The Victorian age.

The Victorian age took its name from Queen Victoria whose reign was the longest in the
1832: Reform Bill
history of England (1837-1901) or (1832-1914)
1914: First world war

This is an ages of technical / economical progress with new sources and machinery and the
spread of industrialism and urbanization. The modern urban economy of manufacturing
industry and international trade took over from the old agricultural economy. Cities became
bigger and bigger but also more polluted. This progress (big advance and richness) is based
on exploitation: poor were considered a social problem, something like crime. Poor children,
forced to separate from their families, were sent to work in workhouses, in return for which
they get very little, they received barely enough food to survive. The poor were thus forced
into overcrowded slums whose appalling sanitation led to epidemics of cholera and other
diseases.
The first Reform Bill of 1832, extended the right of vote to the mercantilist middle classes,
excluded the working classes completely.

This exploitation led to social unrest:

 Chartism is a working class movement who demands more democracy, in particular
his demand contains six points:
1. Votes for all males
2. Annually elected parliaments
3. Payment of members of Parliament so that also working-class men could
became MPs
4. Secret voting
5. Abolition of the propriety qualification for candidates seeking election
6. The establishment of electoral districts equal in population
This movement was drawn up three times: it was poorly organised and split up by
internal differences, after the third rejection in 1848 (the year that Marx an Engels
wrote their Communist Manifesto) the movement died, and chartist were arrested. It
wasn’t successful because this idea was too advance for the country, it was too early.
A series of reform in the second half of the century extended the vote to members of
the working classes and in 1918 the right of vote was granted for all men. Women had
to wait until 1928 before they too were able to vote.

 Luddites (1881): they show machineries as the cause of their poverty and problems, so
they destroyed them.

In this age the cost of living was kept artificially high by the Corn Laws which
maintained the price of corn in Britain at an unrealistic high level, by taxing imported
corn. People who wanted to keep the price of corn high were especially land owners.
 The Whig Anti-Corn law League fought against this measure and were supported by
the workers anxious for cheap food. They asked for the abolition of the corn-law, and
they have success.
The 19th century was also a time of great technological innovation. The Great Exhibition
(1851) held in Crystal Palace in London, a magnificent glass edifice, is a symbol for Britain’s
dominant position as an industrial and imperial trading power. It was meant to show the
world the Britain superiority.

This was also an age of reform, with 3 reform Bill:

 The Elementary Education Act of 1870 which gave all children the right to a basic
education.
 The Trade Union Act of 1871 which made unions legal
 The Universal Suffrage

“The Victorian age was full of contradictions”

Even though the Victorians may have been progressive in theory, they were often quite the
opposite in practice. The social contest was a double-sided picture: on one side we have the
spread of industrialism, urbanization, and moral values but on the other there’s still lots of
corruption, crime, and prostitution. Poor people was considered a social problem, and so poor
children, forced to separate from their families, were sent to work in workhouses, in return
for which they received barely enough food to survive. Women are expected to be “the angel
in the home”, but in this period there’s also crime and prostitution. Dickens and Hardy
represented these contradictions in their novels. In fact as well as celebrating the energy of
the city they are also critical of certain aspects of this age, such as the greed and the hypocrisy
of the rich and the indifference to the problems of poor.