Colegiul Național Vlaicu Vodă

Lucrare de atestat la limba engleza

The Victorian Era

Realizat de: Olescu Maria Lorena

Profesor Coordonator: prof. Ileana Popescu

 The Victorian period formally begins in 1837 (the year Victoria became Queen) and ends
in 1901 (the year of her death).
In ideology, politics, and society, the Victorians created astonishing innovation and change:
democracy, feminism, unionization of workers, socialism, Marxism, and other modern
movements took form. In fact, this age of Darwin, Marx, and Freud appears to be not only the
first that experienced modern problems but also the first that attempted modern solutions.
Victorian, in other words, can be taken to mean parent of the modern -- and like most
powerful parents, it provoked a powerful reaction against itself.
More than anything else what makes Victorians Victorian is their sense of social
responsibility. The poet Matthew Arnold refused to reprint his poem "Empedocles on Etna,"
in which the Greek philosopher throws himself into the volcano, because it set a bad example;
and he criticized an Anglican bishop who pointed out mathematical inconsistencies in the
Bible not on the grounds that he was wrong, but that for a bishop to point these things out to
the general public was irresponsible.
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first English monarch to see her name given to the
period of her reign while still living. She was known as the Queen of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland and she also had the additional title of Empress of India. Her reign
lasted 63 years and seven months. The British Empire was the largest empire ever, consisting
of over 25% of the world's population and area. It included India, Australia, Canada, New
Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, several islands in the West Indies
and various colonies on the African coast. In 1750 the population of Britain was 4 million. By
1851 it was 21 million. By 1900, Queen Victoria reigned over 410 million people.
On 10th June 1837, following the death of her uncle, William IV, she became queen at the
age of eighteen. She fell instantly in love with her German cousin, Prince Albert and they
were married on 10 February 1840. Between 1841 and 1857 Queen Victoria had nine children
- four sons, five daughters. Prince Albert was very interested in art, science and
manufacturing and took a keen interest in the building of the Crystal Palace. He died suddenly
of typhoid (bacterial infection) in 1861. His widow was overcome with grief and wrote in her
diary, "My life as a happy person is ended!" She wore black for the rest of her life. For a long
time she refused to appear in public.
Queen Victoria died aged 80 on 22 January 1901 and a new age - the Edwardian - began.
Anglicanism describes the Christian denominations that follow the religious traditions
developed by the established Church of England. Victorian England was a deeply religious
country. A great number of people were habitual church-goers, at least once and probably
twice, every Sunday. The Bible was frequently and widely read by people of every class. Yet
towards the end of Queen Victoria's reign, the hold of organized religion upon the English
people began to slacken for several reasons.
The social class was divided in the working class, characterised by men and women who
performed physical labor, paid daily or weekly, the middle class including men performing
mental or "clean" work, paid monthly or annually, such as doctors, lawyers, clerks, and the
upper class, also known as the elite.
At the start of the Victorian era, the elite was in total control of society and its politics. The
elite was made up of about 300 families which were firmly established as the traditional
ruling class. However, new values, such as individualism, were developing throughout the
Victorian era. For example, the idea of the self-made man became a dominant aspiration in
the middle class. Similar to the American Dream, the idea is that, if they work hard enough,
all men can become wealthy.
Science was seen for the first time as a profession in its own right. The Victorians invented
the modern idea of invention, described as the notion that one can create solutions to
problems, that man can create new means of improving himself and his environment.
Charles Darwin is best known as the father of evolutionary biology and the theory of
evolution by natural selection. His evolutionary theory shocked Victorians with the idea that
humans are basically animals.
Paleontology, or the study of fossils, was still a young science at the start of Victorian times,
and the idea that fossils were the remains of species extinct for millions of years was only
gradually taking hold. The term "dinosaur," meaning "terrible lizard," was coined in 1842 by
the British paleontologist Richard Owen, who went on to produce the first life-size
reconstructions of dinosaurs based on the evidence of their skeletons. 
James Clerk Maxwell produced a set of equations that consolidated everything that was
known at the time about electricity and magnetism. He went on to discover a theoretical
solution of the equations that took the form of a wave traveling at the speed of light. This
suggested that light itself was an electromagnetic wave, and that other such waves might be
created using electromagnetic equipment. This was confirmed experimentally when the
German Heinrich Hertz produced the first artificial radio waves in 1887.
The planet Neptune was the first astronomical body to be predicted by theoretical calculations
before it was seen through a telescope.
Furthermore by the end of the century a radical economic theory was developed by Karl Marx
and his associates.
Medicine progressed during Queen Victoria's reign. Although nitrous oxide, or laughing
gas, had been proposed as an anaesthetic as far back as 1799 by Humphry Davy, it wasn't
until 1846 when an American dentist, started using ether on his patients that anaesthetics
became common in the medical profession. In 1847 chloroform was introduced as an
anaesthetic by James Young Simpson. Chloroform was favoured by doctors and hospital staff
because it is much less flammable than ether, but critics complained that it could cause the
patient to have a heart attack. Chloroform gained in popularity in England and Germany
after doctor John Snow gave Queen Victoria chloroform for the birth of her eighth child
(Prince Leopold). By 1920, chloroform was used in 80 to 95% of all narcoses performed in
the UK and German-speaking countries.
Anaesthetics made painless dentistry possible. At the same time sugar consumption in the
British diet increased, greatly increasing instances of tooth decay . As a result, more and more
people were having teeth extracted and needing dentures. This gave rise to "Waterloo Teeth",
which were real human teeth set into hand-carved pieces
of ivory from hippopotamus or walrus jaws. The teeth were obtained from executed
criminals, victims of battlefields, from grave-robbers, and were even bought directly from the
desperately impoverished.
Medicine also benefited from the introduction of antiseptics by Joseph Lister in 1867 in the
form of carbolic acid (phenol). He instructed the hospital staff to wear gloves and wash their
hands, instruments, and dressings with a phenol solution and, in 1869, he invented a machine
that would spray carbolic acid in the operating theatre during surgery.
 Modern Psychiatry began with Sigmund Freud (father of psychoanalysis, a clinical method
for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst).
Common diseases in the Victorian era were Cholera - caused by human waste in the
drinking water, Consumption - a tuberculosis of the lungs and Typhus - spread by body lice
and dirty conditions.
Education in nineteenth-century England was not equal,not between the sexes, and not
between the classes. Gentlemen would be educated at home by a governess or tutor until they
were old enough to attend Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, or a
small handful of lesser schools. The curriculum was heavily weighted towards the classics -
the languages and literature of Ancient Greece and Rome. After that, they would attend
Oxford or Cambridge. Here they might also study mathematics, law, philosophy, and modern
history. Oxford tended to produce more Members of Parliament and government officials,
while Cambridge leaned more towards the sciences and produced more acclaimed scholars.
However, it was not compulsory, either legally or socially, for a gentleman to attend school at
all. He could, just as easily, be taught entirely at home. However, public school and
University were the great staging grounds for public life, where you made your friends and
developed the connections that would aid you later in life. Beau Brummel met the Prince of
Wales at Eton and that friendship helped him conquer all of London Society despite his lack
of family background. 
A lady's education was taken, almost entirely, at home. There were boarding schools, but no
University, and the studies were very different. She learned French, drawing, dancing, music,
and the use of globes. If the school, or the governess, was interested in teaching any practical
skills, she learned plain sewing as well as embroidery, and accounts.
Sports such as Cricket, cycling, croquet, horse-riding, and water activities are examples of
some of the popular sports in the Victorian Era. The modern game of tennis originated
in Birmingham, England, between 1859 and 1865. The world's oldest tennis tournament,
the Wimbledon championships, were first played in London in 1877.

