The Victorian

Era

Fatima Al-Ashour

The Victorian Era gets its name from Queen Victoria

who ruled England from 1837 to 1901. During this long reign

of 64 years, many changes were brought about in

England. Victorian Era is known for the vast

developments that took place changing the political and

economic structure of England.

So WHAT happened in that age ?

Victoria's reign seem markedly different from earlier periods in British history. It is often described by historians and politicians as the time that the world changed forever and the age that shaped the globe more then all the previous centuries the world had ever seen.

Advancements in science, technology, medicine and engineering coupled with social and religious progress gave birth to a new concept of modernity

Victorian society witnessed a massive transformation due to the

“progress” in a variety of fields,

The advancement of the steam engine through the period brought in a whole new method of travel, the railways. Train travel revolutionized the concept of travel and trade and thousands of miles of tracks were laid across the empire, for example by 1875 there was an amazing 9000 miles of track that had been laid!

The Industrial Revolution

The extraordinary industrial development brought huge changes in terms of working and daily life. One of the main changes that revolution brought was machines. Business people established places named factories. There, they had these machines and they needed some people to work with them.

“The Great Exhibition” in the Chrystal Palace, London. Erected to display the exhibits of modern industry and science. It shows the new inventions and congratulations of English empire.

The power of the middle class increased with the expansion of industry and trade

The Reform Bill: it was a response to the demands of middle classes, who were taking control of England's economy. It extended the right to vote to all males owning property worth £ 10 or more in annual rent.

The developments of the electrical telegraph, postal services and the improvement in ship building and travel gave way to a new concept of faster communication.

Economical progress:The British economy was strong. Britain became the greatest economical power in the world

Colonialism was an important phenomenon

For better or worse the British Empire had a massive impact on the history of the world. It was the largest formal empire that the world had ever known. As such, its power and influence stretched all over the globe; shaping it in all manner of ways.

Queen’s College for Women was established

Working conditions for women and children were terrible

Pollution in towns due to factory activity

Lack of hygienic conditions: Houses were over crowded, most people lived in miserable conditions; poor housess shared hared water supplies

Poverty

epidemics

Negative aspects of the age

The Victorians were great moralisers they supported: personal duty, hard work, decorum, respectability, chastity

Victorian Poetry was an important period in the history of poetry, providing the link between the Romantic movement and the modernist movement of the 20th Century.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892),

Robert Browning (1812–89),

Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806–61), Matthew Arnold (1822–88).and Emily Dickinson (American Romantic)

The leading poets during the Victorian period were:

the poetry of this period was heavily influenced by the Romantics, but also went off in its own directions. Particularly notable was the development of the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by Browning.

Dramatic monologue – the idea of Dramatic monologue – is creating a lyric poem in the voice of a speaker ironically distinct from the poet.

Poetry: It was considered superior than prose, novel theatre. They said that the writing of a genius must be poetry. There were two main romantic inheritances in poetry:

1.- the use of retrospective forms: archaic language. They revived many old forms (particularly the mixture of lyric and elegy which influenced others forms like epigram).

2.- experimentation with genres. Some poets continued the movement of colloquial diction into poetry (Robert Browning)

GENERAL CHARASTERISTICS OF VICTORIAN LITERATURE

* The Victorians loved the heroic, chivalrous stories of knights and they hoped to regain some of that noble, courtly behavior and impress it upon the people both at home and in the wider empire.

Tennyson’s poetry: problems of religious faith, social change and political power.

Browning’s poetry: intellectually and bracing harshness

Arnold’s poetry: sorrowful, disillusioned pessimism over the human plight in rapidly changing times

Notable poets were absorbed in social issues

Themes

“Throughout this era poetry addressed issues such as patriotism, religious faith, science, sexuality, and social reform that often aroused polemical debate. At the

same time, the poets whom we classify as Victorian frequently devised experiments

that expanded the possibilities of the genre, creating innovative forms and

types of prosody that enabled new kinds of poetic voices to emerge in print.”

(Bristow).

Victorian poetry is pictorial; poets use detail to construct visual images that represent the emotion or situation the poem concerns

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