Victoria Age (1837-1901)

1.Queen Victoria- her reign was the longest in British history.

She came to the trrone during a difficult political and economic period.

2.Social Reforms During the Victorian Age several important social reforms were carried out.
The most important, besides the Reform Bills, which extended the right to vote to much of the male middle
classe, were:
• The Mines Act (1862), which forbade the employment of women and children in mines.
• The Emancipation of religious sects (1871), which allowed Catholics to hold government jobs and
to enter the universities of Oxford and Cambridge
• The Trade Union Act (1875), which legalized the activities of the unions of workers.
• The Suffragette movement (1918), which women voted in a general election for the firts time.
In 1928 all women were granted the right to vote.
During the reign of Victoria also new political parties are born, like:
▪ 1833- The Factory Act,which regulated child labour in factories
▪ 1834- Poor Law Amendment, which established a system of workhouse to give basic support to the
poor.
▪ 1847- Ten Hours’ Act, which limited the working hours to 10 a day fpr all workers.

3.Colonial Policy
During the reign of Queen Victoria the British Empire greatly expanded.
British Empire included:
-Canada -Australia -New Zealand
-South Africa -Hong Kong -Singapore
-India : it was important because it supplied---tea, cottom/silk, spices…
Nearly half of the world trade was carried in British ships.

4. Economica progress
The positive aspects of age were economic progress in:
➢ Technology (railway, light buld)
➢ Sciences
➢ Communication (electric telegraph, daily newspapers and Penny Post)

5.Crystal Palace
Crystal Place was built for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
It had a political purpose- that is to show British economic supremacy in the world.
The Workhouses
The Victorian Workhouse was an institution that was intended to provide work and shelter for poverty
stricken people who had no means to support themselves.
6.Society
The Victorian compromise- The Victorian establishment refuse ti admit the existence of a materialistic of
life, trying to cover the unpleasant aspects of progress under a veil of respectability and facile optimism.
Respectability- women felt more and more stifled being confined to the home most of the time and some
writers began to expose the fundamental hypocrisy of Victorian society.

7.The decline of Victorian values

▪ The liberal and socialist concern for the working class had spread in Britain.
▪ The religious movement was evangelicalism which was based on a democratic conception of life
▪ Darwin started to collect the evidence that would lead him to his first theories on evolution.
▪ During the last decale, the so-called “Nineties”, highly-refined, decadent poses were adopted by
upper-class people and artist.
8. The early Victorian novel
• The novel became the leading genre. (more people can read)
• Charles Dickens is the most representative novelist of the age.
The themes of his great novels are:
➢ Social injustice
➢ The poverty and suffering of the masses
➢ Political incompetence
➢ Corruption
• Hard Times deals with the themes of the inhumanity of the factory system and the unnatural
teaching methods of the utilitarian philosophy.
• The romantic age was born in England that arrives with the two Bronte sisters.
• William Makepeace was Bickens’ counterpart as a novelist in novels without heroes.
• The technical features of the early Victorian novel was the mild realism commedy.
• Novels:
- Crime and horror novels
- Novels of philosophical pessimism