Queen Victoria and the Victorians
Introduction: Queen Victoria and Victorian values
Queen Victoria is synonymous with the Victorian age, and indeed with ‘Victorian values’. She
seems to personify in her life the attitudes and stereotypes of Britain in the 19th century. Nowhere is
this clearer than in Lytton Strachey’s biography of Victoria, published in 1919, a companion volume
to his more famous attack on the Victorian age, Eminent Victorians (1918). In this biography Queen
Victoria emerges as moralistic, remote from her people for most of her reign, and out of touch with
the modern world. There is of course a lot of evidence to support this view of Victoria. She spent half
her life in mourning her consort Prince Albert who died in 1861, isolating her family and her court
from public view in Osborne, Balmoral, and Windsor, and avoiding her London residence (where
Albert had died). As the world’s most famous widow, she opposed campaigns to give better rights to
women. And although Prince Albert was a renaissance prince, the champion of the arts and the new
sciences and technology, Victoria, it is said preferred animals and going to the theatre. However, the
emphasis on Queen Victoria as the source of ‘Victorian values’ perhaps tell us more about Britain in
the 20th century than it does the Victorian age. Strachey’s biography of 1919 and his book, Eminent
Victorians, started the attack on the 19th century, which lasted well into the 1960s. As Britain gave
up its empire after World War Two, and became more of a social democracy (equal suffrage for men
and women, free health care and unemployment benefit), Queen Victoria came to represent an age
which was unfair, intolerant and simply old. In the 1960s, with reform in Britain of the divorce laws,
more relaxed attitudes towards sexuality, and the move to a secular society, the attack on the
Victorians was complete. When modern Britain held up a mirror to itself, it saw not the great
Victorian age, but a new world made since 1945. But is this association of Queen Victoria with
‘Victorian values’ fair or even accurate ? This lecture explores Queen Victoria’s own views and
activities in three main areas – first, religion; secondly, the woman question; and third and finally,
science and technology. The lecture shows that far from being old-fashioned and conservative, she
was more progressive on many political and social issues in Britain and overseas in the empire, and a
leader of innovation and invention. In showing Queen Victoria in a new way, the lecture also
suggests that ‘Victorian values’ is no longer a useful way of understanding the Victorians.
1. ‘We are not amused’: Victoria and religion
First, let us consider religion, Queen Victoria and the Victorians more generally. As Queen of
Great Britain and Ireland and its dependencies – her official title – Victoria was also ‘Defender of the
Faith’ (in Latin Fidei Defensor). She was head of the Protestant Church, and by law could only marry
another Protestant, always a problem for the British monarchy, surrounded as they were by a largely
Catholic Europe since the 16th century. Protestantism – as the state religion -- extended throughout
Victorian politics and society. Although nonConformists and Catholics were given civil rights in 1828
and 1829 – a few years before Victoria became queen – many other disabilities remained. Jews were
not emancipated until 1858, the Church of England received special parish subsidies (church rates)
until 1868, and the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge were for Protestants only until
1871. One reason the state church – the Church of England – remained so orthodox was because of
the challenge of other Christian religions. The emerging new towns of Victorian Britain were growth
areas for faiths such as Welesyan Methodism, and after the Irish famine of the 1840s, there was
widespread immigration of Catholics into mainland Britain, a part of the population over whom the
Pope in Rome (Pius IX) claimed leadership ahead of the Queen. Additionally, the 1851 census of
religious attendance revealed that more people in Britain were attending non-Conformist
(Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian) and Catholic chapels every Sunday than state churches. Also, an
increasingly young population required education, and the governments of the time wished state
religion to be part of this. In the factory hours legislation of 1843, for example, the government of Sir
Robert Peel, tried to make Sunday School attendance for children compulsory (this failed). And in
the 1870 Education Act, primary schools were provided for all areas where there were no other
1
schools, and religion was made central to this new curriculum. This was the faith, which Victoria as
queen, was expected to uphold. How well did she do ? Outwardly, she was a good Anglican. She was
of course crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, she married a Protestant prince, their nine
children were brought up with strict Anglican teaching, and when the Church of England was
threatened – for example when Gladstone’s Liberal government disestablished the Church in Ireland
(and elsewhere in the empire) in 1869 – she objected. She had a difficult relationship with the
Archbishops of Canterbury for most of her reign, found sermons outside of her own royal chapels
boring (although she did after all have to listen to so many) – and she was critical of Anglican
extremism, for example the Tractarians of the 1830s and 1840s (who wished to restore the Church
of England to its pre-reformation ways), or those who campaigned for Sabbatarianism (ie: keeping
Sunday for religious observance), who she felt wanted to stop people (like her) enjoying theatre or
(not her) going to museums.
