The Victorian Age

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The Victorian Age

• The Age and Its Double

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Lesson Outline

• Queen Victoria.
• Some common ideas about the age.
• Periodization Conventional subdivisions.
• Diversity. Compromise. Contradictions.
• Victorian values.
• Poverty, unrest and reform
• Change and progress
• The Woman Question.
• Science.
• Religion
• High culture and popular culture.
• Architecture
• Art.
• The genres. The canon.
• The construction of Victorianism
• Modernist attitudes regarding the Victorian age
  and their influence on its construction.
•  

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season
of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was
the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we
were all going direct the other way - in short,
the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on
its being received, for good or for evil, in the
superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
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Queen Victoria, an Icon

• Victoria b. 1819. German family House of Hanover
  .
• Father Duke of Kent (George IIIs son) d. 1820
  Victoria heir presumptive. Her uncle, King
  William IV, had no heirs. Educated for the
  throne in native German and English, by mother
  (House of Saxe-Coburg)
• Came to the throne 1837 (coronation 1838)
• 1840 married Albert Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a
  German prince, her cousin. Image of bourgeois
  happiness. A strong morality and family values,
  in contrast to the sexual, financial and personal
  scandals that had been associated with previous
  members of the House of Hanover and which had
  discredited the monarchy. Lived at Buckingham
  Palace
• Had 9 children. 42 grandchildren. The grandmother
  of Europe.
• Albert died 1861. Mourned for 10 yrs. No public
  appearances. Victoria wore black ever since.
  Albert Memorial. Later established close
  relationship with a Scottish manservant, John
  Brown. Maybe secret marriage.
• 1876 Empress of India. Under Prime Minister
  Disraelis influence, expansionist foreign
  policy.
• Golden Jubilee (1887). Diamond Jubilee (1897)
  parade with representatives of all colonies.
• Died 1901. Longest reigning British sovereign.

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An Age of Contrasts

• Named by extrinsic facts.
• Single label for a long and heterogeneous age.
• No clear-cut features to characterize it.
• Actually, an age of contrasts
• Faith in reason vs fantasy, sensationalism, the
  gothic
• Earnestness vs nonsense, fun
• Moralism vs unbridled sexuality, erotic lit.,
  the nude
• Patriarchal repression of women vs emancipation,
  the New Woman, womens achievements in lit.
• Victorianism is all but stuffy. It contains the
  seeds of modernity.

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The Victorian compromise

• The coexistence of contrasting realities
• prosperity and progress on the one hand, and
  poverty, ugliness and injustice on the other.
• Ethical conformism vs corruption
• Moralism and philanthropy vs capitalistic
  greediness. ,
• Private life vs public behaviour.
• Victorian culture was dominated by a capitalist
  economy and a patriarchal structure which however
  were subtly undermined and challenged.
• The Victorians are interesting not only because
  they are complicit with the ideological systems
  they often thought themselves resisting, but
  because they often tried to be oppositional and
  were remarkably alert to the constraints that
  language and conventions imposed on them (George
  Levine)

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Victorian Values

• Earnestness.
• Self help.
• Respectability a mixture of both morality and
  hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social
  standards.
• Puritanism, all sorts of taboos, even linguistic.
  Influence of Queen Victoria.
• Family values.

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Periodization

• Victorias reign 1837-1901
• Victorian Age 1830 1890
• 1830-1848
• Ruthless Industrial Revolution laissez-faire
  policies move to the cities growth of slums
  social unrest, Chartism, 1832 Reform Act Marx
  Engels, cf Dickens
• 1848-1870
• Wealth and well-being triumphalism (Victorian
  compromise), Great Exhiition 1851, Empire,
  Expansion, Identification of middle-classes with
  monarchy. The Crimean war
• 1870-1890
• Military and economic set-backs. Uncertainty.
  Loss of continental power status. Queen
  Victorias Jubilee. The Boer war.
• 1890 --? decadence, fin de siècle.
• Debunking of earnestness. Art for arts sake
  movement. Aestheticism.

