1832 - 1901

 Victoria crowned queen in 1837. (18)

 Ruled for more than 60 years.
 Married german cousin, Albert.
 Designed Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
 Popular among middle classes.
 Middle classes rose and prospered.
 Economic, technological, and political
expansion and dramatic social change.
 England peaked in influence as a world
power.
 Rigid standard and high moral tone of
middle class defined the age.
 Exploitation of working class.
 Parliament produced strong prime ministers.
 Beginning of modern age with her death .
Eldest son Edward VII.
 People are talking about….
 The Great Exhibition of 1851 lasted 140 days.
Showed economic and industrial supremacy of
Great Britain.
 Social Reform: laws limiting child labor and the
work day, Salvation Army was organized, raise
of public awareness through magazine articles
and books.
 The Middle Class dominated the time. Showed
virtues: character, duty, earnestness, hard work
and respectability – servant class arouse.
 A lady never called on a man under any
circumstances. It was considered improper and
would likely result in scandal if discovered.
 Older girls and young women addressed each
other as “Miss” until they became close friends.
 Between single men and single women, first
names were not used until a couple became
engaged. Cousins, however, could use each
others’ first names freely, regardless of age and
sex.
 Food, Fashion, Arts and Entertainment
• Tea party important feature of middle class,
more and more food served.
• Teashops opened in the 1880´s –
unaccompanied women.
• Fashionable Victorian women changed clothes
all the time.
• Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters and
poets founded in 1848 to protest low standards
• Victorians disapproved inactivity – busy in lawn
tennis, garden parties, picnics.
• Cricket became popular with all classes.
 People are reading and writing….
• Books – Variety of genres: Historical
fiction,mystery novels, science fiction: The Time
Machine by H.G. Wells.
• Punch magazine – satiric commentaries and
clever drawings.
• A History of England – a work of history popular
as a novel, 5 volumes by Macaulay.
• Rules of Behavior – social codes of middle class.
• Plays – spectacular farces and melodramas.
Masterpieces by Wilde and Shaw.
 The novel was the
dominant form in
Victorian literature.
 Victorian novels seek
to represent a large
and comprehensive
social world, with a
variety of classes.
 Victorian novels are
realistic.
 Major theme is the
place of the
individual in society,
the aspiration of the
hero or heroine for
love or social
position.
 The protagonist’s
search for
fulfillment is
emblematic of the
human condition.
 For the first time,
women were major
writers: the Brontes.
Elizabeth Gaskell,
George Eliot.
 The Victorian novel
was a principal
form of
entertainment.
 Poets sought new ways
of telling stories in
verse
 All of the Victorian
poets show the strong
influence of the
Romantics.
 Dramatic monologue –
is the great
achievement of
Victorian poetry.
 Poets use detail to
construct visual images
that represent the
emotion or situation
the poem concerns.
 The theater was a
flourishing and
popular institution
during the Victorian
period.
 The popularity of
theater influenced
other genres.
 Bernard Shaw and
Oscar Wilde
transformed British
theater with their
comic masterpieces.
 Romanticism continued but writers concerned
with working and living conditions.
 Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë combined
romanticism with realistic descriptions. Robert
Browning character studies in poetic form.
 Focus on . . .Dickens – model Victorian writer –
combination of realistic social criticism with
comedy and romantic sentiment.