Cultural History of Britain
Lecture 10
Queen
Victoria
(1837-1901)
Timeline
 Queen Victoria 1837-1901
 1832 : Reform Bill – the beginning of he historical period
 1838- : Chartist Movement
 1845-48: Great Famine (Ireland, emmigration)
 1851: Great Exhibition (London)
 1854-56: Crimean War (Florence Nightingale)
 1876: Queen Victoria crowned as the Empress of India
(Jewel in the Crown) – cf. Paul Scott, Raj Quartet
 1870s-: Irish Home Rule Movement (aim: autonomy –
separate parliament)
Social Background
• the fight of the middle classes for economic, political and cultural power
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(Habib, History 469)
middle-class values: strict morality, diligence, economy, stability,
Christianity, conservatism
middle classes→reading audience (Habib, History 469) (railway –
yellowbacks, journals – instalments, Victorian three/triple-decker)
revolutions, nationalism (Habib, History 469)
Imperialism (Habib, History 469) (“white man’s burden”, orientalism, the
exotic colonial subject as Europe’s other) – one fourth of the earth’s land
area
Industrial Revolution (Habib, History 469) – “workshop of the world”
Railway as a means of mass transport (seaside resorts)
urbanisation and pauperisation (Habib, History 469)
development of communication and transportation (Habib, History 469)
rise of the working classes (e.g. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South;
Charles Dickens, Hard Times) (Habib, History 469)
Intellectual Background: Sciences and Philosophy
• Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859) (Bantock, “Intellectual
Background” 13-56)
• scientific, mechanical worldview (McFarlane, “Mind of Modernism”
75)
• positivism (Bantock, “Intellectual Background” 13-56) – Auguste
Comte, Émile Durkheim, Herbert Spencer (Habib, History 470)
 reaction against Hegel (Habib, History 470)
 rejection of metaphysical inquiry (Habib, History 470)
 nature, experience, observation and empirical verifiability (Habib,
History 470)
 conservative (Habib, History 470)
 sociology, psychology (Freud), social thought (Habib, History 471)
 literary expression: realism and naturalism (Habib, History 471)
Disintegration of a Unified World-View
• relativity in philosophy and morality (Nietzsche)
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(McFarlane, ”Mind of Modernism” 79)
reaction against a mechanical, materialistic society
(McFarlane, “Mind of Modernism” 79)
utilitarianism, positivism, social Darwinism (Habib,
History 469)
private morality, breakdown of the paternal authoritarian
pattern – Nietzsche’s popularity after 1890 (McFarlane,
“Mind of Modernism” 79)
Marxism (McFarlane, “Mind of Modernism” 79)
decadence at the turn of the century (Habib, History 489)
Education
 Elementary and secondary schools
 Elementary education for the working classes
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Factory Act (1833)
Foster Act (1870)
Mundella Act (1880)
 Public schools
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Except for Winchester, Eton, Bedford, Rugby and Harrow the majority of
public schools established in the 19th century
Education and personality development with equal weight (sports, corporeal
punishment)
“factories of gentlemen” – provides administrators for the colonies, the
British Empire
 Higher education
 Until 1831 only two universities in England
 From the 1850s: mushrooming of redbrick universities
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Manchester (1851)
Newcastle (1852)
Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Belfast, Bristol (turn of the century)
 Private tutors and governesses (the governess novel)
Women in Victorian Society
 Stereotypes (Virgin Mary vs. femme fatale) – cf. “the
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Angel in the House”, Coventry Patmore and Virginia
Woolf
Sexual double standard
Prostitution
Prudery
Hypocrisy
Victorian educated middle-class gentlemen – double life
(cf. Robert Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
Architecture and Fine Arts in General
 Architecture
 No distinctive new style characteristic for
the 19th century
 Rivalry of Neo-Classicism and NeoGothic
 Fine arts
 Quality sculpture disappeared (kitsch)
 Conversation pieces (animals) in painting
(kitsch)
 Caricature as a new and innovative genre

Punch (1841-1992, 1996-2002)
Painting
a) Academism (e.g. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 18361912)
The Finding of
Moses (1904)
b) The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848)
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)
Ecce Ancilla
Domini (1850)
Proserpine
(1874)
Ford Madox Brown (1821-93)
The Last of England 1859
William Holman
Hunt (1827-1910)
The Light of the World
(1853-4)
William Holman Hunt
Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1868)
The Lady of Shalott (1890-1905)
John Everett Millais (1829-96)
Ophelia (1851-2)
Edward BurneJones (1833-98)
The Golden Stairs (1880)
Arts and Crafts: William Morris (1834-96)
Red House, Morris’s home (1862-5)
designed by him
Arts and Crafts stainedglass window
The “Modern” Pre-Raphaelite:
John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)
The Lady of Shalott (1888)
Theoretising Pre-Raphaelite Art: John Ruskin
John Ruskin (1819-1900) – Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
 reassessment of Romanticism – rejection of metaphor; also
rejection of realism
 Modern Painters – “pathetic fallacy”; truthfulness in the
representation of nature
 →roots of later naturalism
 architecture: Gothic revival (Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau)
Aestheticism and
Art Nouveau
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1908-9)
Vrubel, Demon Seated (1890)
Glasgow, Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868-1928)
Orientalism:
Anglo-Japanese
Art (Japonism)
Aubrey Beardsley
(1872-98)
The Peacock Skirt (1893)
Literature
Genres
•the age of the novel:
William Makepeace
Thackeray (1811-63)
Charlotte Brontë (1816-55)
Emily Brontë (1818-48)
Anne Brontë (1820-49)
Charles Dickens (1812-70)
George Eliot (1819-80)
George Meredith (18281900)
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
a)
Victorian poetry –