Indeed, on the question of missionaries and toleration, Queen Victoria proved remarkably
modern in her concerns. We can see this best in relation not so much to the Church of England at
home, but overseas, where, as monarch, she presided over a colonial empire with a diverse mix of
religions and races. Although her husband, Prince Albert, believed in the importance of missionary
work – that is, attempting to convert the indigenous peoples of the empire to Christianity – he gave
a rare public speech to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1851, she
was less evangelical. In the case of India, she partly blamed the Indian rebellion of 1857 on the work
of missionaries, and insisted in the transfer of the government of India from the East India Company
to the Crown, that the religions of the Indian people be left alone and respected. This act of
toleration was unusual and unexpected. Many British officials and commentators on India blamed
the 1857 rebellion on a Muslim conspiracy (and continued to fear this in the Wahabi movement in
India in the 1860s and 1870s). Moreover, the British had for a very long time tried to stop many
Hindu religious practices – certain ceremonies and sati (widow immolation). So in supporting
religious pluralism in India Queen Victoria was taking a strong stand against her own government. In
Africa too, she showed sympathy to non-Christian religions, for example supporting the Bishop of
Natal, John Colenso, who had caused controversy by questioning the old Testament of the Bible,
after he came into contact with native southern African religious beliefs.
Where Queen Victoria thought the church did it best work was in social reform. Better housing
for the working class, charity for the ill, destitute and unemployed, and for abandoned children –
these were the kind of schemes to which she gave her name and patronage. Indeed, she and Albert
led the way, pioneering model housing programmes in London and other cities which were later
copied by other philanthropists and reformers. So perhaps the best way to sum up Queen Victoria
and religion, is to say she tolerated the state ceremonial and hierarchy of the Church of England, she
disliked its evangelical, proselytising element (especially overseas), and followed the example of its
good works amongst the poor and deserving.
2. Gender and power: Victoria and the woman question
Let us turn secondly to Queen Victoria and the ways in which she epitomised Victorian gender
relations. Victorian Britain was divided by many things – class and wealth, power, old and new – but
probably the most striking difference between then and now was in the relations between men and
women, a situation known as separate spheres. In 19th century Britain women were excluded from
the workplace – principally by the Factory Acts. The industrial revolution created a separation
between the home – the place of the woman, as mother and housewife; and work, the domain of
the male ‘breadwinner’. Under the convention of coverture their property became the possession of
their husband in marriage. And it remained extremely difficult for women to obtain divorce. Until
1857, divorces could only be granted by a separate act of Parliament, and thereafter it was always
2
easier for a man to be granted a divorce than a woman. Yet ironically, the most powerful person in
the country was a woman. What difference did that make ?
The ideology of separate spheres applied to Queen Victoria perhaps more so than other women.
An only child, her father, the Duke of Kent, died when she was a baby and Princess Victoria or ‘Drina
as she was known, was brought up in a very female household. She was cultivated in the arts of
painting and horse-riding, learned the French and German languages, as well as dancing. This was
not a formal education but nor was it so very different from what an aristocratic young woman or a
daughter of the gentry would receive. On acceding to the throne she came under the influence and
guidance of a series of fatherly figures: Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister, Leopold the King
of Belgium, and the Duke of Wellington. Although destined to be a queen, her main role was to
produce a dynasty, and so avoid the barren and childless situation of her uncles – the sons of George
III. She did just that, to her distant relative, Albert of Coburg, in 1840 – for love, it is clear, but also
with the succession of monarchy in mind. Victoria gave birth to 9 children (6 boys and 3 girls) in the
space of 17 years. Albert and Victoria took the education of their children more seriously than most
monarchs, although they still gave to their sons a distinctive training: Albert Edward (Prince of
Wales), to be tutored and prepared to be king, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to be a sailor (he travelled
the world on his ship the Galatea in 1868-70), and Arthur, the Duke of Connaught as a soldier (he
later commanded part of the Indian army). Like their mother, Victoria’s daughters were set more
feminine goals. Victoria (or Vicky as she was known in the family), the eldest was married into the
Prussian royal family at the age of 17, Helena became a notable sculptress, and Beatrice, Victorian’s
constant companion after Albert died was only reluctantly allowed to marry. In other words, there
was not much difference between Victoria in the 19th century and her heroine as queen, Elizabeth I,
400 years earlier: the same need for an heir, and a court culture dominated by men. If anything, the
19th century was even more patriarchal, with such a strong emphasis on gender roles within the
family.
Not surprisingly, Queen Victoria was not a supporter of women’s rights, that is to say, the 19th
century campaign to give women the vote. Her reasons are interesting. She said in 1870, ‘God
created women and men different – then let them remain each in their own position ... Woman
would become the most hateful, heartless, and disgusting of human beings were she allowed to
unsex herself; and where would be the protection which man was intended to give the weaker sex?’.
This shows how she lived in a world in which men’s stronger position brought them responsibility to
women, and in which women were reluctant to be equal because they might have to behave in the
same way as men. In 1870, campaigners such as Millicent Fawcett and John Stuart Mill were arguing
that the vote should be given to unmarried women and widows, that is, women who lived in their
own homes, as the suffrage was still based on property. Even they assumed that married women
would follow their own husbands’ political views and vote the same way. As a widow Queen
Victoria’s is more complicated position than simply being anti-feminist. She wished women to
receive proper protection, and the state of marriage provided this. So we need to take her status as
a widow for half her reign more seriously than historians do usually. She opposed women
remarrying – something which increased her reputation in India hugely. And she patronised the
nursing profession – the caring profession -- in Britain and in the colonies, not just raising money for
hospitals for women, but also for training young nurses.
