Notes

1. Dr. M. F
VICTORIAN AGE

2.  THE VICTORIAN PERIOD: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
- The British Empire
- The Industrial Revolution
The Impact of the Industrial Revolution
I. The Emergence of Overcrowded Cities
II. Child Labor
- Cultural Context: Smith, Darwin, and Mill
LITERATURE
- Literature of Social Protest
- The Victorian Novel
- Victorian Poetry
- Victorian Drama

CONTENTS

3. THE VICTORIAN ERA:
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
CONTEXTS

4. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD
The Victorian era of British history was the period
of Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 until her death in
1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity,
refined culture, great advancements in technology,
and national self-confidence for Britain. During the
Victorian age, Britain was the world's most powerful
nation. By the end of Victoria's reign, the British
empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth's
surface. Like Elizabethan England, Victorian
England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and
culture. But as Victorian England was a time of great
ambition and grandeur, it was also a time of misery,
squalor, and urban ugliness.

5. A Time of Change
 London becomes most important city in Europe
 Population of London expands from two million to
six million
 Shift from ownership of land to modern urban
economy
 Impact of industrialism
 Increase in wealth
 World’s foremost imperial power
 Victorian people suffered from anxiety, a sense of
being displaced persons in an age of technological
advances.

6. Queen Victoria (1837- 1901)

7. Queen Victoria and the Victorian
Temper
 Ruled England from
1837-1901
 Exemplifies Victorian
qualities: earnestness,
moral responsibility,
domestic propriety
 The Victorian Period was
an age of transition
 An age characterized by
energy and high moral
purpose

8. The Early Victorian Period
1830-1848
 In 1830, the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway opened,
the first public railway line in
the world.
 By 1850, railway lines
connected England’s major
cities
 By 1900 , England had 15,195
lines of railroad and an
underground rail system
beneath London.
 The train transformed
England’s landscape,
supported the growth of
commerce, and shrank the
distance between cities.

9. The Reform Bill of 1832
 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

10. The Time of Troubles
1830’s and 1840’s
 Unemployment
 Poverty
 Rioting
 Slums in large cities
 Working conditions
for women and
children were terrible

11. Impact on Victorian Literature
 The novelists of the 1840’s and the 1850’s
responded to the industrial and political scene:
 Charles Kingsley- The Water Babies
 Elizabeth Gaskell – North and South;
Life of Charlotte Bronte
 Benjamin Disraeli- Sybil

12. The Mid-Victorian Period
1848-1870
A time of prosperity
A time of improvement
A time of stability
A time of optimism

13. The British Empire
 Many Between 1853 and
1880, large scale
immigration to British
colonies
 In 1857, Parliament took
over the government of
India and Queen Victoria
became empress of India.
 Many British people saw the
expansion of empire as a
moral responsibility.
 Missionaries spread
Christianity in India, Asia,
and Africa.

14. Religious Debate
 Evangelical movement
emphasized spiritual
transformation of the
individual by conversion
and a moral Christian life.
 Their view of life was
identical with Dissenters.
 The High Church
emphasized the importance
of tradition, ritual, and
authority
 The Oxford Movement led
by Newman
 The Broad Church was open
to modern ideas.

15. Utilitarianism
 Derived from the ideas of
Jeremy Bentham and his
disciple James Mill, the
father of John Stuart Mill
 Rationalist test of value
 The greatest good for the
greatest number
 Utilitarianism failed to
recognize people’s
spiritual needs

16. Challenges to Religious Belief
 Science
 Huxley
 Darwin- the Origin of Species and The Descent
of Man
 Higher Criticism
 Examination of the Bible as a mere text of
history
 Source studies
 Geology
 Astronomy

17. The Late Victorian Period
1870-1901
 Decay of Victorian values
 British imperialism
 Boer War
 Irish question
 Bismarck's Germany became a rival power
 United States became a rival power
 Economic depression led to mass immigration
 Socialism

18. The Victorian Novel
 The novel was the dominant form in
Victorian literature.
 Victorian novels seek to represent a
large and comprehensive social
world, with a variety of classes.
 Victorian novels are realistic.
 Major theme is the place of the
individual in society, the aspiration
of the hero or heroine for love or
social position.
 The protagonist’s search for
fulfillment is emblematic of the
human condition.
 For the first time, women were major
writers: the Brontes. Elizabeth
Gaskell, George Eliot.
 The Victorian novel was a principal
form of entertainment.

19. Victorian Poetry
 Victorian poetry developed in the
context of the novel. Poets sought new
ways of telling stories in verse
 All of the Victorian poets show the
strong influence of the Romantics, but
they cannot sustain the confidence the
Romantics felt in the power of the
imagination.
 Victorian poets often rewrite Romantic
poems with a sense of belatedness.
 Dramatic monologue – the idea of
creating a lyric poem in the voice of a
speaker ironically distinct from the
poet is the great achievement of
Victorian poetry.
 Victorian poetry is pictorial; poets use
detail to construct visual images that
represent the emotion or situation the
poem concerns.
 Conflict t between private poetic self
and public social role.

20. Victorian Drama
 The theater was a
flourishing and popular
institution during the
Victorian period.
 The popularity of theater
influenced other genres.
 Bernard Shaw and Oscar
Wilde transformed British
theater with their comic
masterpieces.

21. THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Queen
expanding
Victoria ruled over a vast and
empire, over which, it was said, the
sun never set. The British considered the
empire as a means of fulfilling the white man’s
mission
control
of civilizing the nations under their
and spreading Western values
throughout the whole world.

23. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
It started at the end of the eighteenth century,
when theoretical knowledge and practical
technology were connected. Scientific ideas were
applied to the making of machines that transformed
the way things were made and dramatically changed
people’s lifestyles. A formerly agricultural nation
was now based on urban and industrial growth. But
as industry grew, it was accompanied by a rapid
increase in the numbers of the urban working-class
poor. Workers in the cities lived in miserable
conditions. Urban squalor and misery were signs of
a massive change in the English society.

24. The Age of Steam

26. Mass Production

27. The Impact of the Industrial Revolution
I. The Emergence of Overcrowded Cities
One result of the advance of technology
was the unprecedented growth of cities.
People, in search of work left the countryside
to work in factories in the different cities of
Britain. They had to live in very dirty and
unhealthy conditions. There were too many
workers and not enough houses. People were
living like animals. Diseases raged,
prevailed,
hunger,
crimepoverty, and deprivation
accelerated, and misery increased.

28. The old rural social pattern was receding under the impact of harsh
industrialization

31. Gustav Doré

36. The homeless waiting for admission into a workhouse are depicted in
this picture by Luke Fildes
Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward
Luke Fildes, 1874.

38. II. Child Labor
Children were expected to help to support
their families. They often worked long hours in
dangerous jobs and in difficult situations for very
little wages. For example, there were the climbing
boys employed by the chimney sweeps, the little
children who could scramble under the moving
machinery to retrieve the cotton fluff; boys and
girls working down the coal mines, crawling
through
adult.
tunnels too narrow and low to take an

43. Chimney Sweeper

44. ADAM SMITH: Smith’s economic ideas had great influence on Victorian
thinking. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), advocated free trade and believed
that the market is best left untouched. Government intervention only prevents
the economy from righting itself. He therefore strongly opposed any
government interference with business affairs. He was against trade restrictions
and minimum wage laws as being harmful to a nation's economy. This laissez-
faire policy of government non-intervention remained popular throughout the
Victorian Era. Capitalists often twisted his words to oppose child labor laws,
maximum working hours, and factory health codes.
The theory of
CULTURAL CONTEXT

45. CHARLES DARWIN:
Darwin’s theory of evolution, proposed in his book The
Origin of Species (1859), has transformed the way we
think about the natural world.
The book was extremely controversial because it implied that
man was simply another form of animal and that people
might have evolved from apes.
Darwin was strongly attacked, particularly by the
Church.
The theory of evolution led to a crisis of faith and
spiritual doubt among so many people.
CULTURAL CONTEXT

46. JOHN STUART MILL:
Mill was a champion of individual rights in his book On
Liberty (1869), and a pioneer of women’s rights in The
Subjection of Women (1869).
Mill attacked the tyranny of the majority who would deny
liberty to individuals through public opinion.
CULTURAL CONTEXT

48. LITERATURE

49. LITERATURE OF SOCIAL PROTEST
The social and cultural background of the period has
had a deep impact on literature of the Victorian period.
Some works of literature protested the grim reality of the
industrial
factories
age.
and
Depicting the deplorable conditions in
mines,
against
the plight of child labor, the
discrimination women, and other social issues,
such literary works were a 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 treated the
themes of child abuse, poverty, urban squalor, crime, and
corrupt educational systems.

50. THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
The novel was the dominant genre in the Victorian
period. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) created a host of
unforgettable characters in such novels as Oliver Twist,
Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Hard Times,
and A Tale of Two Cities. William Thackeray's (1811-1863) most famous work is Vanity Fair. Charlotte
Bronte’s (1816–55) Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte’s
(1818–48) Wuthering Heights are classics of English
literature. George Eliot's (1819–80) most important
works are Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss and
Adam Bede. The major novelist of the later part of the
period was Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), whose best
works include Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far from the
Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure.

52. VICTORIAN POETRY
Many characteristics of romantic poetry continued in poetry of
the Victorian period.
However, Victorian poetry, in general, is less subjective than the
romantic.
An interest in the past, both the classical and the medieval, appears in
the subjects, and in the use of mythological and historical allusions.
The dramatic monologue is used greatly by the poets.
 The themes are more realistic, discussing such issues as child labor,
the rights of women, science and religion.
Victorian poetry is mostly pictorial, heavily relying on visual imagery.
 The elegy is one of the most popular poetic forms in the period, a
form of poetry that laments the dead or the past.
Victorian poetry is often characterized by doubt and psychological
conflicts.
The greatest poets of the period are Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Robert Browning. Other important poets are Matthew Arnold,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Thomas Hardy is considered the best poet of the late

53. Gerard Manley HopkinsThomas Hardy Christina Rossetti
Alfred Tennyson Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning

54. VICTORIAN DRAMA
Throughout the nineteenth century, drama
period.continued its decline since the Restoration
Most works of the period lack depth and originality.
Two playwrights are exceptions to this trend: Oscar
Wild (1856-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-
1950). Oscar Wild’s comedies such as The Importance
of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan abound
in verbal polish and cynicism. Shaw’s plays addressed
such social questions as education, marriage, and the
class system in a comic vein. His works include Man
and Superman, Pygmalion, and St. Joan.

55. George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
Oscar Wilde
(1856-1900)

56. Ulysses and the Sirens
J. M. W. Waterhouse , 1891