The Victorian Age 1837-1901

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The Victorian Age1837-1901

• So many worlds, so much to do,
• So little done, such things to be . . .
• --Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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• Queen Victoria (House of Hanover)
• 1837-1901
• (the longest reign of a monarch in British
  history)

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• During the 64 years of Queen Victorias reign,
  (1837-1901), Britains booming economy and rapid
  expansion encouraged great optimism.

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• The year's at the spring,And day's at the
  mornMorning's at sevenThe hill-side's
  dew-pearledThe lark's on the wingThe snail's
  on the thorn Gods in his heaven
• Alls right with the world!
• -- Robert Browning

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• After the British defeated Napoleon at Waterloo
  in 1815, Britain was not involved in a major
  European war for nearly 100 yearsuntil World War
  I began in 1914.

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• Economic and military power (especially the Royal
  Navy) helped Britain acquire new colonies in
  far-flung parts of the globe.

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• Factory towns grew into large cities as Britain
  became the worlds leader in manufacturing.
• Banks, retail shops, and other businesses
  expanded.

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• These changes spurred the growth of two important
  classesan industrial working class and a modern
  middle classwho were able to live a better life
  because of the low cost and large variety of
  mass-produced factory goods.

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The Idea of ProgressAn acre in Middlesex is
better than a principality in Utopia.Thomas
Macaulay

• History meant progress, and progress meant
  material improvements that could be seen and
  touched, counted and measured.

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The Idea of Progress

• Middle-class Victorians prided themselves on the
  material advances of the 19th century and on
  their ability to solve human problems.

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The Hungry Forties

• Serious problems surfaced during the early years
  of Victorias reign
• economic depression,
• widespread unemployment,
• famine in Ireland, and
• deplorable living and working conditions brought
  on by rapid urbanization.

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The Hungry Forties
Depression put a million and a half unemployed
workers and their families on some form of poor
relief.
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Workhouse Dining Hall
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The Hungry Forties

• Government commissions investigating working
  conditions learned of children mangled when they
  fell asleep at machines at the end of a 12-hour
  working day.

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The Hungry Forties

• Young girls and boys hauled sledges of coal
  through narrow mine tunnels, working shifts so
  long they only saw sun on Sundays.

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The Hungry Forties

• In Ireland, the potato blight (1845-1849) caused
  a famine that killed 1,000,000 people and forced
  2,000,000 others to emigrate.

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The Irish Potato Famine
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The Hungry Forties

• The rapid growth of cities made them filthy and
  disorderly.
• The Thames River in London was polluted by
  sewage, industrial waste, and the drainage from
  graveyards where bodies were buried in layers six
  or eight deep.

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• From the butchers and greengrocers shops the
  gaslights flared and flickered, wild and ghastly,
  over haggard groups of slipshod dirty women,
  bargaining for scraps of stale meat and
  frostbitten vegetables, wrangling about short
  weight and bad quality. Fish stalls and fruit
  stalls lined the edge of the greasy pavement,
  sending up odors as foul as the language of
  sellers and buyers. Blood and sewer water
  crawled from under doors and out of spouts, and
  reeked down the gutters among offal, animal and
  vegetable, in every stage of putrefaction.
• --Rev. Charles Kingsley

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The Movement for Reform Food, Factories, and
Optimism

• Violence broke out at massive political rallies
  in the 1840s to protest government policies that
  kept the price of bread high and deprived most
  working men (and all women) of the vote and
  representation in Parliament.

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Chartist (Peoples Charter) Rebellion
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The Movement for Reform Food, Factories, and
Optimism

• The price of food dropped after mid-century,
  largely because of trade with other countries and
  the growing empire.
• Diet improved as meat, fruit, and margarine (a
  Victorian invention) began to appear in
  working-class households.

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The Movement for Reform Food, Factories, and
Optimism

• Factories and railroads made postage, newspapers,
  clothing, furniture, travel, and other goods and
  services cheap.
• A series of political reforms gave the vote to
  almost all adult males by the last decades of the
  century.

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The Movement for Reform Food, Factories, and
Optimism

• A series of Factory Acts limited child labor and
  reduced the usual working day to 10 hours, with a
  half-holiday on Saturday.
• State-supported schools were established in 1870,
  made compulsory in 1880, and made free in 1891.
  By 1900, literacy was widespread.

