The victorian context
Part 2
SOCIETY and LETTERS
The Victorian Compromise
 The Victorian Frame of mind - Key Thinkers
 The rise of the Novel
The Victorian compromise: what was it?
• A general understanding by which a
violent revolution was prevented by
covering the bad aspects of progress
(and through reforms)
• The Victorians veiled the unpleasant
aspects of industrialization with a FAÇADE
of RESPECTABILITY
• Contradictions: Great progress and
prosperity of the middle classes VS. the
terrible living conditions of the working
classes and the poor.
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W. H. Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853-4,
London, Tate Britain.
The Victorian Compromise:
what was it ?
• The extreme, moralistic attitude of a
society which actually particularly cared
for APPEARANCE.
• Great moralism + great hypocrisy
• Vice was publicly condemned, but
actually tolerated if in small amounts
and concealed
The Victorian Compromise
• Houses of prostitution, gambling dens, and all
sorts of vice were tolerated in great cities
• Thus, the Victorian compromise operated to
maintain a facade of respectability in public
while sin occurred in the dark recesses of the
private sphere
• This Double standard was the essence of the
Victorian Compromise
The Victorian Compromise
• The Victorians were great moralisers
•
They had a strict code of values:
•
•
•
•
•
Hard work
Personal duty
Decorum & Respectability
Chastity (for women)
Patriotism
The Victorian compromise
• These values supported by the upper and
particularly by the middle classes
• But all strata of society had to conform to these
values
• Hard work & Personal duty
• Strong believers in hard work: they saw the material
progress they had reached as a result of this
• Personal duty valued more than inclination
• At school: discipline, diligence, good behaviour, time
keeping
The Victorian Age
The Victorian compromise
• The middle-class was
obsessed with respectability,
decorum.
• Respectability 
(morality+hypocrisy/keeping
up appearance) distinguished
the middle from the lower class
(conformity to standards)
•
= Having a nice house with servants,
a carriage, regular attendance to
church, charitable activities
John Lamb, Victorian family portrait, 1879.
The Victorian Age
9. The Victorian compromise
• ‘Victorian’, synonym for
’prudish’ , stood for extreme
repression; even furniture legs
had to be concealed under
heavy cloth not to be
“suggestive” of some sensual
idea.
•
•
‘prude’ =someone who is easily shocked or
embarassed by anything relating to sex (if
you say someone is a prude, you show
disapproval)
(prudery=excessive modesty estremo
pudore )
W. H. Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853-4,
London, Tate Britain.
The Victorian Age
9. The Victorian compromise
Decorum (appropriate, polite behaviour)
meant:
John Lamb, Victorian family portrait, 1879.
a. Victorian private lives were
dominated by an authoritarian
father.
b. Women were subject to male
authority; they were expected
to marry and make home a
“refuge” for their husbands, to
take care of the house and
children
9. The Victorian compromise
• Patriotism /Jingoism
• (Jingoism = the belief that a country is better than another, expressed in a
threatening way)
• British proudness tending to racial superiority ( they
were the ones destined to be the leaders)
• Hypocritical jingoistic attitude
• They almost had the right to colonize other
“uncivilized countries” to teach them their superior
way of life (actually they exploited them for
economic reasons)
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND –
Key Thinkers
• EVANGELICALISM
(inspired to methodism founded by Wesley)
•
•
•
•
•
• shaped the Victorian mentality.
Enthusiastic commitment in society within
the Church of England
Humanitarian causes & social reform
Strict code of morality (against entertainment)
Attendance to church
Bible reading
The Victorian Age
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND
Key Thinkers
John Stuart Mill and his ideas
based on Bentham’s
Utilitarianism….
John Stuart Mill
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• UTILITARIANISM
• Philosophical doctrine founded by Jeremy Bentham
(18th cent)
• Based on the Epicurean principle that man looks for
pleasure and tries to avoid sufferance.
• Any action (even the government’s) must be judged
in terms of the pleasure [= material benefit]
provided to the greatest number of people possible
(materialistic view)
• Basic principle: The greatest happiness of the
greatest number of people (happiness=material
happiness)
• Any problem could be resolved through reason
(statistics, overviews). It suited the middle classes
John Stuart Mill and other intellectuals of
the time (Dickens, Ruskin)
• Attacked the Utilitarian indifference to human values
(culture) showed by this doctrine.
• MILL, educated according to its principles , revised
them: happiness not = material happiness, but
spiritual happiness (not just a job and a home)
• Legislation should help men develop their
personalities
• Importance of education and art.
• Promoter of reforms: education act, trade unions,
emancipation of women.
The Victorian Age
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND –
Key thinkers
Charles Darwin and the
theory of natural
selection
Charles Darwin
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Charles Darwin
• 1859 On the Origin of Man
• Different living creatures not created by God (as
according to the Bible) but the result of a slow
process of adaptation in a struggle of survival: the
strongest and fittest to the environment will survive,
the weakest will deserve to be defeated
• (The philosopher H. Spencer will adapt D.’s theories to society,
arguing that economic competition was the same: no
compassion for the poor and the oppressed)
• 1871 The Descent of Man
• Man like any other being was the result of of
evolution and derived from the ape
• SHOCKING IDEAS, contrasting what was expressed in the bible
The Victorian Age
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND
Key Thinkers
Karl Marx and his studies
about the harm caused by
industrialism in man’s life.
He did research in England,
studying its industry
Karl Marx
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The Victorian Age
The rise of the novel
• There was a communion of interests and opinions
between the writers and their readers.
• This was due to the growth of the middle classes and
literacy (even if at different levels)
• The Victorians were avid consumers of literature.
They borrowed books from circulating libraries and
read various periodicals.
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The Victorian Age
11. The rise of the novel
• Novels made their first appearance in instalments
on the pages of periodicals (direct relationship
reader-writer / reviewers) = the greatest form of
enterteinment
• A new kind of novel (scientific approach) : realistic,
dealing with social problems. Educating, opening
the people’s eyes on the evils of society and
entertaining at the same time.
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The features of the Victorian Novel?
• The voice of the omniscient narrator provided a
comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier
between «right» and «wrong», light and darkness.
• The setting chosen by most Victorian novelists was
the city, both the symbol of industrial civilization and
anonynmous lives .
• The plot was long and often complicated by sub-plots.
• Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of
characters and achieved a deeper analysis of their
inner life.
• In the final chapter there was retribution and
punishment - Everything (events, incidents) was
explained and justified.
LITERARY PHASES of the VICTORIAN NOVEL
• 1) Early Victorian Novels
The authors are critical towards their
age, but they still identify themselves
with it (Dickens, Thackeray)
• 2) Mid-Victorian Novels
Linked to the persistence of Romantic
and Gothic traditions and to a
psychological vein (the Bronte sisters,
Stevenson)
LITERARY PHASES of the VICTORIAN NOVEL
• 3) The Late Victorian Novel
• Nearer to the development of
“Naturalism”, an almost scientific look at
human behaviour, upon which the
narrator no longer had power to
comment.
• Authors like Thomas Hardy and Oscar
Wilde began to express a sense of
disatisfaction with the values of the age
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