Etiquette is described by the Oxford dictionary as the customary code of polite behaviour
in society or among members of a particular profession or group.
People without manners or bad manners were looked down upon. No one wanted to socialize
with them.
Before finishing schools were implemented, the task of ensuring the education and training of
their young daughters to become accomplished ladies often fell on the mother's shoulders.
They were important because that was a civil way to obtain husbands (by charming them with
good manners) and to become good future wives. That was the complete future of their
daughters - to gain a husband to take care of them for the rest of their lives. If a daughter
remains unmarried, it would be the burden of her household to look after her forever.

In consequence, Victorian Etiquette and Manners became one of the pre-occupation of

females during victorian times.

It has always been ladies first. Men are trained in victorian etiquette to perform chivalry acts
such as offering the lady a hand to go up her carriage. Ladies are never seen opening their
own doors in the presence of a man, or carrying anything heavy.
It was rude to boast, brag or be pretentious. It was considered vulgar. One should always
remain humble.
Grooming was of high importance. No one came down to their breakfast in pajamas. A lady's
hair was always tied up in a chignon, in a bonnet unless she is still very young.
The ladies always dressed modesty, in good taste and in very feminine colors with beads,
laces and ribbons. They were taught to have poise, to gesture gently and elegantly. To never
be in a hurry or seem flustered. Good posture and gracefulness were seen as part of a woman's
beauty.
With less options of entertainment in Victorian days compared to modern day, the art of
conversation was highly regarded. That was because of their way of entertaining and leisure.
Their social calendar would include afternoon teas , balls and dances, traveling to visit friends
and family, going on walks, sports, watching someone paint or draw, hearing someone read or
playing the piano.
Fathers watched behavior, looking for suitable mates for their marriageable daughters. And
girls particularly took notice of social standards when entertaining a gentleman’s intentions.
The concept of the gentleman was not merely a social or class designation. There was also a
moral component inherent in the concept which made it a difficult and an ambiguous thing for
the Victorians themselves to attempt to define.
Members of the British aristocracy were gentlemen by right of birth (although it was also
emphasized, paradoxically enough, that birth alone could not make a man a gentleman), while
the new industrial and mercantile elites, in the face of opposition from the aristocracy,
inevitably attempted to have themselves designated as gentlemen as a natural consequence of
their growing wealth and influence. Other Victorians, belonging to the Church of England,
army officers, members of Parliament were recognized as gentlemen by virtue of
their occupations, while members of numerous other eminently respectable professions —
engineers, for example, were not.
Victorian fashion comprises the various fashions and trends in British Culture that
emerged and developed in the United Kingdom and the British Empire throughout
the Victorian Era, roughly 1830s to 1900s (decade). The period saw many changes in fashion,
including changes in clothing, architecture, literature, and the decorative and visual arts.
By 1905, clothing was increasingly factory-made and often sold in large, fixed price
department stores. Custom sewing and home sewing were still significant, but on the decline.
New machinery and materials developed clothing in many ways.
The introduction of the lock-stitch sewing machine in mid-century simplified both home and
boutique dressmaking, and enabled a fashion for lavish application of trim that would have
been prohibitively time-consuming if done by hand. Lace machinery made lace at a fraction
of the cost of the old. New cheap, bright dyes were developed that displaced the old animal or
vegetable dyes.
In the 1840s and 1850s, women's gowns had wide puffed sleeves. Dresses were simple and
pale, and incorporated realistic flower trimming. Petticoats, corsets, and chemises were worn
under gowns. By the 1850s, the number of petticoats was reduced to be superseded by the
crinoline, and the size of skirts was expanded. Day dresses had a solid bodice and evening
gowns had a very low neckline and were worn off the shoulder with shawls.
In the 1860s, the skirts became flatter at the front and projected out more behind the woman.
Day dresses had wide pagoda sleeves and high necklines with lace or tatted collars. Evening
dresses had low necklines and short sleeves, and were worn with short gloves, fingerless lace
or crocheted mitts.
In the 1870s, uncorseted tea gowns were introduced for informal entertaining at home and
steadily grew in popularity. Bustles were used to replace the crinoline to hold the skirts up
behind the woman, even for "seaside dresses". The fad of hoop skirts had faded and women
strived for a slimmer style. The dresses were extremely tight around the corseted torso and the
waist and upper legs; Punch ran many cartoons showing women who could neither sit nor
