CHY 4U1 – Image Analysis
The Industrial Revolution – The Ideal Victorian Family
Discussing the Illustration:
1) The Industrial Revolution made life more comfortable for millions. This image of a middle
class family in the mid 1800s conveys a sense of their growing ease and material comfort.
How does the image help get across this sense? In what ways is this comfortable family
like or not like a typical well-off family today?
2) People in England, Europe and America begun to be better off because of how
industrialism vastly increased the production of all kinds of goods and services – and
usually at lower cost than in the past. Why do you think industrial production, especially
factory production, was able to do this?
3) This image could be labeled the “Ideal Victorian Family.” Can you explain what
historians generally mean when they use the term “Victorian” this way? In what way do
you think this is or is not an ideal or idealized view of family life in the 1800s in Europe
and North America?