THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE VICTORIAN AGE

Victorian age was characterised by a great progress and a great industrialization. In this period England was the world
centre of finance and this condition brought prosperity and wealth to England. The progress reached improved Victorians
lifestyle (the railway, the electricity, the photograph, the Penny Post etc). But there were bad aspects too; in fact
industrialization brought hard living conditions: workers and their families had to live and work in unhealthy conditions.
So Victorian society was characterised by Utilitarianism, a social philosophy: The duty of reason and law is the
development of a system which can guarantee the happiness of more families. In fact in this period great importance was
attributed to the family which symbolised the values of decency, sobriety and virtue. People became also sensible on
Christian actions and charitable works, an example of this was the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery from the
British Empire. At last there was also another important event: Women began to improve their social condition, in fact
they began to work. They began to work in factories, and then they expand their profession and became writers,
journalists and teachers.

Victorian Novel

The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel. Novels became the most popular form of literature; they are
read aloud within the family. The novelist felt that they had a moral and social responsability, for this they wrote about
social problems and changes like Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns. Charles
Dickens introduced a new form of novel which had a great success: He published installments of novels in newspapers
and magazines using the technique of suspense. The great success is demonstrated by the rising of naturalistic novels,
psychological novels and adventure novel: The first tended to view life more scientifically; the second explored the hidden
motives of human action; the last dealt with exciting plots and exotic geographical and historical settings. These novels
were also joined by the detective story, the fantasy novel and the mystery- detective novel which represented the short
story novels.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens had to work in a factory to help his family when he was only 12 years old. So here he could see the hard
living condition of children and this influenced his literary works, in fact his writes denounce his society. Dickens
developed a new form of novel: He began to publish instalments of novels in newspapers and magazines using the
technique of suspense, so the readers waited with interest the next publication. This form became very popular; it
represented a form of entertainment. The themes of these novels are social: Dickens didn’t only denounce social wrongs
but also the conditions and people that gave rise to them. Some works of Dickens are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and
Nickleby. But the lack of psychological depth and the presence of fairy type characters (too good or too evil) diminish the
force of his message of social accusation. By the way, his novels had a great circulation which meant a great interest for
the discussion.

Movements during the Victorian Era

Victorian Era was characterised by a large number of movements: Utilitarianism, the Pre-Raphaelite and the aesthetic
movement. Utilitarianism is a social philosophy developed by Jeremy Bentham which is founded on the principles that
the worth of human life could be calculated avoiding pain and achieving pleasure. According to this philosophy the duty
of reason and law is the development of a system which can guarantee the happiness of more people. The aesthetic
movement was developed against Utilitarianism. The most exponent of this movement was Oscar Wilde who considered
art as substitute for life. The aesthetes tried to live according to their principles which were provocative and took them to
the contrast with the society. The Pre-Raphaelite movement wanted to reform art by rejecting what they considered to
be the mechanistic approach. The movement assigned a prime value to beauty assuming an essentially aesthetic
tendency of”art for art’s sake”, art had no moral function.