1

Term 1, II English
Assistant Professor Daniela Brown

COURSE ON VICTORIANISM
UNITS 1- 2
GENERAL PRESENTATION OF 19TH C. BRITAIN

A. Introductory notes
1.” Any cultural period suffers distortion from a generalised indictment (accusation) however speciously
formulated.” (Jerome Hamilton Buckley)

So, Victorianism makes no exception. No matter how many studies have been written by who
knows how many specialists, half true, half idealised perspectives on the 19 th c. cultural period in
Great Britain mingle in various degrees.

2. The aim of this course:

An attempt to offer you a GENERAL THEMATIC PRESENTATION of a complex controversial period
of British culture which is mainly associated with the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901)

a./ The course is not meant to go into deep analysis of a particular literary text ( the seminar will)
b./ The course will try to explain the British literary phenomena within the larger context of
British culture:
 influences from previous periods
 social historical events in the period
 religious fragmentation
 philosophical doctrines
 aesthetic views and artistic styles.

c./ Examples from the painting, architecture and photography will be provided for the literary
event to be better understood as a part of a whole range of thoughts and occurrences contained
within Victorianism .
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B. Social cultural context of the 19th c Britain

a./ The influence of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). 1876- Empress of India.
She brought to the British monarchy such 19th-century ideals as:
 a devoted family life
 earnestness
 public and private respectability
 obedience to the law1.
 Christian morality also put a stress on the virtues of family responsibility and happiness.

b./ Britain, the leader of the world (Afghanistan, Tibet, India, Hong-Kong, New Zealand, Australia,
Canada, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa-after the 1890s). Between the 1830s and 1880s, the British were
self-confident in their economic and international political powers, but in the 1850s, their illusion of
peace and confidence was broken by:
 the Indian Mutiny (1857-9)
 the Crimean War (1853-6) (the British and the French helped the Ottoman Turks fight against Russia.)

c./ The industrial revolution: environmental and technological changes, the success of the middle class:
 the invention of the telegraph— In 1837 by American F. B. Morse and in Britain by the British

 physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone and engineer Sir William F. Cooke. 2

 generalisation of steam power, (James Watt started it in 1769)

 photography, (1839 William Talbot)

 the rotary printing press

 the 1st railway system in the world, (1830 Manchester- Liverpool, the 1 st fully timetabled railway)

 the electric lamp, (in 1878 and 1879, British inventor Joseph Swan and American inventor Thomas

Edison simultaneously developed the carbon-filament lamp. 3 )

1
"Victoria (queen)," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.

2
"Telegraph," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
3
"Electric Lighting," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
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 the vacuum cleaner

d./ The rise of the middle-class and of the working class. The factory system and vigorous capitalism
offered these newly risen classes a few small domestic comforts and cheaper mass products which
mimicked the artistically made objects of the aristocracy.

e./ The free market was based by the doctrine of laissez-faire which gave complete freedom to
capitalistic enterprise (“minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individual and
society.” The British economist John Stuart Mill was responsible for bringing this philosophy into popular
economic usage in his Principles of Political Economy –1848)4

f./ England, the stage of cultural debate

 serialised novels
 scientific and religious debates
 mass literacy
 modernisation of education
 wide circulation of newspapers and magazines: the Edinburgh Review, Westminster Review, the
Cornhill Magazine

g./ Religious fragmentation and Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) became more visible: with
the census 1851: more than half of English and Welsh did not go to the Anglican Church: non Anglican
called-Nonconformists. Puritans (more emphasis on the bible and teaching than on ceremony and
hierarchy): Baptists 17th c with Q E I as dissident puritans (Neo-Protestants)-TEY REJECT THE
BAPTISTS OF CHILDREN, Presbyterians-end 16th c-rejecting bishops and hierarchy and independence
and Congregationalists 9each congregation organised itself), by the 19 th c they ar no longer called
Puritans, they are Non conformists/ Dissenters, Civil War, Cromwell: Quakers: small minority but v
active in social reform and social morality (slavery), Methodists: started as a missionary movement in
18th: John Wesley was an Anglican simple religious method to poor communities, a method, but 19 th, they
split from the Anglican church, Unitarians (intellectual minority): in England late 18 th c: they do not
believe in the Trinity, believe in one god, Jesus is not a god, the Evangelicals (dif from Biserica
Evangelica in Transilvania): lat 18th c: they are Anglicans, taking the bible, morality and Christian life
more seriously than religious ceremony (gorge Eliot background), involved in factory reform and
antislavery and their moral consequences. VVV serious approach to religion. Catholics 4% in 1851
census, then growing with Irish immigrants. By 1828 for Nonconformists-equal civil and political rights

