VICTORIAN AGE

the Dawn of the Victorian Age

>reign of Queen Victoria:1837 – 1901
>social reforms
- the First Reform Act (1832) had transferred voting privileges from the small boroughs to the
large industrial towns
- the Factory Act (1833) had prevented children aged 9 to 13 from being employed more than
48h/week
- the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) had created workhouses
>workhouses
their system of regimentation was due to an optimistic faith in progress and to the Puritan virtues
>technological progress:Second wave of industrialisation
-Great Exhibition (1851)
-Natural History Museum
-Science Museum
-Victoria and Albert Museum
-London Underground
fémin
the Irish Potato Famine:1845
-bad weather and an unknown plant disease
-emigration to America
-the Prime Minister,Sir Robert Peel,abolished the Corn Laws ( which imposed tariffs on imported
corn,keeping the price of bread high)

Foreign policy
>1st Opium War:1839 – 1842
-China vs Britain
-control of Hong Kong
>2nd Opium War:1856 – 1860
-China vs Britain,France
-access to five Chinese ports
>Crimean War:1853 - 1856
>Indian Mutiny:1857
-after the Indian administration was given fewer responsibilities

the Victorian Compromise

>contradictions
-progress/reforms and poverty
-faith in science and religion
-vices were indulged and strict morality
-Modernity and revival of Gothic and Classicism
>respectability (the quality of being socially acceptable)
-asserting a social status
-keeping up appearances
-looking after a family
-morality and hypocrisy since the unpleasant aspects of society were hidden under outward
respectability
-women were physically weaker but morally superior
-single women with a child were marginalised as ‘fallen women’
-sexuality was repressed
 Early Victorian thinkers
>Evangelicalism
-religious movement
-emphasis on moral conduct and strict code of morality
-literal truth of the Bible
-public and political action
-created charities
>Bentham’s Utilitarianism
-Jeremy Bentham
-morally right actions:maximise (the material) happiness
-any reason can be overcome through reason
>Charles Darwin’s theory
-’On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’
-struggle for survival when resources are limited
-individuals that adapt ( with favourable physical condition) survive
-man evolved like other animals

the Later Years of Queen Victoria’s reign

When Prince Albert died in 1861,Queen Victoria withdrew from society and spent the next ten years
in mourning.
>Liberal Party → Gladstone
-Whigs
-Radicals
-businessmen
>Conservative Party → Disraeli
-Tories

Disraeli Artisans’and Public Health Act Factory Act Easter Question

-1868 Labourers’Dwellings Act (1875) (1875) (1875) -attempt of the European
-1874 clearing of the slums sanitation limited the countries to gain power after
housing for the poor running water working hours per the decay of the Ottoman
week Empire.
-Disraeli encouraged the
pùrchase of more shares in
the Suez Canàl Company

Gladstone Education Act Trade Union Act Ballot Act Third Reform Act Home Rule Anglo-Boer Wars
-1868 (1870) (1871) (1871) (1884) -self-government (1880-1902)
-1880 board legalisation of secret extended voting to all for Ireland. -the British
-1886 schools,mainly Trade Unions ballot at male householders -Gladstone tried controlled Cape
-1892 in the poorer elections to pass a bill Colony and
areas three times but Natal,the Boers
failed Transvaal and the
Orange Free
State.
-the war broke out
after British took
over Transvaal in
1877
Britain’s global hegemony
-naval power
-financial and economic strength
-ability to control many areas of the world because of their political and cultural fragmentation
-through free market economics it destroyed traditional farming and caused the deindustrialisation
of India

Social Darwinism
-Herbert Spencer
-it applied Darwin’s theory to human society:races,nations and social classes were subject to the
principle of the ‘survival of the fittest’
-the poor did not deserve compassion

White man’s Burden

-duty to spread Christian civilisation
-obligation to provide leadership where States were failing or non-existent