climb stairs in their tight dresses. Small hats were perched towards the front of the head, over
the forehead. To complement the small hat, women wore their hair in elaborate curls. Some
women wore hairpieces called "scalpettes" and "frizzettes" to add to the volume of their hair.
In the 1880s, riding habits had a matching jacket and skirt (without a bustle), a high-collared
shirt or chemisette, and a top hat with a veil. Hunting costumes had draped ankle-length skirts
worn with boots or gaiters. Clothing worn when out walking had a long jacket and skirt, worn
with the bustle, and a small hat or bonnet. Travelers wore long coats like dusters.
In the 1890s, Women's wear in the last decade of the Victorian era was characterised by high
collars, held in place by collar stays, and stiff steel boning in long line bodices. By this time,
there were neither crinolines nor bustles. Women opted for the tiny wasp waist instead.
Women's hats during the Victorian era are stereotypically thought of as the enormous, feather-
and flower-laden creations that were fashionable in the late-Victorian period. They evolved
through many trends over the decades before reaching the later style.
The exaggerated structure of certain Victorian dress elements was part of an effort by
designers to emphasise the popular silhouette of the moment. Millinery was incorporated into
this design strategy. During the early Victorian decades, voluminous skirts held up with
crinolines, and then hoop skirts, were the focal point of the silhouette. To enhance the style
without distracting from it, hats were modest in size and design, straw and fabric bonnets
being the popular choice. Poke bonnets, which had been worn during the late Regency period,
had high, small crowns and brims that grew larger until the 1830s, when the face of a woman
wearing a poke bonnet could only be seen directly from the front. They had rounded brims,
echoing the rounded form of the bell-shaped hoop skirts.
The silhouette changed once again as the Victorian era drew to a close. The shape was
essentially an inverted triangle, with a wide-brimmed hat on top, a full upper body with
puffed sleeves, no bustle, and a skirt that narrowed at the ankles (the hobble skirt was a fad
shortly after the end of the Victorian era). The enormous wide-brimmed hats were covered
with elaborate creations of silk flowers, ribbons, and above all, exotic plumes; hats sometimes
included entire exotic birds that had been stuffed. Many of these plumes came from birds in
the Florida everglades, which were nearly entirely decimated by overhunting. By 1899, early
environmentalists like Adeline Knapp were engaged in efforts to curtail the hunting for
plumes. By 1900, more than five million birds a year were being slaughtered, and nearly 95
percent of Florida's shore birds had been killed by plume hunters.
During the 1840s, men wore tight-fitting, calf length frock coats and a waistcoat or vest. The
vests were single- or double-breasted, with shawl or notched collars, and might be finished in
double points at the lowered waist. For more formal occasions, a cutaway morning coat was
worn with light trousers during the daytime, and a dark tail coat and trousers was worn in the
evening. The shirts were made of linen or cotton with low collars, occasionally turned down,
and were worn with wide cravats or neck ties. Trousers had fly fronts, and breecheswere used
for formal functions and when horseback riding. Men wore top hats, with wide brims in sunny
weather.
During the 1850s, men started wearing shirts with high upstanding or
turnover collars and four-in-hand neckties tied in a bow, or tied in a knot with the pointed
ends sticking out like "wings". The upper-class continued to wear top hats, and bowler
hats were worn by the working class.
In the 1860s, men started wearing wider neckties that were tied in a bow or looped into a
loose knot and fastened with a stickpin. Frock coats were shortened to knee-length and were
worn for business, while the mid-thigh length sack coat slowly displaced the frock coat for
less-formal occasions. Top hats briefly became the very tall "stovepipe" shape, but a variety
of other hat shapes were popular.
During the 1870s, three-piece suits grew in popularity along with patterned fabrics for shirts.
Neckties were the four-in-hand and, later, the Ascot ties. A narrow ribbon tie was an
alternative for tropical climates, especially in the Americas. Both frock coats and sack coats
became shorter. Flat straw boaters were worn when boating.
During the 1880s, formal evening dress remained a dark tail coat and trousers with a dark
waistcoat, a white bow tie, and a shirt with a winged collar. In mid-decade, the dinner jacket
or tuxedo, was used in more relaxed formal occasions. The Norfolk jacket and tweed or
woolen breeches were used for rugged outdoor pursuits such as shooting. Knee-length
topcoats, often with contrasting velvet or fur collars, and calf-length overcoats were worn in
winter. Men's shoes had higher heels and a narrow toe.
Starting from the 1890s, the blazer was introduced, and was worn for sports, sailing, and other
casual activities.
Throughout much of the Victorian era most men wore fairly short hair. This was often
accompanied by various forms of facial hair including moustaches, side-burns, and full
beards. A clean-shaven face did not come back into fashion until the end of the 1880s and
early 1890s.