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Change in the social sphere

• Social change
• Reform Bill 1832 Democratic process (partial
  extension right of vote to middle classes)
• Chartism (Radical movement male suffrage)
  failed but Created a framework for future
  working-class organisations.
• Repeal Corn Laws (free trade, anti-protectionism)
• Poor Laws 1834
• Growth of cities, new cities. Growth of slums and
  dire poverty
• The Industrial Revolution
• meant that the balance of power shifted from the
  aristocracy, whose position and wealth was based
  on land, to the newly rich business leaders.
• Education Acts extended compulsory education.
  Literacy

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Urbanisation

• On the home front the Industrial Revolution
  accelerated the migration of the population from
  country to city.
• The result of this movement was the development
  of horrifying slums and cramped row housing in
  the overcrowded cities.
• Misery and distress among the working classes.
  The new urban conditions created a lot of health
  problems. Whole families were often crowded in
  single rooms, where lack of hygiene occasionally
  led to cholera.
• By 1900 80 of the population lived in
  cities,-the poor living further away from the
  city core.
• Suburban rail transit

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Advances in Technology

• Mining (coal)
• Industrial production
• Rise of capitalism.
• Benefits for middle classes (heating, lighting
  etc.).
• Exploitation of minors and women.
• Transportation.
• High-speed printing.
• Communications (telegraph photpgraphy)

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Problems and events of the early Victorian period

• Age of extreme poverty and social unrest. The
  establishment of Poor Houses.
• The Chartist movement began in 1839 with demands
  for electoral reform and universal male suffrage.
  
• The movement was taken over by radical reformers
  and was dealt with very harshly by the
  authorities.
• The Anti Corn Law League was another voice for
  social reform. They advocated total free trade,
  but it was not until 1846 that the Corn Laws were
  completely repealed
• 1846 Irish Famine
• Marx and Engles were inspired by the conditions
  of England. It seemed as if a revolution would
  break up, any moment.
• Dickens, Gaskell, Kingsley portrayed the poverty
  and unrest of this era .

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From Friedrich Engels The Condition of the
Working Class (1845). 1

• Every great town has one or more slum areas into
  which the working classes are packed. Sometimes,
  of course, poverty is to be found hidden away in
  alleys close to the stately homes of the wealthy.
  Generally, however, the workers are segregated in
  separate districts where they struggle through
  life as best they can out of sight of the more
  fortunate classes of society. The slums of the
  English towns have much in commonthe worst
  houses in a town being found in the worst
  districts. They are generally unplanned
  wildernesses of one- or two-storied terrace
  houses built of brick. Wherever possible these
  have cellars which are also used as dwellings.

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2

• These little houses of three or four rooms and a
  kitchen are called cottages, and throughout
  England, except for some parts of London, are
  where the working classes normally live.These
  streets themselves are usually unpaved and full
  of holes. They are filthy and strewn with animal
  and vegetable refuse. Since they have neither
  gutters nor drains, the refuse accumulates in
  stagnant, stinking puddles. Ventilation in the
  slums is inadequate owing to the hopelessly
  unplanned nature of these areas. A great many
  people live huddled together in a very small
  area, and so it is easy to imagine the nature of
  the air in these workers' quarters

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Events of the mid-Victorian period (1848-1870)

• The Great Exhibition.
• Improvements in working conditions (Factory
  Acts), education and health.
• The Crimean War
• The Indian Mutiny and transfer of India from the
  East India Company to the Crown.

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The Great Exhibition

• 1851 Great Exhibition marked the triumph of the
  middle classes, advances in technology and
  imperial expansion.
• Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, was the main
  backer of the 1851 Great Exhibition. This was the
  first "world's fair", with exhibits from most of
  the world's nations.
• The exhibition was held in Hyde Park, and the
  showpiece was the Crystal Palace, a prefabricated
  steel and glass structure like a gigantic
  greenhouse, which housed the exhibits.

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The Crimean War

• Overseas, England became involved in the Crimean
  War (1854, a contest between the major European
  powers and Russia for influence over territories
  of the declining Ottoman empire.
• Military incompetence. Riots against the war and
  parliamentary interrogations.
• See poem"The Charge of the Light Brigade", by
  Alfred Tennyson.
• First of the modern wars technical changes
• tactical uses of railways, telegraph
• Live war reporting public kept up-to-date.
  Documented by photographs
• Establishment of more humaneand modern nursing
  practices under the influence of Florence
  Nightingale, the "Lady with the Lamp". Use of
  anesthetics.

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The Indian Mutiny 1857

• India until 1858 was governed by the Est India
  Company with government assistance.
• The Mutiny in the Hindu army was sparked off by
  religion causes. The army rebelled and massacred
  many British officers, administrators, and
  families.
• The rebellion led to the dissolution of the East
  India Company in 1858. It also led the British to
  reorganise the army, the financial system and the
  administration in India. It was the beginning of
  the Raj and of the Indian empire. Queen Victoria
  became Empress in 1876.
• .

