Colegio Villa Maria La Planicie
Fifth Secondary: European Literature
Study Sheet for Victorian Times and Literature
Name: ……………………………………..
Class and Section: ……..
Teacher: Luz Maria Alvarez-Calderon
Eng. Dept. Coord: Catherine Sotil
The Victorian Period
1.
How long and when did Queen Victoria reign?
Sixty-four years: from 1837 to 1901.
2.
Who did she love and marry?
3.
What revolutionary historical process took place during her reign?
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
The Industrial Revolution.
4.
What characterized the period of her reign?

England was a politically and economically powerful nation.

Nationalism was in vogue.

There was material progress, money and communication.

Advances took place in science and industry.

There were social and economic problems too, because of the exploitation of the poor and working classes.

People tried to imitate the life of Queen Victoria, who rejected excess, and the court life. They became very
sober, strict, closed-minded and puritan. They tried to appear respectable. Many people consider it to be a time
of appearances and hypocrisy.
5.
What characterized the Industrial Revolution?

Machines replaced man. People moved from the country to the city to find jobs.

Workers, including women and children, were exploited 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The salaries were poor and work conditions were infra-human. So factories were called “sweat shops”.

Slum areas, where the poor lived, appeared in the cities.

The industrial city appeared for the first time and city life became important.

The new rich formed the bourgeoisie, or middle class. They were flashy and lacked refinement.

The new bourgeois class struggled with the working class and the old aristocracy.
Victorian Literature
6. What characterized Victorian literature?
It was didactic.
Prose, for both essays and novels, became a very important form.
It was initially influenced by Romanticism.
Realism began in the Victorian period.
7. Mention three important Victorian essayists and explain which their views were regarding their
times?
Thomas B. Macaulay
Optimistically thought those were the best of times and favored the new bourgeoisie.
Myopically denied denying the existing problems of reality.
Thomas Carlyle
An aristocrat that supported aristocratic rule of government and business.
Opposed the new bourgeoisie.
John Henry Newman
Converted from the Anglican Church and became a Catholic priest and later, a cardinal.
Known as Henry, Cardinal Newman.
Believed society could improve with education and the practice of Christian values.
8. Mention ten important Victorian novelists and their works.
Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette
Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch
Amy Levy
The Romance of a Shop, Reuben Sachs, Miss Meredith
Lewis Carroll
Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Charles Dickens
David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A
Christmas Story, A Tale of Two Cities
Thomas Hardy
Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Ubervilles
Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book, Captain Courageous
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde
William M. Thackeray
Vanity Fair
9. What characterized Victorian Poetry?
The poet was a guiding prophet, but there was little communication with him.
Initially, some Romantic characteristics are present.
The second half of the Victorian period reflects the conflicts faced when dealing with Charles Darwin´s theory
of the evolution of species.
Victorian poetry also transmitted aspects of social crisis.
10. Mention some Victorian poets and their characteristics.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The most balanced of the Victorian poets.
Religious and believes in the after-life.
Tried to solve the problems of his age, the Victorian Period.
Robert Browning
The most optimistic of them even though he was aware of the problems.
Believed God protected man and believed in an afterlife.
Matthew Arnold
The most pessimistic voice, and was a disappointed, negative person.
According to him, the only way to survive in this world was by being self-dependent, to care only for yourself,
to be selfish. There was no sense in this cruel world and mankind was lost.
Elizabeth Barret Browning
Robert Browning’s wife.
Wrote private love poetry (“Sonnets from the Portuguese”), dedicated to her husband.
Was called “the hysterical voice of the Victorian Period” by conservative people.
Here are some links for research on Victorian novelists and novels: http://www.victorianweb.org/ ,
http://www.sparknotes.com/ , http://www.pinkmonkey.com/index2.asp , http://www.enotes.com/ ,
http://www.bookrags.com/ , http://www.studyguidezone.com/ , http://www.studygs.net/
SparkNotes Editors. (n.d.). SparkNote on A Christmas Carol. Retrieved September 19, 2014, from
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/christmascarol/