“The Victorian Age”

1830-1900
 Queen Victoria
• She came to the throne in 1837 and her reign
is the longest in British history;

• Became queen at the age of 18; she was

graceful and self-assured. She also had a gift
for drawing and painting;

• Throughout her reign, she maintained a sense

of dignity and decorum that restored the
average person’s high opinion of the
monarchy after a series of horrible, ineffective
leaders;

• In 1840 Victoria married a prince Albert,

who became Prince-consort and they had
nine children and their family provided a
model of respectability;

• he died in 1861 and she sank into a deep

depression and wore black every day for
the rest of her life
 social and political reform

In Victoria’s reign there were some social and political reform, in fact the 1830s be
called “age of reform”
The most important are:

•1832-First Reform Act: extended the vote to most middle-class men

•1833-Britain abolished slavery/Factory Act: prevented children aged 9 to 13 from being

employed more than forty-eight hours a week

•1834-Poor Law-Amendment: applied a system of workhouses for poor people

•1871-Trade Union Act: made it legal for laborers to organize to protect their rights
 Technological progress
In the mid-19th century, England experienced a second wave of industrialization that
brought about economic, cultural and architectural changes.

In 1851 a Great Exhibition, organized by Prince

Albert, showed the world the industrial and
economic power of Great Britain. The exhibition
was housed in the Crystal Palace, a huge glass and
steel structure designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and
erected in Hyde Park. More than 15,000
exhibitors from all over the world have shown
their wares to millions of visitors.

People became very fond of exhibits, so the money was invested in creating several
museums, including the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and what is
now called the Victoria and Albert Museum. Admission was free. Construction of
the London Underground began in 1860 and the railways began to transform the
landscape and people's lives.
 A complex age
The Victorian age was characterized by complexity: it was an age of unprecedented
change but also of great contradictions, often referred to as the "Victorian compromise".
It was a time when progress, reforms and political stability coexisted with poverty and
injustice. Modernity was praised, but there was a revival of Gothic and classicism in art.

Religion has played an important role in

people's lives.
Evangelicalism,in particular, has
encouraged public and political action and
created many charities.
Philanthropy led to the creation of
societies that faced all kinds of poverty
and depended above all on the voluntary
efforts of middle-class women.
The Victorians believed in God but also
in progress and science. Freedom was
linked to religion as freedom of
conscience, optimism about economic and
political progress and national identity.
 The American Civil War

A political situation was tense due to the

economic differences between the
northern and southern regions:

•The North: it was industrialized, there

was population growth and also the
emancipation of exploitation.
•The South: the economy was still based
on the plantation of tobacco and cotton
and also on slavery; it was inhabited by 4
million black slaves, and life was based on
a strictly divided class system.
About the Emancipation, there were two different
currents of thought:

•The Abolitionists: they attacked the exploitation of

slaves, the separation of slaves from their family and
the cruelty they suffered.
•The Supporters of slavery: they believed it was an
institution that gave work, protection and taught
blacks the principles of the Christian faith.
 In 1860 the Republican candidate ABRAHAM LINCOLN won the presidential election.
Shortly thereafter, 11 southern states separated and formed the Confederate State of America
under the presidency of Jefferson Davis. The war ensued because Lincoln refused to allow any
American state to have the constitutional right to withdraw from the Union

The civil war broke out in 1861 and lasted four years; ending in 1865 when the northern blue troops
defeated the gray confederates. Five days later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a southern fanatic.
The civil war determineted the end of the institution of slavery but this did not guarantee equality and
economic security for slavery. They were free but without money and a home. Some emigrated to the
industrial city in the north, others remained in the south.

While the southern economy had collapsed during

the war, the northern factories had increased to
meet military needs.
The country's natural resources have been fully
exploited.
Men who came out of nowhere like Comelius
Venderbilt and John Rockefeller have created a
new version of the "American dream": they have
made great fortunes and created financial empires.
But the great majority of the workers did not
share in the wealth and were exploited. They
organized the American Federation of Labor
(AFL) which became the strongest trade union
group.
 The later years of queen Victoria’s reign
When Prince Albert tragically died, Queen Victoria remained an important figure, but
the political panorama was changing with the regrouping of the parties:
-The Liberal Party: include the former Whigs, some Radicals and a large minority of
businessmen; the party was led by William Gladstone.
-The Conservative Party: it had evolved from the Tories; they reaffirmed their position
under the leadership of Benjamin Disraeli.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

he had already been elected prime minister in 1868.