It is therefore useful to consider Queen Victoria as a successful monarch not in spite of being a
woman, but because she was a woman. This has been the emphasis in some good books about her,
for example, Dorothy Thompson’s 1990 study: Queen Victoria: Gender and Power. Thompson argued
that only a woman ruler would have been acceptable to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It is certainly
true that in Scotland (which she first visited in 1843) and Ireland (1849) she played an important part
in settling ecclesiastical and economic problems by her visits. And overseas, as a symbol of imperial
3
rule, her influence was critical, softening the harder edges of colonialism. Nowhere was this more
obvious than in India, in which she took a deep interest long before she formally became Empress in
1877. She encouraged direct contact between Indian rulers and her court, she enthusiastically
became the symbolic head of the British raj – on rupee coins, and in new orders of chivalry – she led
relief subscriptions during the famine years, and supported attempts to reform the zenana
households of the maharajahs. In the jubilees of 1887 and 1897 her reign was widely celebrated in
India, but also elsewhere in the empire. Amongst the Maori tribes of New Zealand she was especially
popular, and in sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific islands too.
3. The legacy of Albert: Victoria, science and modernity
From over 100 years’ distance, the Victorian age seems very old, even in Britain where we still
use the public libraries built by the Victorians , the sewers they constructed, the apartment blocks
and estates large terrace houses they planned. And Queen Victoria appears even older, secluded
within a very traditional court culture. She chose to live in palaces and castles which were a
throwback to the renaissance or to the fairy-tale Gothic, and she often dressed up for dances and
galas in medieval costume. She disliked many aspects of the modern age of the 19th century:
smoking, cars, typewriters and telephones (admittedly, many of these inventions came when she
was an old woman, and background noise of any sort was an annoyance). Conversely, she enjoyed
train travel – and particularly welcomed in the 1840s fast steam train access between Windsor
Castle (which she loved) and Buckingham Palace (which she did not). And the royal family also made
great use of the telegraph, from its inception in the 1860s onwards, with their own telegraph office
at Windsor, and temporary telegraph stations set up whenever a member of the family was
travelling overseas, for example, during the Prince of Wales’ tour of India in 1875-6.
However, it was Prince Albert who made science, technology and the arts his special mission. He
encouraged royal patronage of music and painting (particularly from his native Germany), he built up
a large library at Windsor with collections of books in many different languages, and he took an
interest in the University of Cambridge (although he failed to become Chancellor there). And of
course, he played an important role in the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition, devoted to showcasing the
inventions, manufactures, crafts and arts of all the counties in the world. Compared to Albert’s
energetic and creative leadership, Victoria’s quiet supportive role at his side is understandable.
Together in his lifetime, they opened new buildings and laid foundations stones for new engineering
projects. But after his death in 1861, she did much to secure Albert’s legacy as the champion of
science. The best example of this is the area of southwest London, known affectionately as
‘Albertopolis’, to where many of the exhibits from the 1851 and later exhibitions were moved – to
the South Kensington Museum (1857, becoming the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1909), and to
the Imperial Institute (1886). Additionally, on the same site, the Natural History Museum was
opened in 1881. Victoria never lost an opportunity to persuade her ministers and her court to get
behind these important schemes devoted to the memory of her consort and his scientific interests.
We must also remember that Queen Victoria and her family were the first ‘media
monarchy’. Whether they liked it or not, Victorian, Albert and their children became the object of
the new illustrated press, the fashion magazines, the cartoon humour and satire of the period (which
could be very severe indeed), and of the yellowback and ‘penny dreadfuls’ novels which sold in the
thousands at railways stalls across the country. This was not a one-way process however. Victoria,
Albert and her advisers showed themselves to be uncharacteristically modern in the ways in which
they orchestrated and managed their public appearance and appearances. Their provincial, Scottish
and Irish tours were all carefully planned operations, the type of which had never been seen before.
Victoria chose specially commissioned portraits of herself and her children, usually by the German
painter Franz Winterhalter, and these were copied and extensively distributed. And the royal family
were amongst the earliest users of the new medium of photography, both to record their realm –
4
Victoria commissioned several photographic documentaries of India after the mutiny – and also to
depict their domestic life. It is thus misleading to see Victoria as falling behind modernity. For the
monarchy to survive in a century beset by revolution and republicanism, as well as scientific
progress, it needed to find and assert its popularity. One reason why Victoria was so heavily
criticised during her life as a reclusive mourner during the 1860s and early 1870s, was that the public
had become so very used to seeing the ‘media monarch’ in the early part of her reign.
Conclusion
Victoria was a serious, hard-working queen, who has not been very well-served by historians. There
has been too much focus on her personal life with (and without) Albert, and not enough on the 40
years she spent as a widow on the throne. During that time she was the ruler of the largest empire in
the world. Limited by constitutional rules at home, she exercised more influence overseas in the
colonies. She shared many of the prejudices of the Victorians, but also much of their
humanitarianism and liberalism. As a female ruler she used her gender to maximum advantage, and
to great effect.
5