ivory tower,
escapism
Elizabeth Browning
(1806-61)
Robert Browning (181289)
Lord Alfred Tennyson
(1809-92)
Matthew Arnold
Gerald Manley Hopkins
(1844-89)
The Emergence of the Woman Writer vs. the
„Madwoman in the Attic”
 With the exception of Jane Austen no significant female
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writer prior to the Victorian Era
Male pseudonames
Angel and monster - „Madwoman in the attic” (Gilbert
and Gubar)
Anxiety of authorship
The Romantic concept of nature (Margaret Homans)
b) Styles
• Romanticism
• Realism: truthful, accurate and objective representation of the real world
(Habib, History 471) with various devices (Habib, History 471):
 descriptive and evocative details
 avoiding the fantastical, the imaginary and the mythological
 principles of probability
 characters (types) from all social layers
 privileging the present and contemporary issues over the nostalgic
representation of the past
 emphasising the social over the individual
 colloquial and everyday registers of the language
 directness and simplicity of expression
• Naturalism: extreme form of realism, Émile Zola (Habib, History 471-2)
 extremely detailed methods of description
 deterministic
 characters: hereditary psychological components
 scientific experimentation with characters
 refusal of metaphysical or spiritual perspectives
b) Styles
 Symbolism: against realism and naturalism, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) (Habib, History
489)
 mental states and ideal worlds, subjectivity
 antagonism toward urban life and modern industry
 anti-bourgeois disposition
 forerunners: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Edgar Allen Poe, “art for art’s sake” – parnassism
 Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine , Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé
 language creates reality, material reality of language, poetic form (Habib, History 490)
 Platonic philosophy – dualistic, idealistic (Habib, History 490)
 refusal of the material world as the real world (Habib, History 491)
 suggestive, symbolic, allusive language, rejection of discursive language (Habib, History 490)
 music as the closest analogy to literature
 Arthus Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899)
 fragmentation and plurality ↔ search for a lost unity (totality) in art (Habib, History 491)
 literature as religion –totalising tendencies (Habib, History 491)
 Aestheticism: art exists only for its own sake, or for the sake of beauty (Habib, History 491)
 opposed to the bourgeois world (Habib, History 491)
 roots: Kant, the Romantics, Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolism, decadence, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche
 representatives: Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde
Theoretising Culture:
Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1869)
 redefinition of culture
“[culture is] a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the
scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for
doing good” (quoted at Habib, History 524)
 aims of culture are those of religion (Habib, History 524)
 questions the bourgeois concept of reality (outwardness↔inwardness) (Habib,
History 524-5)
 examines the condition of England – present: anarchy
 central question: who shall inherit England?
 three groups: the Barbarians (aristocracy)
 the Philistines (middle classes)
 the Populace (working classes)
 crucial role of literature: moral development and spiritual renewal through reading
literature (Leitch, Norton Anthology 804)
 personality and moral qualities of the critic – against political enthusiasm and
fanaticism, balanced, reflective, liberal individuals; perfection (Leitch, Norton
Anthology 804)
 not much textual analysis (Leitch, Norton Anthology 804-5)
 careful, deliberate reformer (Leitch, Norton Anthology 805)
Theoretising Aestheticism:
Walter Pater (1839-94) and his
Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)
 collection of essays on writers and Italian painters
 influence: Oscar Wilde
 loose definition of Renaissance: “an outbreak of the human spirit” from the
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“limits which the religious system of the middle ages imposed on the heart
and the imagination” (Leitch, Norton Anthology 834)
makes a religion of art → modern aestheticist rapture and impressionist
criticism (Leitch, Norton Anthology 834)
pleasure and self-gratification
autonomy of art (Habib, History 499)
mixed reception, severe criticism (Leitch, Norton Anthology 834)
concerned with death, without solace in God (Leitch, Norton Anthology
834)
no concern with social or political change (Leitch, Norton Anthology 835)
Neo- or Post-Victorian Culture (1960s-)
 Complex cultural phenomenon sharing the features of
postmodernism
 Nostalgia
 Deconstructive tendencies
 Intertextuality (adaptations – rewrites, film adaptations, theme parks,
games)
 Its definition of “Victorian” is broader than the historical Victorian
period
 Includes Jane Austen and the Modernist, eminently Virginia Woolf
 Literature
 First major work: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
 Rewrites (prequel, paralelquel, sequel)
 Fictitious biographies
 Highbrow, middle-brow, low-brow (pulp)
 Film – special focus in heritage film
 Subculture: steampunk
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York, London: W.
W. Norton, 2001: 806-25.
---. Culture and Anarchy. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent
B. Leitch. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2001: 825-32.
Bantock, G. H. “The Social and Intellectual Background.” The Pelican Guide to
English Literature. Vol. 7. From James to Eliot. Ed. Boris Ford. London: Penguin
Books, 1983, 13-60.
Blamires, Harry. A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1991.
Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory from Plato to the Present.
London: Blackwell, 2008.
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York,
London: W. W. Norton, 2001.
McFarlane, James. “The Mind of Modernism.” Modernism – A Guide to European
Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London:
Penguin Books, 1991: 71-94.