The Victorian Period 1832-1901
Study Guide
Introduction
1. List three events form the Victorian Period time line.
2. List the three social and political milestones of the Victorian Period.
Peace and Economic Growth: Britannia Rules
3. What did the expanded Industrial Revolution create?
4. Who achieved political power during this time?
The Idea of Progress
5.
6.
What was Macaulay’s idea of progress?
Make a list of the improvements he wanted for the city of London.
The Hungry Forties
7.
Of the 16 million in England and Wales, how many were on some form of poverty relief due to
the depression?
8. Describe three problems of the Hungry Forties.
The Movement for Reform: Food, Factories, and Optimism
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13.
What government policies were being protested by the working class that caused them to
organize a monster rally?
What caused the prices of food to drop?
In what years did the following groups get the right to vote?
a. All men who owned property worth ten pounds or more in yearly rent
b. Most working-class men, except farm workers
c. Women age 30 and over
d. Women age 21
What act of the women gave favor to their right to vote later?
How did the factory acts change child labor?
“Blushing Cheeks:” Decorum and Prudery
14. In what ways did the Victorians think they were progressing?
15. Define prudery.
16. What did book publishers and magazine editors do to emphasize prudery?
Authoritarian Values
17. What was a typical marriage like during the Victorian Period?
18. What jobs were available for the working class women?
19. Who and what do the Victorians blame for the immorality and sexual excesses?
Intellectual Progress: The March of the Mind
20. Intellectually, how have humans progressed during this period?
21. Who theorized about the evolution of species?
Thomas Huxley and the Game of Science
22. To what did Thomas Huxley compare science?
23. What did he along with others believe?
Questions and Doubts
24. What questions did Victorian writers raise?
25. What was their complaint?
26. What two writers challenged the views of the Victorian culture about their knowledge of the
universe?
The Popular Mr. Dickens
27. Who is considered to be the most popular figure in Victorian literature and considered to be a
Victorian success?
28. Why did people love his novels so much?
29. For what reason does Dickens make attacks on the Victorian society in his novels.
Trust in the Transcendental – and Skepticism
30. What was the highest purpose of a poet?
31. What two poets found it difficult to believe in an initial power?
32. With this pull away from the initial idea of a divine power, in what did the main characters of the
novels written by early and mid Victorian novelists find happiness?
Reflections of a Culture
33. As I have always reminded you, with every literary period we have studied, the literature of a
time period is a reflection of what?