VICTORIAN AGE
(1837-1901)
Historical Background
When King William IV died, he was succeeded by his niece Victoria, who was only 18
and who became the symbol of a whole era, called Victorian Age.
The Victorian Age (1837-1901) is generally divided into e periods:
1. 1837-1851: general unrest: on one hand a rapid insdustrial development, on
the other hand hardship with food shortage. Conquests for social
improvement and reforms in many fields (education,. Sanitation, factory
regulation, franchise- diritto di voto)
2. 1851-1870: peace and progress: England at the height of power, wealth and
influence as a result on industrial development.
1851 is the year of the Great Exhibition held by prince Albert (V.’s husband) to
show the scientific progress.
3. 1870-1901: colonial expansion: great industrial competition with Germany
and USA and imperialistic aspiration.
INLAND POLICY
V.’s reign began in a difficult atmosphere, in fact there was much discontent among
the working class owing to a slump in industry and to a period of bad crops, which
led to misery. So the working class gave life to the Chartist Movement (1837), that
asked for social reforms. The Chartists drew up a document called “People’s
Charter” in which they asked for Universal suffrage, vote by ballot, annual
Parliaments, Abolition of Property Qualification, and equal Electoral Districts. But
the Chartism had no success, in fact it disappeared after 1848.
The Trade Union Movement had, at first, met a strong opposition from the
Government, but it had been legalized in 1825-26. Strong Craft Unions (unioni di
categoria) were formed and in 1875 Disraeli’s Government – conservative – passed
the Trade Union Act that approved the legality and the importance of the unions.
Queen Victoria’s reign saw an alternation of great Prime Ministers:
1
TORIES
(conservatives)
Peel, Disraeli
WHIGS
(liberals)
Palerstone, Gladstone
The Liberals proposed to extend the franchise and in 1867 the 2nd Reform Bill was
passed, which gave the right of vote to the town labourers (but not to agricultural
labourers and miners).
It was only in 1884, with the 3rd Reform Bill that the suffrage was extended to all
male workers (not to women!).
In 1892, the Independent Labour Party was founded. Its aims were the
improvement of working classes conditions by state action and the reorganization fo
the society on a socialist model. Politically, it was not powerful, but it paved the way
for the Modern British Labour Party, which was founded in 1900.
A great political problem of the time was Ireland. Its population was mostly made
up of Catholics and very poor. A famous Nationalist leader, Charles Parnell,
demanded the Home Rule, that is Home Government for Ireland. This was rejected
by the conservative and it was only after the World War I, that Home Rule was
granted to Ireland.
Another social question was the price of corn; it was maintained high by the
Government with protective tariffs, the so-called Corn Laws, which restricted the
importation of foreign corns. This was made by the conservative party because it
wanted to protect the landed gentry (aristocrazia terriera), by which it was mainly
supported. An association was formed, the Anti-Corn-Law League, which combined
working and middle class interests, and obtained the repeal of the Corn Laws in
1846. This was a victory of the industrial interests against those of the landowners.
The upper class and the industrial middle class believed in a policy of free trade,
adopted by the prime minister Peel. This free exchange of goods brought great
wealth to England, which found its expression in the Great International Exhibition
(1851), an enormous structure to display objects and goods; it was the triumph of
civilization based on commerce and technology. In fact during Victorian Age
scientific research was no longer theoretical, but was applied to invention and
construction of machines. The railway line increased thanks to iron industry and
mechanical factories that were the most developed in the world. Moreover the
2
proximity of British shipyards (cantieri navali) to the cool mines and iron factories
gave the shipbuilding industry a great advantage over other nations so that Britain
could abandon protectionism and adopt free trade. Besides transporting goods,
ships were needed also to transport millions of emigrants from Europe to the New
World.
This age was also characterized by a lot of social reforms, such as:
- The Factory Acts, which regulated the condition of workers;
- The Mines Act which prohibited the working of women and children in mines;
- The Education Acts which reorganized elementary education;
- Emancipation of all religious sects, by which the Catholics were finally allowed
to enter Oxford and Cambridge and work in government jobs.
FOREIGN POLICY
The V.A. was a period of great colonial expansion.
To solve the problem of the surplus of population at home;
Why the colonization?
To consolidate overseas markets.