Black is the colour traditionally associated with mourning for the dead. The customs and
etiquette expected of men, and especially women, were rigid during much of the Victorian
era. The expectations depended on a complex hierarchy of close or distant relationship with
the deceased. The closer the relationship, the longer the mourning period and the wearing of
black. The wearing of full black was known as First Mourning, which had its own expected
attire, including fabrics, and an expected duration of 4 to 18 months. Following the initial
period of First Mourning, the mourner would progress to Second Mourning, a transition
period of wearing less black, which was followed by Ordinary Mourning, and then Half-
mourning. Some of these stages of mourning were shortened or skipped completely if the
mourner's relationship to the deceased was more distant. Half-mourning was a transition
period when black was replaced by acceptable colours such as lavender and mauve, possibly
considered acceptable transition colours because of the tradition of Church of England (and
Catholic) clergy wearing lavender or mauve stoles for funeral services, to represent
the Passion of Christ.
Child labour, often brought about by economic hardship, played an important role in the
Industrial Revolution from its outset: Charles Dickens, for example, worked at the age of 12
in a blacking factory, with his family in a debtors' prison. In 1840 only about 20 percent of the
children in London had any schooling. By 1860 about half of the children between 5 and 15
were in school (including Sunday school).
The children of the poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long
hours in dangerous jobs for low wages. Agile boys were employed by the chimney sweeps;
small children were employed to scramble under machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins; and
children were also employed to work in coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and
low for adults. Children also worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or sold
matches, flowers, and other cheap goods. Some children undertook work as apprentices to
respectable trades, such as building, or as domestic servants (there were over 120,000
domestic servants in London in the mid 19th century). Working hours were long: builders
might work 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants worked 80
hour weeks. Many young people worked as prostitutes (the majority of prostitutes in London
were between 15 and 22 years of age).
Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organisations, clergymen, and single women became
increasingly concerned about prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social
Evil". Estimates of the number of prostitutes in London in the 1850s vary widely (in his
landmark study, Prostitution, William Acton reported that the police estimated there were
8,600 in London alone in 1857). When the United Kingdom Census 1851 publicly revealed a
4% demographic imbalance in favour of women (4% more women than men), the problem of
prostitution began to shift from a moral/religious cause to a socio-economic one. The 1851
census showed that the population of Great Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that
roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply because there were not enough men.
These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or "redundant women", and
many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with them.
While the Magdalene Asylums had been "reforming" prostitutes since the mid-18th century,
the years between 1848 and 1870 saw a veritable explosion in the number of institutions
working to "reclaim" these "fallen women" from the streets and retrain them for entry into
respectable society — usually for work as domestic servants. The theme of prostitution and
the "fallen woman" (any woman who has had sexual intercourse out of marriage) became a
staple feature of mid-Victorian literature and politics. In the writings of Henry
Mayhew, Charles Booth, Charles Dickens and others, prostitution began to be seen as asocial
problem.
The novel that was the most important in the Victorian period.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign: his first
novel, Pickwick Papers, was published in 1836, and his last Our Mutual Friend between
1864–5. William Thackeray's (1811–1863) most famous work Vanity Fair appeared in 1848,
and the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49), also
published significant works in the 1840s. A major later novel was George Eliot's (1819–
80) Middlemarch (1872), while the major novelist of the later part of Queen Victoria's reign
was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), whose first novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, appeared in
1872 and his last, Jude the Obscure, in 1895.
Robert Browning (1812–89) and Alfred Tennyson (1809–92) were Victorian England's
most famous poets, though more recent taste has tended to prefer the poetry of Thomas
Hardy, who, though he wrote poetry throughout his life, did not publish a collection until
1898, as well as that of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), whose poetry was published
posthumously in 1918. Algernon Charles Swinburne(1837–1909) is also considered an
important literary figure of the period, especially his poems and critical writings. Early poetry
of W. B. Yeats was also published in Victoria's reign.
With regard to the theatre it was not until the last decades of the nineteenth century that any
significant works were produced. This began with Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, from
the 1870s, various plays of George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) in the 1890s, and Oscar
Wilde's (1854–1900) The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895.