4
Encyclopedia Britannica 2000 CD-Rom
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to Anglicans, 1829 for Catholics Until 1870s, one had to be an Anglican to get a degree in an Oxford or
Cambridge University.
1830s the Oxford Movement: It started by Henry Newman an Anglican: recover the universal trad, the
origins and it looks to Roman Catholic theology, it elevated the status of the Church, late in the 1860s:
from ideas this goes into ritual: controversies about catholic practices in Anglin churches (Bells and
smells, paintings, Gregorian chants, restoring churches to look medieval): Newman becomes catholic.
Division: Hgh Church (Anglo Catholic), Low Church (Evangelicals: passionate about the personal
commitment and lifestyle) and the Broad/Liberal church: does not insist passionately about any belief, the
church has a good moral influence. By the end of 19th c, the Anglican Church is less protestant than at the
beginning)
Whigs (Liberals: Lord Lamb Melbourne, Gladstone a Whig later), tend to be Nonconformists and Tories
(Peel, Benjamin Disraeli “Cybil or the 2 Nations”- a novel about the way aristocracy should play a role in
keeping the country united), Gladstone a Tory first) (Conservatives_- Anglicans
1.Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
2.No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency;
3.Swear not at all; for for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse;
4.At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
5.Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
6.Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
7.Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:

h./ The utilitarian doctrine: Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Suart Mill
 Adam Smith was the 1st to assume that progress is linked to national wealth- 1776 treatise, The
Wealth of Nations.
 Jeremy Bentham’s 1789 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation develops the
principles which bring about individual contentment due to social checks and balances. “An action is
right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of
happiness… it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive.”5
 John Stuart Mill: 1844—Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, essays
on the influence of consumption on production, the definition of productive and unproductive
labour, and the precise relations between profits and wages.

5
ibid.
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 Utilitarianism: the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of
a majority.
o the doctrine that an action is right in so far as it promotes happiness, and
that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of
conduct.- Dictionary
An ethical philosophy in which the happiness of the greatest number of people in the society is considered the greatest
good. According to this philosophy, an action is morally right if its consequences lead to happiness (absence of pain), and
wrong if it ends in unhappiness (pain).
Since the link between actions and their happy or unhappy outcomes depends on the circumstances, no moral principle is
absolute or necessary in itself under utilitarianism. Proposed by the English philosopher-reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-
1832) in his 1789 book Principles Of Morals And Legislation it was developed by the English philosopher-economist John
Stuart Mill (1806-73) in his 1863 book Utilitarianism.
o
Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/utilitarianism.html#ixzz3G6s5BQbB

i./ Reform Bills and Acts

 the Reform Act of 1832 enfranchised all male owners of property worth between 10 to 50 pounds in
annual rent
 the Education Act by 1870- generalised literacy
 the Factory Acts-1833-1878 eliminated child labour and overworking
 Public Health Acts-1871-1875-some medical assistance to the poor)

j./ Social unrest (the Chartist Movement -1836-1854)

C. The undermining consequences of progress

 Urban crowds living in filthy slums. Polluted waters, smog. Professional diseases (of miners,
chimney sweepers…). Human misery.
 Family- an agent of oppression, especially for women
 The decay of religious belief and the obsession of scientific materialism
 Exploitation of children and women
 Advantageous laws for the rich in the detriment of the poor
 Unemployment and social pressure of the working class
 In the world of the novel, the serialised strategies made novels lack a coherent structure, plot
and convincing characters

D. The Victorian literary world inherits previous artistic elements (see VIII), mirrors and is mirrored by
whatever happened in the 19th c.
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I. Focus on town life and social classes in the novel (Charles Dickens in Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend,
William M. Thakeray in Vanity fair, Anthony Trollope in Barchester Chronicles, Elizabeth Gaskell in
Mary Barton, A Tale of Manchester Life- 1848 and in North and South- 1855)
II. Poetry weaker then the novel
III. Darwinian perspective in social life ( the idea developed by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species
according to which the fittest will survive) and utilitarianism
IV. False Puritanism (A. Clough’s poem The Latest Decalogue, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
V. Revival of a deep religious feeling (the poetry and creed of G. M. Hopkins)
VI. The nostalgia for the pastoral setting seen as a Paradise Lost (Thomas Hardy’s Tess, George Eliot’s
Mill on the Floss, Matthew Arnold looks back to a harmony with nature in his poem In Harmony with
Nature, Hopkins finds the innocence and the sacredness of nature through religious faith and
illumination.)
VII. a./ The industrial revolution, scientific discoveries and access to technology worried the Victorian
writer who felt that his contemporaries bore the miserable sometimes dangerous consequences of a new
era or made him depict prophetic triumphs of the future (immediate gloomy realities of technology are
described by Dickens or science fictional perspectives of a dark technological future are represented by
Louis Stevenson- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), or George Herbert Wells- The
Time Machine (1985), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds —1898)
VIII. The writers’ ironical attitude to the Victorians’ self-confidence and authority (Oscar Wilde’s
Importance of Being Ernest, Bernard Shaw’s plays)
IX. Neo-classical and Romantic features :

Neo-classical
-the stress on reason and duty
-society seen as a perfectible mechanism
- the individual is responsible for the part he plays
in society
- the picaresque structure of the novel (Great
Expectations, Jane Eyre)
- - society seen as corrupted and the source of
Romantic
- the past revisited (Medieval and
Renaissance themes)
-the stress on the irrational and on feeling
- the presence of outsiders: outcasts,
children, handicapped, eccentrics, thieves,
criminals, convicts (Dickens excels in all
that)
all evil
- focus upon the individual as a unique being