New Zealand, Australia
Africa: Suez Canal, Uganda, Kenya, Rhodesia, NIger
Where?
Canada
Asia: Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, India (Queen Victoria became
Empress of India, 1876)
Mediterranean: Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus.
In 1853, the Crimean War broke out. It originated from a dispute between Turkey
and Russia. France and England took the side of Turkey because they feared the
growing power of Russia in the Balkans. Russia was defeated but there was a great
disorganization of the English command, particularly in the field of sanitation. Public
opinion was shocked at the news of the horrible conditions of the wounded soldiers.
A young lady, Florence Nightingale (known as the “Lady with the lamp”) went to the
Crimea to organize hospitals. Her ideals eventually inspired the women’s corps in
the International Red Cross.
British Liberals (as Palmerstone) gave their support to the cause of Italian
Independence. In fact they thought that the Austrians would be driven from Italy
because they feared that France would regain control of Mediterranean.
3
Figures of the Italian Risorgimento (like G. Mazzini) were enthusiastically welcomed
in London.
Social Background
In 1901 Queen Victoria died. She had represented the civil and domestic virtues that
England believed in: duty, morality and love for family.
Victorian Age was a complex age, marked by social, political and religious changes.
In this period colonial expansion was fostered and scientific progress and
transportation were also improved. The middle class, made up of bankers,
merchant, manufacturers, mainly benefited from the changes of the time and ruled
the country. In fact, this period marked the triumph of industrial/middle class; they
had a great confidence in progress, believed in the theories of laissez-faire and
Utilitarism and they were philanthropists and had a conventional religious faith and
a morality observing exterior forms and conventions.
The working class, instead, was overwhelmed by misery; whole families lived in bad
conditions in single rooms, and often the lack of hygiene led to cholera.
4
The New Poor Laws (1834) had not been a solution: it established that needy
people should be given food and shelter in special places called Workhouse; these
were generally horrible places where life was miserable as Dickens denounced in
“Oliver Twist”. Poverty was considered a crime and punished with jail.
This situation saw prosperity and progress on one hand and poverty and injustice on
the other; it opposed moralism and philanthropy to corruption and greed for money
and separated private from public life. This contradictory situation is usually called
the Victorian Compromise that is the utilitarian compromise of a large section of
English society that saw industrial development as a source of prosperity while it
ignored the social conflicts raised by it, trying to cover the unpleasant aspects of
progress under a veil of respectability.
Under the influence of Queen Victoria herself, the age turned excessively
puritanical. Sex became a taboo subject, and all the words with vaguely sexual
connotations were driven out of everyday language. This conventional morality
found its best expression inside the family, where the fathers were very
authoritarian and mothers was to be submissive. Victorian families were usually
very big and the queen herself had 9 children. Women were confined within their
house or, at the most, devoted to respecatalbe jobs like teaching or social activities.
Men were forbidden to gamble, swear or drink.
Victorian compromise is an artificial way of behaving where your mind is different
from your behaviour.
It is based on
- prudery (politeness, prudence, moderation)
- hypocritical behaviour or speech
- respecatability
it was important to keep up the apparences.
This situation aroused the concern of many theorists and reformers who feared an
armed revolution like in France, so they tried to improve living conditions. In this
sense great influence was exercised by Evangelicalism, a religious movement,
deeply concerned with human problems and social reforms. They contributed to the
abolition of slavery and the 1st Reform Bill. They were very puritan and wamted the
abolition of some public entertainments and advocated a strict moral code of
behaviour and the observance of sunda as a day of absolute rest.
The bad condition of English working class contributed to the revolutionary theories
of Carl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who both lived in England and together wrote the
Communist Manifesto (1848). Though Comunism never reallyf lourished in Britain,
Marxism had some influence on the English Socialists. In this atmosphere the Fabian
5
Society was founded in 1884 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, inspired by Marxist
doctrine. It aimed at a gradual not revolutionary socialism. It was so called from
Quintus Fabius Maximus, nicknamed “cunctator” ot “delayer” because he carried a
campaign against Hannibal by avoiding direct engagement.
Main philosophical currents of the time:
Utilitarianism: promulgated by Jeremy Bentham and developed by John Stuart Mill
: they stated that “only what is useful is good” and that all moral, social and political
actions sholud be directed towards achieving “the greatest good for the greatest
number of people”.