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Unprecedented change in the condition of women.

• At the beginning of the century, women had no
  legal existence, no right to property, no
  guardianship over children, no right to
  education.
• Debate over a womans sphere, Angel in the
  house ideology.
• Woman idealized Angel in the house
• The New woman
• Woman reified
• Rise of prostitution
• Erotic literature
• Painting of nudes
• Yet, social movements and legal reform secured
  many rights for women
• Factory Act
• Married womens property Act,
• Education extended to women. 1848 Queens
  College.
• The suffrage movement

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Leisure and Tourism

• Technology changed leisure in Victorian Britain
• Influence of railways and of the invention of the
  bicycle.
• On working-classes
• Outings in the country-side
• Bank holidays made escapes to seaside resorts
  (Blackpool, Brighton) possible. Development of
  seaside resorts.
• Holiday packages a day at the seaside (train and
  meal)
• On the middle-classes
• mass tourism.
• Thomas Cook, first travel agent (1841)
• Organized trips to the Continent.
• Travellers cheques.
• The Music Hall. Theatres
• The amusement-pier at the seaside resort.

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Science

• Progress in science and technology (steam,
  electricity, medicine, sanitation).
• Mostly scientific knowledge had the purpose of
  supporting a theological vision of nature.
  Science had to prove the existence of God.
• Development of some specific scientific areas had
  a great impact on culture, religion and society
• Geology
• Biology
• Anthropology

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Lyell and Darwin

• Lyells Principles of Geology prove that research
  on transformations of the globe contradict the
  creationism of the Scriptures.
• Tennyson In Memoriam
• George Eliot
• Darwins natural observations on the Beagle and
  the publication of The Origin of Species (1859)
  introduce evolutionism, which goes against the
  Bible also in the field of biology.

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Anthropology

• Anthropology affirms itself as the modern science
  of man in the Nineteenth cent
• John Lubbock Notions of primitive people
  (prehistoric man compared to populations living
  in colonized countries)
• Idea of bringing civilisation to primitive people
  used in order to justify economic expansion,
  colonialism.
• Edward Burnett Tylors Primitive Culture
  introduced the ethnological concept of culture
  there is an essential uniformity among different
  people but there are various stages of
  development and evolution.
• Frazer, The Golden Bough
• The knowledge of primitive cultures helped prove
  that England had reached the highest point of
  civilisation.

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Victorian Ecocriticism

• Ruthless expansion, exploitation of the soil,
  inconsiderate building, transformation of inner
  cities.
• Many Victorian writers show an awareness of the
  degradation the physical environment was
  undergoing. (Dickens, Hopkins.
• Economic policies of laissez-faire, colonialism
  and capitalism increased rural poverty and
  hunger and exacerbated famine.

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Architecture

• Because of great fire of London (1666), the
  image of London is mostly Victorian.
• Economic and social development matched by great
  architectural development.
• Various revivals, but especially gothic revival.
• Monumental buildings
• Covent Garden.
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Royal Albert Hall
• Albert Memorial

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Art

• Much indoctrinating, anecdotical painting with a
  moral message. Showed how ordinary people lived.
  Pictured the condition of Victorian society.
• Often too sentimental.
• A visual record of an era before photography was
  used to document reality (photography, however,
  sed as a model for painting) . Celebration of the
  city and of a changing landscape.
• Main focus the world of bourgeois Britain
  family portraits and paintings to decorate their
  houses. Great market for artists who opened their
  studios to the public and became rich.
• Even the great Romantic painter William Turner
  Turner became interested in contemporary
  technology and painted bridges, trains, ships
  etc. documenting progress in an expressive way.
• (Frith Ramsgate Sands and Turner Rain, Steam and
  Speed

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Revolutions in the Victorian Art Scene

• The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Founded in 1848
  by William Holman Hunt. Rossetti, Millais.
• Painters and poets. Refusal of academic painting.
  Go back to Italian Quattrocento.
• Magazine The Germ
• The first avantgarde movement.
• Arts and Crafts Movement (1860-1910)
• Inspired by Ruskin. A reaction to the ugliness of
  industrialized England.
• Design. Decorative objects for homes, including
  wallpaper, textiles, furniture and stained glass.
• William Morris.
• Libertys Department Store
• Kelmcott Press
• Victoria and Albert Museum

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Religion

• Contested from the right Tractarianism Oxford
  Movement Newman
• HG.M.Hopkins
• Contested from the left. Dissent (Evangelical
  movement, Methodists. Anti-slavery movement.
  Child Labour).
• Put into question by recent scientific theories
  and especially by Darwin (although he never
  excluded the possibility of a higher purpose
  behind the order of nature).

