The Victorian Age

1837-1901

Queen Victoria (1819-1901)

Great Britain was a very important and rich nation in the middle of the nineteenth century. London was the biggest and most influential

city in Europe.Merchants and professionals became rich in London. These people became part of the new high society. They were well educated and

lived in beautiful houses with servants. They were always very elegant and often went to the theatre, parties and dinners. During the Industrial Revolution thousands of people came to London from

all over the country. They found work in the factories. Young children worked in the factories too.

Adults and children worked very long hours in terrible conditions. Children often did the most dangerous work because they were

small: chimney sweeps, for example! They were many accidents at work and some were fatal.

Workers made very little money and lived in small, dark houses.Some people had no work and no home. These men, women and

children often because beggars or criminals. Others lived in a workhouse. The poor laws of 1598 – 1601 and changed in 1834

obligated the local priest to take care of the poor in his area.This was the beginning of the workhouses.

They were often sad, squalid places.

Main Features:

- The Industrial Revolution and Free Trade - Social Conflicts - Social Reforms - Victorian values: Family, Respectability, Morality - Religion - The Condition of Women : the DoubleStandard - Colonial expansion

POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE:

- Industrial revolution - Technological advances

- Economical progress.

but There is lots of NEGATIVE aspects...

Negative aspects of the Victorian Age:

- Pollution in the towns provoked by the factories - Hygienic conditions - Epidemics

The status of Women in the Victorian Era is often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between England's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. During the era symbolized by the reign of British monarch Queen Victoria, difficulties escalated for women because of the vision of the "ideal woman" shared by most in the society. The legal rights of married women were similar to those of children; they could not vote or sue or even own property. Also, they were seen as pure and clean. Because of this view, their bodies were seen as temples which should not be adorned with jewelry nor used for physical exertion or pleasurable sex. The role of women was to have children and tend to the house. They could not hold a job unless it was that of a teacher or a domestic servant, nor were they allowed to have their own checking accounts or savings accounts. In the end, they were to be treated as saints, but saints that had no legal rights. Then there is the problem of PROSTITUTION.

WOMEN IN VICTORIAN ERA

CLOTES

See also fashion by decades: 1830s - 1840s - 1850s - 1860s - 1870s - 1880s- 1890s

Methods of clothing production and distribution varied enormously over the course of Victoria's long reign.

In 1837, cloth was manufactured (in the mill towns of northern England, Scotland, and Ireland) but clothing was generally custom-made by

seamstresses, milliners, tailors, hatters, glovers, corsetiers, and many other specialized tradespeople, who served a local clientele in small

shops. Families who could not afford to patronize specialists made their own clothing, or bought and modified used clothing.

By 1907, clothing was increasingly factory-made and sold in large, fixed price department stores. Custom sewing and home sewing were still

significant, but on the decline.New machinery and materials changed clothing in many ways.

The introduction of the lock-stitch sewing machine in mid-century simplified both home and boutique dressmaking, and enabled a fashion for lavish application of trim that would have been prohibitively time-

consuming if done by hand. Lace machinery made lace at a fraction of the cost of the old, laborious methods.

New materials from far-flung British colonies gave rise to new types of clothing (such as rubber making gumboots and mackintoshes possible).

Chemists developed new, cheap, bright dyes that displaced the old animal or vegetable dyes.

WOMEN’S CLOTHING

Women's fashionable clothing began with a straight, Regency silhouette, bloomed into

exaggerated skirts and sleeves, moved to small shoulders and even wider skirts

supported by crinolines or hoops, and narrowed by way of the bustle to hobble skirts.

Charles Frederick Worth, the "father of haute couture" and the prototype of the

fashion designer as the dictator of modes, was a London draper who relocated to Paris in the

1840s. His success led to the dominance of Paris fashion houses as arbiters of style and

the preferred clothiers for upper-class women in both Britain and America.

Reactions to the elaborate confections of French fashion led to various calls for reform on the grounds of both beauty (Artistic and Aesthetic dress) and health (dress reform).

Arthur Lasenby Liberty challenged the dominance of French fashion when he showed

English gowns in Paris at the end of the century.

MEN’S CLOTHINGMen's fashionable clothing was perhaps the

least volatile, but there was still an enormous difference between the wasp waist and frock coats of the 1830s dandy and the sober sack

suits and Norfolk jackets of 1901.

THE END

Creato da:

PALMISANO FRANCESCO

e

GIANNOTTA FABRIZIO