THE VICTORIAN
ERA
1837 to 1901
“BRITISH HISTORY IS TWO THOUSAND YEARS
OLD, AND YET IN A GOOD MANY WAYS THE
WORLD HAS MOVED FARTHER AHEAD SINCE
THE QUEEN WAS BORN THAN IT MOVED IN
ALL THE REST OF THE TWO THOUSAND PUT
TOGETHER.” – MARK TWAIN
Common Conception of the
Victorian Era
“During this period of growth and change,
the numbers of the middle class swelled,
the lives of the working class improved,
and the nation was set on the road to
democracy.
“Nevertheless, for many … today the term
Victorian implies only stuffy complacency,
hypocrisy, and prudishness.”
STRUCTURES OF
SOCIETY
The Beginning
The Reform Bill of 1832
◦ The passage of the bill represented the first real
step toward the democratic reforms that many of
the British had sought since the time of the
American and French revolutions.
◦ Middle class men were given voting rights.
Summary: Stable
◦ No major wars from 1815 to 1914
◦ Colonialization primarily through commerce
(as opposed to military strength)
◦ Industrial Revolution expanded which means
the middle class expanded
◦ Social & economic changes happened
gradually
◦ Political power was extended to middle and
working classes
Major
Events
◦ England went from an island to an
Empire!
Major
Events
◦ England went from an island to an
Empire!
◦ Irish Potato famine / tension with
Ireland
◦ Strong Prime Ministers – Disraeli &
Gladstone
◦ Lister & Nightingale – medical
advances
◦ Darwin’s Theory of Evolution made
a splash
◦ Towards the end of the era, the
previously progressive populace
turned conservative.
Queen
Victoria
◦ Accepted the idea of constitutional
monarchy in which the monarch gave
advice rather than orders.
◦ Actually loved her husband – Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (German). After his
death in 1861, she wore mourning for the
rest of her life.
◦ She shaped the conventions of culture
more than the politics of the time.
Science
◦ “The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the
phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are
what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is
always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our
cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the
smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who
plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of
overflowing generosity with which the strong shows
delight in strength. And one who plays ill is
checkmated – without haste, but without remorse.
◦ Thomas Huxley, from A Liberal Education
PROGRESS
The big idea
of the era.
Considered
the duty of all
to improve
the world and
ourselves.
Radicals
◦ Both ideas built on this concept of progress or
evolution
◦ Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
◦ The Communist Manifesto 1848
◦ Charles Darwin publishes
◦ On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection 1859
CULTURE
Florence
Nightingale
◦ Florence Nightingale (Crimean
War)
◦ Photography & war
correspondents revealed the
bungling that kills many Brit.
Soldiers in the hospital in
Scutari, Turkey.
◦ So she went to help the
ordinary British soldier
◦ “scum of the earth” Duke
of Wellington
◦ She said that the British soldiers
were “murdered” by
incompetence.
◦ Made nursing a respectable
career
Expanded education
opportunities increased literacy;
Flourishing lending libraries and
cheap periodicals created a
mass reading public.
Literature
Novels were very popular and
usually appeared in serial form
initially.
Optimism & belief in progress.
Realism – sought to capture
everyday life as it really was.
Literature
◦ Writer’s goal: to make readers aware of the
connection between earth and heaven,
body and soul, material and ideal.
◦ To remind the reader to become better,
materially, spiritually, and intellectually.
FAMOUS WORKSDO YOU KNOW
THEM?
PLEASE, SIR, I
WANT MORE
Oliver Twist
PLEASE, SIR, I
WANT MORE
The plucky orphan who
went from an
orphanage,
apprenticeship to an
undertaker, pick-pocket,
to adopted son.
Famous Characters:
The Artful Dodger
Fagin
Oliver himself
Brutal murder – Bill Sykes
Charles
Dickens
◦ Oliver Twist
◦ David Copperfield
◦ Great Expectations
◦ A Christmas Carol
(Ebenezer Scrooge)
DOPPELGANGERS
This clip is
a
modern
day
version
of what
Victorian
novel?