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Relevant Topics in Literature

• Residual Romanticism in the novel and in poetry
• On the whole an engaged literature responding to
  relevant issues
• Imaginative responses to industrialisation and
  urbanisation representation of social upheaval.
• Literature reflects the crisis of faith and
  religious belief.
• Takes the place religious teaching. Denounces
  sins offers moral lessons.
• A destabilized age reflected in a literature
  weighed with doubts, angst and contradictions
• A literature challenging ways to deal with
  morally and socially repressed topics
  experimental
• Complicit with Capitalism, Colonialism and the
  rise of the empire

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The Great Victorian Novel

• Major achievement of the age. Vital.
  Comprehensive. Portrays various aspects of
  society.
• Expression of the middle-classes and of their
  values.
• Realism. Self-referentiality.
• But also desire to improve, to correct.
  Didactic. Engaged. Yet complicit with the ssytem.
• Mixes sentimentalism with humour.
• Henry James defined Victorian novels Loose
  baggy monsters
• 3 vols. Instalments. Cliff-hangers. Cf. Soap
  operas.
• Circulating libraries. Family reading.

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Major Novelists

• Charles Dickens evolution from optimism to
  pessimism.
• William Thackeray.
• The Brontes, a literary myth.
• Elizabeth Gaskell
• George Eliot
• Anthony Trollope
• Thomas Hardy
• George Gissing
• Rudyard Kipling

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Unconventional genres

• Even realistic novels contaminated by other
  genres.
• The irrational.
• A literatre devoid of high seriosness,withot a
  prpose, intended for entertainment
• The supernatural, the uncanny, the gothic. (Bram
  Stoker, Le Fanu, Stevenson, Wilde).
• Psychological enqiry.
• Sensationalism.
• Erotic literature
• Detective novels. (Dickens, Collins, Conan Doyle)
• Science fiction. (Wells, Butler)
• Fantasy, nonsense. (Lewis Carroll, Esdward Lear)
• Childrens Literature

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Questioning Victorianism

• Samuel Butler. The Way of All Flesh
• The Aesthetic Movement.
• Walter Pater
• Oscar Wilde

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Poetry

• Residual lyricism ( Romanticism).
• More innovative than other genres.
• Contamination with other genres and epistemic
  fields.
• Tennyson / Science
• Arnold philosophy
• Hopkins / theology, linguistics
• Robert Browning theatre (dramatic monologue)
  detective novel The Ring and the Book
• E. Barrettt Browning Aurora Leigh a novel in
  verse.
• Pre-Raphaelites fantasy, fairy - tales.
• Swinburne / erotica

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The Victorian Sage

• Age characterized by great prose works addressing
  varios problems and criticizing the age and its
  shortcomings.
• Carlyle, on the effects of industrial
  capitalism.
• Ruskin against machines, industry and the evils
  of British society.
• Newman on drying up of religiosity
• Matthew Arnold on absence of ideals and hypocrisy
  (philistinism)
• J. Stuart Mil, on absence of freedom and on the
  sbjection of women.l

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Journalism

• The extension of British journalism in the
  Victorian age has been the result, largely, of
  technology resulting in cheapness and of ability
  to obtain news in increasing quantity and speed,
  and, in some respects, with greater accuracy.
• Freedom of press little censorship.
• Multiplication in the number of daily and weekly
  journals
• Increased circulation (by 100 times, over the
  century)
• Speed printing, cheap paper made from wood pulp
  led to low prices. Advertising brought prices
  down.
• Speed
• Distribution (railways)
• Use of telegraph

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Various constructions of Victorianism

• Early constructions underline
• Realism
• Referentiality
• Character
• Moral intention
• Earnestness,Work ethic
• Prudishness, repression
• Bourgeois values
• Patriarchism, capitalism, Imperialism
• Hypocrisy

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Images of the Victorian Age

• What Victorians told us
• e.g. Ruskin agst. Evils of industrialisation and
  materialism
• Arnold Philistinism
• J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women
• What Modernists told us
• Strachey Eminent Victorians
• Woolf (read from Orlando)