Darwinism: only the fittest survive, instead the weak and the unfit, both in nature
and in society, had to succumb according to a universal law of natural selection.
Darwins’ theory caused great uncertainty because the monkey theory, according to
which man descends from apes, was in contrast with the Genesis according to which
God had created men in his own image.
Arthur Schopenhauer manteined that God, free will and immortality of the soul are
human illusions.
Auguste Comte , the founder of Positivism, excluded revealed religion and
metaphysics, and replaced them with sociological ethics.
Hyppolyte Taine manteined that man is the product of 3 factors: “la race” (the
race), “le milieu” (the environment) and “le moment” (the pressure of the past on
the present. This led to a sense of disilllusionment and pessimism.
6
Literary Production
Because of the ferments of the Victorian Age, literature became a compromise
between old and new models. It was upset by contradiction, so different literary
movments developed, playing a very important role in spreading the new ideas.
We have:
- Late Romanticism: a continuation of R. And still looked to the Middle Age for
inspiration
- Realism: stated that art has to reproduce reality faithfully, without idealizing
it.
- Naturalism: advocated total objectivity and a scientific approach to literature.
- Aestheticism: avoiding the problem of the time, proposed a doctrine of “art
for art’s sake”.
- Decadentism: stated that art is superior to nature and that the true beauty is
that of dying and decaying things.
Conventionally, Victorian literature is divided into 2 period:
Early Victorian period
Late Victorian Period
Writers identify themselves with
Their age, but they are critical
Towards it (DICKENS)
sense of dissatisfaction and
rebellion prevail and writer are
strongly critic of their society
(HARDY, WILDE)
7
POETRY
Victorian poetry staretd as a revival of Romanticism, but it soon reflected the sense
of uneasiness that marked all the period. The early poets were cosncious that they
were living in a great age, and in particular the 2 major poets, Browning and
Tennyson, felt taht they were bound to be the spokemen of their age and that they
had a responsibility towards their public. A new sense of religoin was felt, but now
the poet searched for God no longer in Nature (like the Romantics) but within
himself.
The dissatisfaction witn Victorian materialsm also led some artists, both writers and
painters, to form in 1848 an association called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
which advocated a return of art to the simplicity of Medieval Italian painters.
Believing that art must have a message to convey, they often filled their paintings
with symbols. , at the same time, they tried to adhere to the simplicity of nature,
that is to represent reality in minute deail without idealizing it. In this way, they
reconciled realism, idealism and medievalism. The founfer and leader of this
movemnt was Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Pre-Raphaelites paved the way for Aestheticism. it originated in France with Gautier
in 1835, but soon it developed throughout Europe by the middle of the 19th century,
as a reaction against the utilitarian outlokk and the moral restrictions of bourgeois
society.
In England the Aesthetic movement began in the ‘70s. This was a period of not only
for new artistic and literary forms, but also for new experiences, sensations, ways of
life. In fact, adopting Gautier’s slogan”art for art’s sake”, the Aesthetic writers broke
with the conventions of the time, in fact they applied their new canons not only to
their works but also to thier lives, disorderly and unconventional, spent in the
pursuit of sensations.
In painting, the Aesthetic theories led to Impressionism.
Between 1880-1890, Aestheticism slowly degenerated into Decadentism. The
main traits of Aestheticism underwent a process of refinement until it fell into
the absurd, the distasteful, and the futile. Decadentists disdained the simple
values of life and the mediocrity so they cut themselves off the masses. They
avoided the contact with reality and looked for an escape not in Nature (like
the romantics), but within themselves, with the help of drugs, in the so-called
“paradis artificiels”, i.e. imaginary and exotic artificial worlds, where illusion
replaced reality. They studied the poems of Charles Boudelaire, whose “Le
fleurs du mal” had first revealed the beauty of evil and decay.
The most noted exponent of D. are Mallarmè. Verlaine, Huysmans,
D’Annunzio.
8
In England, the origins of the aesthetic movement cuold be traced back to
Keats and his cult of beauty. It found its theorist in Walter Pater who stated
taht art was to be autonomous and distinct from morality.
However we can say taht british Aestheticism and Decadentism found their
best representative in Oscar Wilde.
9