The decline of Victorian values

Liberal and socialist concern for the working class. The reaction to industrialism and
liberalism was strong. The best minds of the time feared that Britain was becoming a
society made up of only two classes, the rich and the poor, "the two nations" as
Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said. Several thinkers, such as
Thomas Carlyle, philosopher John Stuart Mill, and writer John Ruskin, were all
concerned about the damage done to man and the environment. The miserable
condition of the British working class contributed to the revolutionary theories of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, who jointly wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848).
Although communism never really flourished in Britain, Marxism did have some
influence on English socialists in the latter part of Victoria's reign. For example The
Fabian Society founded in 1884 was more directly inspired by Marxist philosophy.

Evangelicalism too was based on a democratic conception of life

Evangelicalism.
and on a rigid moral code that condemned exploitation at work. The
evangelicals contributed to social reforms, the abolition of some public immoral
spectacles and the observance of Sunday as a day of rest.

Victorian writers were interested in the advancement of

Science and evolutionism.
science, as can be seen in a novel such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert
Louis Stevenson. Victorian morality and religion were shaken by the publication
of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in
which he proclaims that man was the result of a gradual evolution, challenging
the Bible in the creation of man from God. Darwin began gathering evidence
during a long voyage across the South Seas aboard a ship called the 'Beagle'. In
1859, he published his theory of him, first in a scientific article and then in book
form. He later continued to work on his theories of him; for example in The
Descent of Man he underlined the similarities between man and some animals
and postulated the idea that man was just an evolved ape, a theory to which
religious and scientists were opposed.

The relaxed attitude towards life, the less rigid observance of social
The nineties.
customs, the belief that life must be enjoyed without thinking much about the
future characterize the Nineties. During the last decade, the so-called decadent
and refined poses of the 1990s were adopted by upper-class people and artists,
who had extravagant tastes and sliced boredom with life - a sentiment that
became known as fin de siècle.