The old Gothic tales that came out of the late 19th century are the first examples of the
genre of fantastic fiction. These tales often centred on larger-than-life characters such as
Sherlock Holmes, famous detective of the times, Sexton Blake, Phileas Fogg, and other
fictional characters of the era, such as Dracula, Edward Hyde, The Invisible Man, and many
other fictional characters who often had exotic enemies to foil. Spanning the 18th and 19th
centuries, there was a particular type of story-writing known as gothic. Gothic literature
combines romance and horror in attempt to thrill and terrify the reader. Possible features in a
gothic novel are foreign monsters, ghosts, curses, hidden rooms and witchcraft. Gothic tales
usually take place in locations such as castles, monasteries, and cemeteries, although the
gothic monsters sometimes cross over into the real world, making appearances in cities such
as London.
In the Victorian era, Gothic fiction had ceased to be a dominant literary genre. However,
the Gothic tropes used earlier in the eighteenth century in texts such as Ann
Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho were transported and interwoven into many late-
nineteenth century narratives. These tropes included psychological and physical terror;
mystery and the supernatural; madness, doubling, and heredity curses.
The gloomy atmosphere and persistent melodrama present in Dickens' Bleak
House and Oliver Twist, exemplifies the transference of Gothic components into an
urban, modern setting. The Victorian Gothic moves away from the familiar themes of
Gothic fiction - ruined castles, helpless heroines, and evil villains - to situate the tropes
of the supernatural and the uncanny within a recognisable environment. This brings a
sense of verisimilitude to the narrative, and thereby renders the Gothic features of the
text all the more disturbing.