Victorian Age notes from Norton Anthology of English Literature*

In the 18th century the pivotal city center was Paris, but he middle of the 19th century it

was London (London expanded from about 2 million inhabitants when Victoria came to

the throne to 6 ½ million at the time of her death)

The process of moving away from an agricultural based society toward an modern urban

economy continues as more people continue to move from the country to the city.

Industrialization introduced rapid technological advancements, so that in one Victorian

lifetime saw the invention of fast railways, iron ships, the telegraph, photography,

anesthetics, and universal compulsory education.

Because it was the first country to become industrialized, England became a financial

powerhouse. London became the world’s banker by the 1870s, and England’s colonies

covered 1/4th of the entire land mass of the globe. 1 in 4 people in the world was a

subject of Queen Elizabeth.

Although many Englanders reveled in the country’s preeminence, they also suffered

from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense too of being displaced persons in a

world made alien by technological changes that had been exploited too quickly for the

adaptive powers of the human psyche

Queen Victoria and the Victorian Temper

Queen Victoria reigned from 1837-1901

The qualities that she was most known for (earnestness, moral responsibility, domestic

propriety) became qualities that Victorian society prized in itself.

Victoria was the mother of 9 children and after her husband died, a perpetually “black-

garbed widow.” She was the very emblem of “domestic fidelity,” and her subjects

embraced that sentiment (1886)

Authors of the period viewed their time as one in transition. ThomasCarlyle suggested

that society should move away from the introspection promoted by the Romantics and

toward a higher moral purpose. He saw it as a time to address “ourselves to the active and

daily objects which lay before us.” (1887)

Because the period is so long, critics have designated three sages (spanning the 70 years)

Early Victorian (1830-1848): Tennyson, Carlyle, Ruskin, Charlotte and Emily Bronte,

Gaskell

Mid-Victorian (1848-1870): Dickens, Eliot, E.B. Browning, Matthew Arnold, Karl Marx

Late Victorian (1870-1901): Hardy, Eliot, Kipling, Yeats, Wilde, Conrad

Early Period: (1830-48)

1830—first steam powered public railway station opened from Liverpool to

Manchester. Just as they did in America, train lines connected the country allowing for

the growth of commerce and shrinking the distance between cities.

Manufacturing towns wanted stronger Parliamentary representation – England was still

running an archaic electoral system that did not include the new and highly populated

industrial towns

The Reform Bill of 1832 extended the right to vote to all males owning property worth

ten pounds or more in annual rent. The voting public included the lower middle classes

but not the working classes, who did not obtain the vote until 1867 (the second reform

bill)

The Reform bill of 1832 also broke up the monopoly of power that the conservative

landowners had (Tory party had been in office almost continuously from 1783-1830).

The Bill represented the beginning of a new age – and age of growing middle-class

power

While industrialization helped to distribute power more fairly among the classes, it also

brought about economic and social difficulties. The 1830s and 40s were known as The

Time of Troubles. During that period, there was a bad harvest, an economic crash, a

period of high unemployment, and rioting.

The conditions of the new coal mining camps were terrible. Workers in industrial cities

often lived in horribly crowded slums and women and children experienced

unimaginably brutal conditions in factories and mines.

These conditions led to the Chartists movement – a large organization of workers

(somewhat like a union), which fell apart by 1848, but succeeded in opening discussions

for workers rights and reform.

The mid-Victorian Period and Religious controversy (1848-70)

Time of prosperity; however, writers, particularly Charles Dickens, were highly affected

by the Time of Troubles and continued to comment on social decay during this period.

This age is often referred to as the “Age of Improvement”

Prince Albert (Victoria’s husband) opened a Great Exhibition in Hyde Parke, where a

gigantic glass greenhouse, the Crystal Palace, had been erected to display the exhibits of

modern industry and science. It was one of the first buildings constructed according to

modern architectural principles and was considered a triumph of Victorian technology.

During this period, the Factory acts in Parliament restricted child labor and limited hours

of employment, and the condition of the working places were gradually improved.

Investment – people, money, and technology abroad creates and solidifies the British

empire. Between 1853-1880 over 2 million emigrated from Britain to British

empires. During this time, Australia and Canada saw large scale immigration, and 1876

– Queen Victoria was named the empress of India

Many saw the expansion of the British empire as a moral responsibility, what Kipling

later calls “The White Man’s Burden” Queen Victoria claimed that the imperial mission

was “to protect the poor natives and advance civilization”

The missionary cause was supported by the Evangelical movement. Evangelicals

emphasized spiritual transformation of the individual by conversion and a strictly moral

Christian life. They were zealously dedicated to good causes (they were responsible for

the emancipation of all the slaves in the British Empire as early as 1833).

At the same time, this period was characterized by a crisis of faith. During this period

scientific processes of analysis were being applied to the Bible. Geology and Astronomy

began to disrupt the religious notions about the growth of the world, and Darwin’s Origin

of the Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) were published and forced a

reevaluation of “long-established assumptions of the values attached to humanity’s

special role in the world” (1868)

The Late Victorian Period and the Decay of Victorian Values (1870-1901)

In the final decades of the century, British imperialism reached its apex but imperialism

was taking its toll in rebellions, massacres, and bungled wars.

The United States began to compete on economically and England lost some of its

financial power.

The Nineties- Fin de siecle – a melancholy cultivated by the knowledge that the end of an

era was close at hand.

Many critics call this time period degeneration

The Role of Women

1918 – women get the vote even though the first petitions to Parliament were introduced

as early as the 1840s

Married Woman’s property Acts (1870-1908) allowed married women to own and

operate their own property

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 that established a civil divorce court

and provided a deserted wife the right to apply for protection order that would allow her

rights to her property. Previously, women could only divorce their husbands for adultery

if it was combined with cruelty, incest, bigamy, or bestiality.

The custody act of 1839 – gave a mother the right to petition the court of access to her

minor children

In 1848 – the first women’s college was established in London. By the end of the century

women could earn degrees from 12 universities (not Oxford or Cambridge).

The most important image of womanhood in the Victorian period comes from a poem by

Coventry Patmore The Angel in the House: “this concept of womanhood stressed

woman’s purity and selflessness. Protected and enshrined within the home, her role was

to create a place of peace where man could take refuge from the difficulties of modern

life” (1873)

Poetry

o Novel was the dominant form throughout the period, and the poetry of the period

reflects the novel’s popularity. Poets during the Victorian period often sought

new ways of telling stories in verse (1876)

o Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson introduced the dramatic monologue

in an attempt to explore character psychology poetically.

** Notes taken in whole and in part from Abrams, M.H. et al. The Norton Anthology of

English Literature. 8th ed. New York: Norton, 2006