The Victorian Period 1830 -1901
Queen Victoria 1837 -1901 • She was a popular queen. She spoke English, French, German, Italian, and Hindustani. • She became queen when the monarchy was unpopular with the people, but she won them over with her modesty, practicality, personality, and style. • The Victorian Period was an age is characterized by energy and high moral purpose
The Time of Troubles 1830’s and 1840’s • London becomes most important city in Europe • Population of London expands from two million to six million • Shift from ownership of land to modern urban economy • Impact of industrialism • Unemployment • Poverty • Rioting • Slums in large cities • Working conditions for women and children were terrible
The Reform Bills • Fist Reform Bill 1832 • Extended the right to vote to all males owning property • Poor Law 1834 - workhouses • Second Reform Bill passed in 1867 • Extended right to vote to working class
The Mid-Victorian Period 1848 -1870 • • A time of prosperity A time of improvement A time of stability A time of optimism
The British Empire • Between 1853 and 1880, large scale immigration to British colonies • In 1857, Parliament took over the government of India and Queen Victoria became empress of India. • Many British people saw the expansion of empire as a moral responsibility. • Missionaries spread Christianity in India, Asia, and Africa.
The Late Victorian Period 1870 -1901 • Decay of Victorian values • British imperialism – the Boer War in South Africa • Bismarck's Germany became a rival power • United States became a rival power • Economic depression led to mass immigration • Irish question – Home Rule Bill
The Role of Women • The only occupation at which an unmarried middle-class woman could earn a living and maintain some claim to gentility was that of a governess. • At home woman’s role was to create a place of peace where man could take refuge from the difficulties of modern life. • The Custody Act (1839) – gave a mother the right to petition the court for access to her minor children and custody of children under seven and later sixteen. • First women’s college established in 1848 in London. • By the end of Victoria’s reign, women could take degrees at twelve university colleges.
Literacy, Publication, and Reading • By the end of the century, literacy was almost universal. • Compulsory national education required to the age of ten. • Growth of the periodical, + cheap newspapers aimed at a popular market • Novels and short fiction were published in serial form. • The reading public expected literature to illuminate social problems.
The Victorian Novel • The novel was the dominant form in Victorian literature and a principal form of entertainment. • Victorian novels are realistic and seek to represent a large and comprehensive social world, with a variety of classes. • Major theme is the place of the individual in society, the aspiration of the hero or heroine for love or social position. • For the first time, women were major writers: the Brontes. Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot.
• 1830 -1840 s social-problem novels: • Elizabeth Gaskell - “Manchester” novels -harsh portrait of industrial life • Benjamin Disraeli – the Young England trilogy (two Britains: the rich & the poor) • Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily, Ann) – blend of the Gothic & psychological insight • Charles Dickens - comic, social conscience, humanity • George Eliot – portrays small-town England, its values and social system • Thomas Hardy – poet & novelist • William Thackeray – satire on fashionable society • Antony Trollope – comic novels • Wilkie Collins - mystery
The 1840 s • Europe - a second wave of revolution • In England - trade depression threw millions into unemployment • a spectacular growth of one branch of English literature, the realistic, or as the Victorians called it, the matter-of-fact novel. • What direction was the country taking? • Benjamin Disraeli used the novel to define a political program.
The main factors in the remarkable flowering of the novel in the 1840 s • the reading public was greatly enlarged • the great circulating libraries were founded • cheap reprints, which made fiction accessible for relatively small amounts of money • the railway & the age of steam transport !!!!! • ‘Boz’
Dickens’ Biography • Born February 7, 1812 • 1824 -- Dickens worked at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse • 1824 -- Mr. Dickens (Charles’ father) taken to debtors’ prison; family joins him • Imprisoned from February – May • Charles, 15, becomes law clerk and freelance writer
Dickens’ mission, “the Great Inimitable” • the novel as an instrument of political and social reform - to make England a better England: • to cast light on current abuses, hardheartedness, and the epidemic malaise of the time (focus particularly on the hardheartedness from above, from the lawmakers in Parliament) • to focus on changing hearts, make readers aware of the pain and needs of others, penetrate the minds of his readers and change them
• Dickens wrote 15 major novels in a career spanning 33 years. • His peak of creativity and literary prowess was in mid - late career from 1848 - 1865. • He crusaded for children’s rights. • He was an advocate of child labor laws to protect children. • He opposed cruelty, deprivation, and corporal punishment of children. • He believed in and lobbied for just treatment of criminals.
• • • • • 1836 -- Sketches by Boz 1837 -- The Pickwick Papers 1837 -- Oliver Twist is serially published 1843 -- A Christmas Carol 1844 -- Martin Chuzzlewit 1844 -- The Chimes 1845 -- The Cricket on the Hearth 1846 -- The Battle of Life 1846 -- Dombey and Son 1850 -- David Copperfield 1853 -- Bleak House 1853 -- A Child’s History of England and. . . a near nervous breakdown 1854 -- Hard Times 1857 -- Little Dorrit 1859 -- A Tale of Two Cities 1861 -- Great Expectations 1865 -- Our Mutual Friends
In addition, • He protested a greedy, uncaring, materialistic society through such works as A Christmas Carol, which Dickens called “a sledgehammer” he used figuratively to wake up the reading public • He repeatedly used satire to highlight problems in his society
Oliver Twist or The Parish Boy’s Progress • Dickens wrote, “I wished to show in little Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through every adverse circumstance and triumphing at last. ” • serialized in a monthly magazine
Utilitarianism • Derived from the ideas of Jeremy Bentham and his disciple James Mill • Rationalist test of value • The greatest good for the greatest number • Utilitarianism failed to recognize people’s spiritual needs
Oliver Twist • The hero of his novel is a child (suffering child). • The Victorians were unaccustomed to fiction that inhabited the child’s universe or showed the world from the child’s perspective. • pure melodrama, (Victorians loved it!! particularly melodramatic death scenes)
• • Dombey and Son by Dickens, Mary Barton by Mrs. Gaskell, Sybil by Disraeli, Vanity Fair by Thackeray
Dombey and Son • the main themes in the novel - capitalism • the double-edged title: superficially, it refers to the way in which dynastic firms advertise themselves to the consumer; the subversive theme - indicates family relationships • Thomas Carlyle: England must replace the “cash nexus”—the strictly financial relationships that capitalism sets up between people—with something more organic and familial. Society as a gigantic family, with responsibilities and emotional ties among people
Mary Barton: A Manchester Story • deals with the events of 1840 s (trade depression hits) from the working class point of view: • John Barton is a mill worker thrown out of work and his wife dies. • joins a trade union and goes on the Chartist demonstration to London. • returns to Manchester embittered. He takes to opium and, finally, murders the son of a factory owner, an act of class revenge. • Melodramatic, powerful depictions of poverty.
Sybil, or the Two Nations • social problem novel • the middle segment in the Young England trilogy, in which Disraeli outlined his political philosophy • the industrial north, the great Chartist rebellion • the need for radical change in the British class structure
Vanity Fair • the title refers to all of England the century up to the mid-1840 s • two heroines: Becky Sharp, clever, astute, and criminal & Amelia Sedley, not clever, but a good woman. • a satirical portrait of an England permeated with snobbery: “Ours is a ready money society. ” But it is also one that is distorted by the class system. • The novel is not merely entertaining; it instructs us in how to live our lives well.