Jingoism
-obligation imposed by God on the British to spread their superior way of life,institutions,law
and political system on native peoples
-racial superiority

Women
-leaders in campaigns against prostitution
-teachers
-volunteered in charities
-opening of women’s colleges
-taboos:control over property,divorce,rights over children,sex
-Married Women’s Property Act

Late Victorian Thinkers

>pessimism
>sense of doubt about the stability of Victorian society
>art critic John Ruskin and the artist William Morris
-nostalgia for the past
-inhumanity of industrialisation
-reaction to utilitarian mass-produced goods
-criticism of the greed

Fabian Society:1884
-socialist group
-reforms

the Independent Labour Party:1893

-non-Marxist socialist party
-it attracted both male and female intellectuals
 VICTORIAN NOVEL

>compulsory elementary education

+
Publishing Format:Serial form
>periodicals
-cheap
-the author could alter the story
-reviewers could shape the public opinion
-leave the reader on a cliffhanger
-gripping stories
=
>middle and working classes started reading more
>novels became a form of entertainment and dominant literary form

Victorian Novelists
>were aware of the evils of their society
>moral and social responsibility to reflect on social changes
>described society as they saw it
>didacticism:they used writing as a way of correcting vices and weaknesses of their age

Narrative Technique
>omniscient narrator
-provided a comment
-erected a rigid barrier between right and wrong
>characters’ inner lives
>in the final chapter incidents had to be explained and justified

Setting:city

Novel of manners economic and social problems Thackeray

Humanitarian novel combined humour with a sentimental request for reform for the Charles Dickens
poor
Novel of formation one character’s development from youth to maturity Dickens
Charlotte Brontё’s Jane Eyre
Literary nonsense nonsensical universe Lewis Carroll
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland
The spread of scientific knowledge made the novel realistic,the spread of democracy-
humanitarian,moral values-inquisitive and critical
 THE LATE VICTORIAN NOVEL
Realistic novel -growing crisis in the moral and religious fields
-Darwin’s theory influenced realistic novel’s
structure:it started to follow an evolutionist pattern
-coincidences solved the intrìcacies of the plot
-chance causes evolution
Thomas Hardy
-strong individuals:manifestations of the
strong forces of nature to whom he
opposed the strong social forces of history
and civilisation
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
-psychological and moral complexity of
human beings

Psychological -monstrous,illogical aspects of life Robert Louis Stevenson

novel -duality in every individual and in Victorian society
(beautiful houses but dark secrets)
‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde’
-night
-poorer districts of London
-Mr Hyde leaves and enters the house
through the back door:the evil lies behind
a beautiful faҫade of civilisation and
refinement

Colonial literature adventures Rudyard Kipling

exalted the white man’s burden ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (poem)

VICTORIAN POETRY
>social reality
>intellectual and moral debate of the age

Majestic poetry
myth of the greatness of England

Poetry of Anti-myth and Disbelief

had to solve the ethical problems raised by science and progress

the Poet
>prophet and philosopher
>reconcile faith and progress
>sprinkle romance over the materialism of modern life

Dramatic Monologue
-narrative poem
-speaker≠poet
-argumentative tone
-silent listener (clues)
-the poet can either criticise or accept what the speaker says
-moment of crisis of the characters
-absence of a unique truth:verses are unpredictable like the human mind (step towards
modernity)
-human psychology
Main poets
>Alfred Tennyson → dramatic monologues
>Robert Browning (Porphyria’s Lover from Dramatic Lyrics)
>Elisabeth Barret Browning → love sonnets
>Gerard Manley Hopkins → rhythm that broke the conventional rules
>Matthew Arnold → dissatisfaction with the Victorian Age

