THE VICTORIAN AGE 1832-1900

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THE VICTORIAN AGE1832-1900

• Prosperity vs. Miseries, Contradictions, and
• the Question of Women

Image sources 1, 2
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Outline

• From Romantic Quest to Social Reform
• Prosperity and Miseries Industrialism
  Imperialism
• Home Sweet Home and the Question of Woman

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April 19, 1824 was for Tennyson a day when the
whole world seemed to be darkened for me. On a
rock, close to his home, he carved the words
Byron is dead. (Cronin 105)

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Romanticism vs. Victorianism
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Victorian Age 3 periods
Industrialism, Scientific Progress
reference
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Victorian Age 3 periods
Lyrical Ballads 1st ed. 1798 Keats 1819 Odes Ode
to the West Wind 1820 Casabianca 1826
Frankenstein 1818
Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre 1847 Bleak House
1851-52
Alice in Wonderland 1865 Middlemarch 1871-72
Dorian Gray 1890 Importance of Being Earnest
1895 Pygmalion 1916
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Social Earnestness e.g. The Reform Bill of 1832
1867

• Transformed English class structure
• Extended the right to vote to all males owning
  property
• Second Reform Bill passed in 1867
• Extended right to vote to working class

This painting by Sir George Hayter (now in the
National Portrait Gallery) commemorates the
passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832. It
depicts the first session of the newly reformed
House of Commons on 5 February 1833 held in St
Stephen's Chapel which was destroyed by fire in
1834. (source)
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Industrialism and Social Unrest

1. Industrial Revolution ? Urbanization e.g.
   London -- Population of London expands from 1
   million in 1800 to 6.7 million in 1900 (and over
   8 million today)
2. ? overcrowding, pollution, prostitution and
   disease (e.g. London The Chimney Sweeper
   Jane Eyre)

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e.g. The Crystal Palace-- the 1851 Great
Exhibition

• In Hyde Park, a gigantic greenhouse erected to
  display the exhibits of modern industry and
  science, such as hydraulic presses, locomotives,
  machine tools, power looms, power reapers, and
  steamboat engines.
• One of the first buildings constructed according
  to modern architectural principles, symbolizing
  the triumphs of Victorian industry

Inventions Steam locomotion railway, iron and
steel ships and the telegraph
source
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BBC the Victorians 1. Painting The Town

• The modern city
• 600 Queen Street Mill
• 945 slums
• 2600 Derby Day
• Sewage system
• Manchester Town hall
• 1888 Glasgow International Exhibition
• 4900 London, East and West End

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Ref. Queen Victoria (1819-1901)Reign 1837-1901

• She had the longest reign in British history
• Became queen at the age of 18 she was graceful
  and self-assured. She also had a gift for
  drawing and painting.
• Throughout her reign, she maintained a sense of
  dignity and decorum that restored the average
  persons high opinion of the monarchy after a
  series of horrible, ineffective leaders
• 1840-Victoria married a German prince, Albert,
  who became not king, but Prince-consort
• After he died in 1861, she sank into a deep
  depression and wore black every day for the rest
  of her life

Source
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BBC the Victorians 2. Home Sweet Home

• -- opening,
• -- Queen Victorias Osborne House
• -- The other sides of a Victorian sweet home
  (adulteress, prostitutes)
• -- 3320 governess
• -- 3543 Children dotted upon infant deaths
• -- 4000 Amelia Dyer baby farmer
• -- 4400 Fallen women (women drowning themselves
  in Thames)
• -- 5100 Womens dress with a corset in it
• -- 5445 Victorian women fought back

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The Social Roles of Women

• The Woman Question suffrage, property rights,
  marriage, etc.
• Child Custody Act, 1839 -- gave a mother the
  right to petition the court for access to her
  minor children and custody of her children
• Matrimonial Causes Act (legally separated wife
  given right to keep what she earns), 1857
• First Married Woman's Property Act, 1870
• Voting Act (Enfranchised all men over 21, and all
  women over 30) 1918
• Equal Franchise Act (Equal voting rights for both
  men and women), 1928

Reference 1, 2
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Equal Rights for Women Education

• Ladys education piano, French, sewing,
  painting, etc. (Jane Eyre chap 10)
• First womens college established in 1848 in
  London.
• By the end of Victorias reign, women could take
  degrees at twelve university colleges.
• Free public education for every child in England
  was not available until 1899
• (Mr. Brocklehurst
• Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre 1847 )

Reference 1, 2
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Angels in the House Victorian Women and the
Home

• Victorian society was preoccupied with the very
  nature of women.
• Protected and enshrined within the home, she is
  expected to create a place of peace where man
  could take refuge from the difficulties of modern
  life.

Reference 1, 2
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Famous Images of Women in the Victorian Age

• Florence Nightingale (source)

• Queen Victoria (source)

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Working Conditions for Women

• Bad working conditions and underemployment drove
  thousands of women into prostitution. (8600
  reported cases in London, and probably up to
  80,000 source??Pygmalion)
• The only occupation at which an unmarried
  middle-class woman could earn a living and
  maintain some claim to gentility was that of a
  governess.

Found Drowned by George Frederic Watts RA
(1817-1904). 1867. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the
Watts Gallery, Compton. (source)
Reference 1, 2
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Governess in Victorian Society

• moderate income for survival
• "no security of employment, minimal wages, and an
  ambiguous status, somewhere between servant and
  family member, that isolated her within the
  household" (Norton Anthology of English
  Literature, 2 903). (source)
• e.g. Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair and The French
  Lieutenants Woman.
• Why cant Jane Eyre go to college?
• no college before 1840
• no career prospect with a college degree.

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Quotes re. Education Class Positions in Jane
Eyre

• Brocklehurst "my plan in bringing up these girls
  is, to render them hardy, patient,
  self-denying. . ., by encouraging them to evince
  fortitude under the temporary privation."
• Jane-- "poor, obscure, plain, and little,"
• Jane "if God had gifted me with some beauty and
  much wealth, I should have made it as hard for
  you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave
  you. (XXIII)
• Jane teaching at Morton "I felt-yes, idiot that
  I am-I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a
  step which sank instead of raising me in the
  scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed
  at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of
  all I heard and saw round me. (XXXI)