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From Virginia Woolfs Orlandochap. V

• The great cloud which hung, not only over London,
  but over the whole of the British Isles on the
  first day of the nineteenth century stayed, or
  rather, did not stay, for it was buffeted about
  constantly by blustering gales, long enough to
  have extraordinary consequences upon those who
  lived beneath its shadow. A change seemed to have
  come over the climate of England. Rain fell
  frequently, but only in fitful gusts, which were
  no sooner over than they began again. The sun
  shone, of course, but it was so girt about with
  clouds and the air was so saturated with water,
  that its beams were discoloured and purples,
  oranges, and reds of a dull sort took the place
  of the more positive landscapes of the eighteenth
  century. Under this bruised and sullen canopy the
  green of the cabbages was less intense, and the
  white of the snow was muddied. But what was
  worse, damp now began to make its way into every
  house damp, which is the most insidious of all
  enemies, for while the sun can be shut out by
  blinds, and the frost roasted by a hot fire, damp
  steals in while we sleep damp is silent,
  imperceptible, ubiquitous. Damp swells the wood,
  furs the kettle, rusts the iron, rots the stone.
  So gradual is the process, that it is not until
  we pick up some chest of drawers, or coal
  scuttle, and the whole thing drops to pieces in
  our hands, that we suspect even that the disease
  is at work.

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Continued

• Thus, stealthily and imperceptibly, none marking
  the exact day or hour of the change, the
  constitution of England was altered and nobody
  knew it. Everywhere the effects were felt. The
  hardy country gentleman, who had sat down gladly
  to a meal of ale and beef in a room designed,
  perhaps by the brothers Adam, with classic
  dignity, now felt chilly. Rugs appeared beards
  were grown trousers were fastened tight under
  the instep. The chill which he felt in his legs
  the country gentleman soon transferred to his
  house furniture was muffled walls and tables
  were covered nothing was left bare. Then a
  change of diet became essential. The muffin was
  invented and the crumpet. Coffee supplanted the
  after-dinner port, and, as coffee led to a
  drawing-room in which to drink it, and a
  drawing-room to glass cases, and glass cases to
  artificial flowers, and artificial flowers to
  mantelpieces, and mantelpieces to pianofortes,
  and pianofortes to drawing-room ballads, and
  drawing-room ballads (skipping a stage or two) to
  innumerable little dogs, mats, and china
  ornaments, the home which had become extremely
  important was completely altered.

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Continued

• Outside the house it was another effect of the
  damp ivy grew in unparalleled profusion. Houses
  that had been of bare stone were smothered in
  greenery. No garden, however formal its original
  design, lacked a shrubbery, a wilderness, a maze.
  What light penetrated to the bedrooms where
  children were born was naturally of an obfusc
  green, and what light penetrated to the
  drawing-rooms where grown men and women lived
  came through curtains of brown and purple plush.
  But the change did not stop at outward things.
  The damp struck within. Men felt the chill in
  their hearts the damp in their minds. In a
  desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into
  some sort of warmth one subterfuge was tried
  after another. Love, birth, and death were all
  swaddled in a variety of fine phrases. The sexes
  drew further and further apart. No open
  conversation was tolerated. Evasions and
  concealments were sedulously practised on both
  sides. And just as the ivy and the evergreen
  rioted in the damp earth outside, so did the same
  fertility show itself within. The life of the
  average woman was a succession of childbirths.
  She married at nineteen and had fifteen or
  eighteen children by the time she was thirty for
  twins abounded. Thus the British Empire came into
  existence and thus for there is no stopping
  damp it gets into the inkpot as it gets into the
  woodwork sentences swelled, adjectives
  multiplied, lyrics became epics, and little
  trifles that had been essays a column long were
  now encyclopaedias in ten or twenty volumes.

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What have we inherited from the Victorians?

• Modern cities.
• Established industrialism (factory and
  manufacturing life had come to stay)
• 'multiple national identities' (the separate
  traditions of England, Wales, Scotland and
  Ireland) opening the way for a multiracial
  society.
• A divided public culture.
• Middle-class taste drove the increasing
  commercialisation of publishing, painting and
  architecture,
• Largely working-class readership depended on hack
  writers, producers of penny dreadfuls and gallows
  speeches who sold in their hundreds of thousands.