AESTHETICISM AND DECADENCE

>end of the 19 century,France
th

>Théophile Gautier
-poet,dramatist,novelist,journalist,art and literary critic
-created the expression ‘Art for Art’s sake’ in the preface of Mademoiselle de Maupin
>elevation of taste
>pursuit of beauty in art and in life
>the person becomes a piece of art
>against the materialism and restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie
>aesthetic isolation:artists withdrew from the political and social scene
>unconventional existence
>subjective point of view
>excessive attention to the self
>hedònistic and sensuous attitude;perversity
>bohémien
>evocative use of language

Précursors of the English Aesthetic Movement

>John Ruskin
>John Keats rafaélait
>Dante Gabriel Rossetti → Pre-Raphaelite Movement
>Walter Peter
-’Studies in the History of the Renàissance’
-’Marius the Epicurean’
-subversive and demoralising
-rejected religious faith holt
-art as the only means to halt the time
-intense experiences
-feel of kinds of sensations
mìarh
-artist as the transcriber ‘not of the world,not of the mere fact,but of his sense of it’
-no didacticism
-Oscar Wilde
-The Yellow Book:a periodical published from 1894 to 1897 by a group of artists that met in the
Rhymers’Club;it reflected the décadent taste (decline of recognised values)

‘À rebours’ by Huysmans
-novel
-the protagonist Des Esseints tries to create an artificial life in search for unusual sensations
-model for Wilde’s dandy
 CHARLES DICKENS
(1812-1870)
>born in Portsmouth
>father imprisoned for debt
>put to work in a factory at the age of 12
>when the family finances improved and his father was released he was sent to a school in London
>at the age of 15,he found employment as an office boy at a lawyer’s
>studied shorthand at night
>shorthand reporter of parliament debates
>reporter for a newspaper
>pen name ‘Boz’
>’Sketches by Boz’:collection of articles and tales describing London’s people and scenes
>’The Pickwick Papers’
>married Catherine Hogarth
>’Bentley’s Miscellany’
>Oliver Twist,David Copperfield,Little Dorrit → exploited childhood
>Bleak House,Hard Times,Great Expectations → poor and working class
>amassed a fortune
>died in Kent
>buried in Westminster Abbey

Characters
-Dickens exaggerated his character habits as well the their language
-ridiculed social peculiarities,vanity and ambition
-children opposed to worthless grown-up people

Style
-graphic and powerful descriptions
-realistic
-satirical

THE BRONTЁ SISTERS

Life
>Charlotte (1816-1855) → Currer Bell;in 1854 married Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls
>Emily (1818-1849) → Ellis Bell
>Anne (1820-1849) → Acton Bell
>isolation in a remote part in Yorkshire
>dad:Anglican clergy man of Irish origin
>mainly self-educated (apart from brief periods at school)

JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bell (1847)

Jane Eyre
-orphan raised by her cold aunt Mrs Reed in Gateshead
- teacher in the Lowood school
-governess at Thornfield Hall (place of independence)
-falls in love with Mr Rochester (the owner)
-refuses Mr Rochester proposal when she finds out he’s married
-goes to live with her cousin at Moor House (brughiera)
-refuses St John Rivers (religious man) proposal
-returns to Mr Rochester;he lives at Ferndean (rural) and he’s blind after a fire in which his wife
died
-plain and poor
-speaks with frankness about herself
-assertive,imaginative and rebellious
-passionate
-follows her convictions
-conflicts between spirit and flesh (carne),duty and desire,denial and fulfilment
-she struggles to get a free spirit and self – respect

Mr Rochester
-Byronic hero
-not a seducer but a nobleman of passion
-attracted to Jane’s soul

Bertha Mason
-Mr Rochester’s mad wife
-described as a monster
-represents what Jane is afraid of:psychological instability and insecurity in the home

Themes
-marriage as a relationship between equals
-critic of the strict Victorian social classes system and gender relationship
-symbolic use of the Gothic to reveal the presence of threatening elements within the self

Style
-use of the heroin as narrator gives unity
-Jane often addresses the reader directly explaining how she feels and how she makes decisions
-emotional use of language
-supernatural
-important dreams
-light and dark
-warmth and cold