This is a
modern day
version of
what Victorian
novel?
DOPPELGANGERS
Dr. Jekyll & Mr.
Hyde
GENRES
THE MYSTERY
Name
the
famous
duo
?
HOLMES &
WATSON
SCIENCE
FICTION
The
tripods
are
coming!
WAR OF THE
WORLDS
HG Wells
THE
ADVENTURE
Treasure Island – Original Pirate Tale
X Marks the Spot & More
Around the World in 80 days – Jules Verne
CHILDREN’S
STORIES
Think of Disney
Films- can you
think of @least
one that is
based upon
stories from
the Victorian
Period?
Drama
◦ Gilbert & Sullivan
◦ HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance
◦ Charming, tuneful, witty entertainment
◦ A world-turned-on-its-head view of life
◦ Oscar Wilde – Wittiness & absurdities
◦ Importance of Being Ernest
◦ George Bernard Shaw
◦ “Pygmalion” aka “My Fair Lady”
Major Authors
◦ British
◦ Charles Dickens
◦ Henry James
◦ Tennyson
◦ George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
◦ Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
◦ Arthur Conan Doyle
◦ World
◦ Leo Tolstoy War and Peace
◦ Louisa May Alcott Little Women
◦ Mark Twain
◦ Victor Hugo – publishes Les Miserables in 1862
(Victorian in British time period, but Romantic in
literary movement)
VALUES
Social Justice =
“Woke”
◦ Actions of the Era
◦ Slavery abolished
◦ Child labor restricted (chimney sweeps)
◦ Public schools were established
◦ Charity as a Christian Duty –YMCA, the Salvation
Army, and more organizations
◦ Debtor’s prison abolished
◦ ”Do noble things, not dream them” Charles Kingsley
◦ Values of giving to the poor, having a social conscience.
◦ Instead of the Romantic ideal of improving the self, focused
on improving society
Cleanliness and Order
◦ Obsessed with Cleanliness
◦ Obsessed with gentility or decorum
◦ Prudery almost a synonym for Victorianism
◦ Censors would omit items that would “bring a blush
to the cheek of a young person”
◦ Sex, birth, and death were softened by sentimental
conventions
◦ People arrested for disseminating info about STDs
◦ Seduced or adulterous women (not their male
partners) were “fallen” and pushed to margins of
respectability
CONCEPT OF
MANKIND
The purpose of life – man’s nature.
◦ PROGRESS:
◦ Thought of themselves as progressing morally
and intellectually as well as materially
◦ Arrogance about Progress in the era
◦ Macaulay: “his cool, almost amazed regard of
the disorder and squalor of the past conveyed
his sense of progress: How could those people
have lived like that? How different we are; how
far we have come.”
◦ Optimism – never ending progress
◦ World offered a challenging set of problems that
could be understood by human intelligence and
solved by science, government and other
human institutions
Think Ahead
◦ What later events (from the modern period) would make them
doubt the idea of inevitable progress?
Challenges to these Concepts
◦Evolution – are we any better than
animals?
◦ What is it that makes us so? (if it is not a
divine creation)
◦Is material progress really the best
judgment of success?
CONCEPT OF
THE DIVINE
Concept of the
Divine
◦ Still a heavily Protestant Christian
◦ Trust in a transcendental power was
characteristic of the early Victorian writers
◦ Romantic idea of a finite natural world
surrounded by and interfused with an infinite,
ideal transcendental reality.
◦ “We are all in the gutter; but some of us are
looking at the stars”
◦ Oscare Wilde, from Lady Windermere’s Fan.
Later writers found it
increasingly difficult to
believe in an infinite power
and order that made sense
of material and human
existence.
Later in
the period
Some writers complained
that materialistic ideas of
reality completely
overlooked the spirit or the
soul that made life
beautiful and just.
Does the universe make
sense?
Into the
Modern Age
At the end of the 19th century, Britain
found its position of world leadership
under increasing challenge. The United
States had recently emerged as a major
world power, and other European
countries’ competition with Britain for
the rich resources of Africa and China
was creating political and military
tensions that would culminate in World
War I.