnd of 18th c.  

• theoretical knowledge and practical technology were connected.  

• Scientific ideas were applied to the making of machines

• machines transformed the way things were made and dramatically changed people’s lifestyles.  

• An agricultural nation concerned with urban and industrial growth

• as industry grew -> a rapid increase in the numbers of the urban working-class poor.  

• Workers in the cities lived in miserable conditions.  Urban mismanagement and misery were signs of a massive change in English society.  

The Age of Steam

Mass Production

Chimney Sweeper

The Impact of the Industrial Revolution

I. Overcrowded Cities

Advance of technology – growth of cities. People left the countryside to work in factories in the city

Unsanitary and unhealthy conditions – too many workers and not enough houses.

Disease, hunger, poverty, and deprivation prevailed, crime rate amplified exponentially as the miserable conditions of life worsened.

The country was undergoing great change with unfettered industrial growth – Laissez Faire economic policy (Jeremy Bentham et al.)

Gustav Doré

Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward – Sir Luke Fildes, 1874.

Social Realist Movement in Britain.

II. Child Labor

Children supporting families worked long hours • dangerous jobs • difficult situations for very little wages: ie.

chimney sweeps• children crawling under moving machinery, down

coal mine shafts, scuttling through narrow, low tunnels.

Idealist Political thought vs. Crude Reality ADAM SMITH: great influence on Victorian economic policy. • The Wealth of Nations (1776), advocated free trade and free market. • Government intervention prevents progress of growth of economy • opposed any government interference with business. • against trade restrictions • minimum wage laws – harmful to a nation's economy. • This laissez-faire policy of government non-intervention remained popular

throughout the Victorian Era. (despite public outcry for child labor laws, maximum working hours, and factory health codes).

CHARLES DARWIN: Darwin’s theory of evolution, The Origin of Species (1859), transformed the way we think about the natural world - led to a crisis of faith and spiritual doubt

JOHN STUART MILL: • a champion of individual rights - On Liberty (1869), • a pioneer of women’s rights in The Subjection of Women (1869). • attacked the tyranny of the majority who would deny liberty to individuals

(direct involvement in elevating public opinion)

Waterhouse , 1891

THE VICTORIAN NOVELNovel was the dominant genre in the Victorian period.  

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) unforgettable characters William Thackeray's (1811-1863)Charlotte Bronte’s (1816–55) Emily Bronte’s (1818–48) George Eliot's (1819–80) (Mary Anne Evans)

Later Victorian Novelists – Naturalists Thomas Hardy (1840-1928),  Elisabeth Gaskell, George 

Gissing - almost documentary style of narrative  - a situation and not  advocating  change. The Naturalist simply “shows” the world as it is, for good or ill. 

LITERATURE OF SOCIAL PROTEST

The social and cultural background – deep impact on literary works

Writers protested the grim reality of the industrial age by  their brutal descriptions 

• of the plight of laboring classes, • the discrimination against women, • other social issues and were a direct means of social 

reform.  • Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton was one of the first 

novels to warn against the problems of industrialization. • Charles Dickens’ works Oliver Twist and  Hard Times, only 

2 of the works that dealt with the themes of child abuse, poverty, urban misery, crime, and harsh educational systems. 

Drama had declined since the Restoration.  Most works  lacked originality.  2 playwrights : Oscar Wild (1856-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). 

Shaw’s plays addressed social questions – education, marriage, the class system in a comic/ironic strain. Pygmalion.   

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) : comedies, The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan – verbal polish and sarcasm.  

VICTORIAN POETRYRomantic taste overflowed into the poetry of the Victorian period.

Victorian poetry is less subjective than the romantic. Strong interest in the past, classical and the medieval – use of

mythological and historical allusions. The dramatic monologue Themes are realistic such as the transience of life (God-

mystery), great battles, etc. Victorian poetry – visual imagery. The elegy – laments the dead or the past. Victorian poetry characterized by doubt and psychological

conflicts - Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. - Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins,- Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. - Thomas Hardy (late Victorian poetry: voice is already rather

original and stylistically hermetic - “Transformations”) . Text      

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Alfred Tennyson

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thomas HardyChristina Rossetti

Matthew Arnold – Dover Beach

Description of a night scene – seaside. The lyrical self calls listener’s/reader’s attention to the window, to share the visual beauty of the scene.

The poet/persona in third-person point of view and shifts to second person at various points when he addresses the listener (exhorting imperatives): to his beloved (?).

Direct reference to the aural experience, which is somehow crushing and brings the first hint of melancholy.

Past and Present become and ebb and flow of the same air – classical antiquity (Sophocles) and Himself who hears the winds of doubt – “night wind, down the vast edges” (27)

Lastly, makes a personal reflection on the future – on what lies ahead (repetition and contrast, alliteration and rhythm.

Dover Beach _