During his government were passed a series of Acts:
- Artisans and Laborers' Dwellings Act (1875), which
allowed local public authorities to clear the slums and
provided housing for the poor;
-Public Health Act (1875), which provided sanitation
as well as running water;
- a Factory Act (1878), which limited the working
hours.
Disraeli's foreign policy dominated by the Eastern
Question.
 WILLIAM GLADSTONE
Gladstone was Prime Minister out of Times.
At that time, reforming legislation focused on education.

Elementary schools had long been organized by the

Church; during his government of lui were passed:
- The Education Act: started a national system by
introducing 'board schools. By 1880 elementary
education had become compulsory.
-Trade Union Act: legalized the trades unions.
- The Ballot Act :introduced the secret ballota t the
elections in 1872.
-The Third Reform Act :extended voting to all male
householders.

The end of an era

The Victorian age ended with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. For nearly a century it had
embodied decorum, stability and continuity.
Her gold and diamond jubilees for her 50 and 60 years on the throne were celebrated with
huge public parades and for her funeral the streets of London were filled with mourners. She
was buried next to her loved one at Windsor Castle.
 VICTORIAN POETRY
During Victoria's reign, poetry became more concerned with social reality. This led on the one
hand to the creation of majestic poetry linked to the myth and belief of the greatness of
England; on the other hand to the creation of poetry more inclined towards anti-myth which
had to solve the ethical problems raised by science and progress.

Now the poet was seen as a 'prophet' and a philosopher.

People expected that he could reconcile faith and progress, as well as sprinkle a little romance
over the unromantic materialism of modern life.

The major poets of the age were:

• Alfred Tennyson
• Robert Browning, who is remembered for his best 'dramatic monologues' in which he was an
original creator of characters;
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who wrote beautiful love sonnets;
•Gerard Manley Hopkins, noted in particular for his rhythm which broke with conventional
rules;
•Matthew Arnold, who used poetry to express his dissatisfaction with his time di lui.
The DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE is a narrative poem in which a single character can
address one or more listeners. It is related to the soliloquy used in Elizabethan plays: in a
dramatic monologue the speaking character is different from the poet himself.
The poet does not speak of him in his own voice, the reader must infer whether he intends to
accept or criticize what the speaker has said.
Since the speaker is to be judged only on the same words as him, different points of view
can be justified and supported.
In the dramatic monologue, the tone of the language is polemical, aimed at revealing the
protagonist's thoughts, thus reflecting a great interest in human psychology.

During the Victorian age, for the first time,

there was a communion between writers and
their readers. One of the reasons for this close
relationship was the enormous growth of the
middle classes. Although its members belonged
to many different levels, they were avid
consumers of literature. Furthermore, the
Victorian writers themselves often belonged to
the middle class.
 THE NOVEL DURING VICTORIAN AGE

• The Victorians showed a marked interest in PROSA, and the greatest literary
success of the time is found in the novel, which soon became the most popular form
of literature and the main source of entertainment.

• In 1840, novelists felt they had a moral and social responsibility. They wanted to
reflect social changes, such as the industrial revolution, the struggle for democracy
and the growth of cities.

• The novelists of the early part of the Victorian period described society as they saw
it and, with the exception of those feelings that offended the current morality,
particularly about sex, nothing escaped their scrutiny.

• The setting of the Victorian novelists was the city, which was the main symbol of
industrial civilization. The writers focused on creating realistic characters that the
audience could easily identify.
 TYPE OF NOVEL
• The novel of manners: it dealt with economic and social problems and described a particular class or
situation.
• The Humanitarian Novel: Charles Dickens' novels are most admired for their tone, which combines
humor with a sentimental call for reform for the less fortunate. They constitute the bulk of what is generally
called the 'humanitarian novel‘.