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Decorum and Authority

• The middle-class obsession with gentility or
  decorum has made prudery almost synonymous for
  Victorianism.
• 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 King George
  IV (1811-1820).

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Decorum and Authority

• Censorship was rampant Books and magazines
  deleted or altered words and episodes that might
  bring a blush to the cheek of a young person.
• People were arrested for distributing information
  about sexually transmitted diseases.

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• Members of polite society blushed at the mention
  of anything physical. Instead of becoming
  pregnant, women were in a family way, in a
  delicate condition, or expectant.

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• Women did not give birth rather, they
  experienced a blessed event. Children were not
  born rather, they were brought by the stork,
  or came into the world.

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Decorum and Authority

• Then theres the widely read Lady Goughs Book of
  Etiquette, which pronounced, among other social
  rules, that under no circumstance could books
  written by male authors be placed on shelves next
  to books written by authoresses.

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Decorum and Authority

• Victorian society regarded seduced or adulterous
  women (but not their male partners) as fallen
  and shunned them.
• Women were subjected to male authority.
  Middle-class women were expected to marry and
  make their homes a comfortable refuge for their
  husbands.

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Decorum and Authority

• Unmarried middle-class ladies could become
  governesses or teachers working-class women
  could be servants in affluent households.
• Unmarried middle-class women were made fun of in
  literature written by men.

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Intellectual Progress The March of Mind

• Advances in science and technology convinced
  19th-century intellectuals and reformers that
  human efforts could overcome all material
  problems.
• Geologists worked out the history written in
  rocks and fossils.
• Charles Darwin and other biologists theorized
  about the evolution of species (1859).

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Intellectual Progress The March of Mind

• When the views advanced by me in this volume . .
  . are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee
  that there will be a considerable revolution in
  natural history.
• --Charles Darwin,
• from On the Origin of Species

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Questions and Doubts

• Victorian literature was filled with voices
  asking questions and raising doubts
• Can material comfort fully satisfy human needs
  and wishes?
• What is the cost of exploiting the earth and
  human beings to achieve comfort?

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Questions and Doubts

• 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.

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Questions and Doubts

• When Victorian writers confronted rapid
  technological and social changes, a literary
  movement known as Realism was born. It focused
  on ordinary people facing the day-to-day problems
  of life, an emphasis that reflected the trend
  toward the growing middle-class audience for
  literature.

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Questions and Doubts

• Robert Browning sought to portray individuals
  with un-Romantic authenticity through his use of
  the dramatic monologue.

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Questions and Doubts

• Charles Dickens, the most popular and important
  figure in Victorian literature, used conventional
  happy endings to satisfy his readers convictions
  that things usually work out well for decent
  people.

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Questions and Doubts

• But, many of Dickenss most memorable scenes
  showed decent people neglected, abused, and
  exploited.

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The Homeless by Luke Fildes
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From Trust to Skepticism and Denial

• The trust in a transcendental power inherited
  from the Romantics eroded, giving way to
  uncertainty and spiritual doubt. Late-Victorian
  writers turned to a pessimistic exploration of
  the human struggle against indifferent natural
  forces.

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From Trust to Skepticism and Denial

• By mid-century, writers were saddened by what
  seemed to them to be the withdrawal of the divine
  from the world.

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From Trust to Skepticism and Denial

• Naturalism sought to put scientific observation
  to literary use. Naturalists crammed their
  novels with gritty details, often with the aim of
  promoting social reform. Opposite to the
  Romantics, they portrayed nature as harsh and
  indifferent to the human suffering it caused.

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From Trust to Skepticism and Denial

• Yes! In the sea of life enisled,
• With echoing straits between us thrown,
• Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
• We mortal millions live alone.

-- Matthew Arnold, To MargueriteContinued
Made into an island set apart from others
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From Trust to Skepticism and Denial

• The dominant note of much mid-Victorian writing
  was struck by Matthew Arnold in his poem Dover
  Beach The Sea of Faith had ebbed. There was
  no certainty or, if there was, what was certain
  was that existence was not governed by a
  benevolent intelligence that cared for its
  creatures.

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The White Cliffs of Dover
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Dover Beach, circa 1900
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Victorian Fiction

• If one form of literature can be seen as
  quintessentially Victorian, it is the novel.
  Members of the new middle class were avid
  readers, and they loved novels. Responding to
  the demand, weekly and monthly magazines
  published novels chapter by chapter in serial
  form. Curious readers had to continue to buy the
  magazine to learn what happened next.