• The novel of formation: These novels dealt with one character's development from early youth to some
sort of maturity. They focus on intense subjective experiences rather than on the world of social interaction.
• Literary nonsense. A particular aspect of Victorian literature is what is called 'nonsense, created by
Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.

It is important to underline that a great number of novels published during the mid-Victorian period, were
written by women.
 CHARLES DICKENS
life
• He was born in Portsmouth in 1812.
• Dickens had an unhappy childhood, was forced to start working in a factory when his father went to
prison for debt, and then, when his father got out, he found a job as a delivery boy who allowed him
to study at night.
• Is possible to find reflections of this disadvantaged childhood can be found in all of his novels.
(child labor, poverty, presentation of women as grotesque figures).
• In 1824 he became a successful reporter of parliamentary debates. starting to write in a newspaper
where, from 1833, he started writing short stories.

Characters: Dickens moved the social frontiers of the

novel by changing the subject of the stories: before him
all the subjects belonged to the upper classes, with him
belong to the whole society, also talking about the poor
and their world (like other realist novelists did in other
countries) often in a London unknown to bourgeois
readers.

Children: are often the most important characters in

Dickens' novels, they represent teachers of morals.
 OLIVER TWIST

The plot:
Speak about the story of a child of unknown parents, Oliver, that lives in a workhouse in bad
conditions.
He is later sold to a family that uses him as a servant. Then he runs away to London where he
fell in the hands of a band of pickpockets that tries to make a thief of him.
He is helped by an old gentleman. Oliver is eventually kidnapped by the gang.
Finally he the boss of the gang was arrested and Oliver comes to live to the home of the
gentleman and he found that he has noble origins.

The world of the workhouse:

Dickens attacked the social evils of his times such as poor houses.
The idea that make this poverty in the workhouses is that if people see bad conditions in
poverty, they will fight to became not poor.
 HARD TIMES
The plot
 Unlike romantic poets, that were used to describe nature and to ignore towns because they despised
industrialization’s effects, Dickens writes novels of denunciations. In other words, Dickens is not satisfied by
industrialization, which he considers a retrograde step because of the destruction of environment it brings. He
shows the negative effects of industrialization. In this novel Dickens describes Coketown, an imaginary industrial
town in the north of England. The description of Coketown, and the lives of the people who work there, reveal
Dickens's indignation at what he regarded as the ugliness, squalor and materialism of the new industrial age. He
accuses:
1.    Social and economical system
2.    Factory owners
3.    The mentality: in fact the Victorians were proud of industrialization’s effects and of their achievements; they
were satisfied by their progress (which is in contrast with primitive forms of live).

CHARCTERS

Dickens denounced social injustices but he had not supported the radical movements of his time. He was
a moderate reformer and believed in human goodness, benevolence, in the possibility of better human
condition of life.

There’s an overall atmosphere of generosity, reconcilement of charity and philantrophism in his novels.
Dickens disapproved violence and revolution and looked upon the subversive power of working classes
with suspicion and worry. Dickens is not a true realist, but a caricaturist and a deformer.
 CHRISTMAS CAROL
The plot

 In this story the social battle against the poverty, typical of Dickens’ novels, is clearly expressed. The
writer was deeply conscious of social injustice, political incompetence, the poverty and the suffering of
the great mass of people, and the class conflicts of Victorian England.
The result was an increasingly critical attitude towards contemporary society.
Dickens combines the sentimental, melodramatic story with keen social satire and realism.
This enables him to tackle important social issues:
the new Poor Law which assigned poor people to workhouse in which living conditions resembled those
of prison.
The set of Christmas Carol is London, the favourite set of Dickens; but in his novels he shows a variety
of setting, from the countryside, through the provincial towns to the industrial settlements

CHARCTERS

The characters of his works are easily divided into good

(Bob Cratchit, Fred) and bad (Scrooge).
The plots of his novels are all complex. Dickens was a
great master of the English language: his ability to create
dialogue is unmatched.
He was able to combine pathetic with comic. The main
strength of Dickens’ style is his humour.