VICTORIAN AGE (1837-1902): HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Historical Context

The Victorian age usually covers in literary history a period of time longer than the actual reign pf Queen Victoria, stretching from 1832 (the year of the first Reform Bill) to 1902 (the end of the Boer War).

This is a period of expansion and prosperity , of industrial development and unceasing scientific and technological progress. England enjoyed several decades of unequalled wealth and power, and a new wave of optimism began to sweep over the country.

•  Queen Victoria

When King William IV died, he was succeeded by his niece Victoria, who was only 18. She became soon very popular because of her strong sense of duty and her simplicity.

The constitution under Queen Victoria did not differ from the one we know today.

Her inexperience facilitated the British two-party system. The reign was politically administered by a series of great Prime Ministers: Peel and Disraeli among the Tories (Conservatives), Palmerston and Gladstone among the Whigs (Liberals).

In 1867 the Liberals proposed the Second Reform Bill , who passed under Conservative Government, which gave the right of vote to the town labourers, but left the agricultural labourers and miners still unfranchised.

Only in 1884, with the Third Reform Bill , the electorate was extended to all male workers.

Il 1892 the Indipendent Labour Party was founded and became in 1900 the Modern British Labour Party.

•  Industrialisation

The process of industrialisation, started in the eighteen century, reached the height.

•  Chartist Movement

•  The Chartist Movement started in 1837 and ended in 1848. It aim was to obtain full democratic participation of the working classes in politics. This group was composed by radicals and workers, who in 1839 presented to Parliament a document called "People's Charter"; in six points it asked for:

•  universal suffrage

•  vote by ballot

•  annual Parliaments

•  payment of members of Parliament

•  abolition of the property qualification (that implical a partecipation in Parliament for the working class)

•  equal electoral districts

But the Charter failed and his objectives were taken again by the Reform Bill (1867) and by the Trade Union Act (1875), which finally sanctioned the legality and importance of the Trade Union Movement.

•  Corn Laws

The Corn-Laws were reason of discontent in workers and middle-classe people, because they fixed a too hight price for the foreign corn. Infact, these ones were imposed during Napoleonic Wars to protect British agriculture and never more repealed. In 1846 the Corn Laws are repealed and the consequences were:

•  the Whigs replaced Tories to power; infact the repeal caused much discontent inside Conservative Party, because it represented a victory of the industrial interests agianst the agricultural ones of the landowners.

•  reduction of the bread price;

•   

•  Free trade

A policy of free trade was adopted by the Prime Minister Peel, and it was supported by industrial middle class. Because of the limited foreign competition, there was no need to impose tariffs to protect English manufacturers. These uncontrolled commercial transactions between nations were important for the European economic grown.

•  The Crimean War

From 1854 till 1856 England together with France was engaged in the Crimean War to check Russia's expansion. From Waterloo, for Britain this has been the only international conflict during the century; but this did not touche people at home very much.

•  The British Empire

British colonisation of East and West Africa dates back to the 1880 and at the end of the century covered a quarter of the earth's landsurface and a third of its population.

England also tried to enlarge Indian territories, but this caused the Indian Mutiny (1856): the consequences were that India passed under British Government and East India Company was abolished. So, in 1877, Queen Victoria became Empress of India.

Social Context

•  Oxford Movement

Great Britain underwent a gradual process of democratization , know as Oxford Movement, composed by a group of Catholics who asked some reforms in favour of the Church of Rome.

•  Evangelicalism

It was a religious movement who contributed to the abolition of slavery and to the First Reform Bill. But they had also a puritanic view of life , so they advocated the abolition of some public entertrainments.

•  Urbanisation

England passed from an agricultural country to an industrial one . This caused a migration of rural people to the industrial areas in search of jobs. So population in industrial cities as London doubled and more people lived in towns and cities than in the countyside.

People in cities lived in intolerable situation, in bad sanitary condition that contributed to the diffusion of typhus and cholera .

•  the Utilitarianism and Liberalism

Whigs' government under Gladstone, was influenced by the politcal philosopher John Stuart Mill . He agreed to the basic principle of Utilitarianism (the pursuit of the gratest happiness for the greatest number of people), but he also accepted a balance between individual freedom and state intervention.

A series of Parlamentary Acts that contributed to a modernisation in services and institutions.

Liberalism was a politic philosophy that defended individual freedoom from any external intervention in industry or commerce, and the free trade.

•  Exploitation of workers

Workers lived in extreme poverty and had to work sometimes up to 14 or 16 hours . Also women and children were employed in harmful and at hight risk occupations. There were two nations: one of the poors and the other one of the rich.

•  Victorian society

•  aristocracy (landowners);

•  middle class

•  working class

This period marked the triumph of the industrial middle classes, with their confidence in progress , their belief in the theory of laissez-faire in economics and utilitarianism in philosophy, their generic philanthropism and sentimentalism, their conventional religious faith and their morality observant of exterior forms and conventions characterised by a prudery that often bordered on the ridiculous.

This is what has been called Victorian compromise , that is the utilitarian compromise of a large section of English society that saw industrial development only as a source of prosperity and progress, while it tended to ignore the many social conflicts and problems raised by it.

But not all the Victorians accepted the current optimistic interpretation of the new industrial civilization; indeed, many of them attacked its contradictions. They realised that it left unsolved the problem of the distribution of wealth, a problem that increased social injustice.

•  The values

Their values were respectability, good manners, hard work, probity, family, the unquestioned father's authority. " Respectability " was the key word of Victorianism: manners and language became very sober, and word connected with sex was considered a taboo.

Queen Victoria proved a very prolific mother (nine children) and encouraged big families. In family the father was more authoritarian than before and the mother was submissive.

•  Women's conditions

Middle-class women had to adhere to a strict code: they had to do only respectable jobs, as teaching, writing or doing social activities, learning to play the piano, to dress very formal clothes also in privicy.

•  Reforms

Several bills tried to improve lower classes' conditions:

•  Factory Acts (they regulated child labour in factories);

•  Ten Hours' Act (which limited the working hours to ten a day for both the sex);

•  Mines Act (it regulated employement of children und ten and women);

•  Public Health Act (wich improved health conditions);

•  Education Act (it provited a system of state primary schools);

•  Parlamentary Reform (about introduction of the secret ballot);

•  Emancipation of all religious sects (by which Catholics were allowed to enter universities and work in government jobs);

•  Adoption of the famous English week (by which Saturday afternoon was devoted to pleasure and entertainment an Sunday deprived of all sorts of amusement).

•  Socialism

The revolutionary socialism in Europe didn't involve Britain, because of its politics based on a gradual reform movement. So British Socialism is represented by the Fabian Society (1884), an intellectual's group that based their activity on conferences and pamphleteering.

It was founded by Sidney and Beatrice Webb , and it was ispirated by Marx's doctrine and advocated gradual reforms .

•  Philosophical currents

•  Jeremy Bentham : He is the preacher of Utilitarianism. He stated that only what is useful is good, and all has to be directed to create the greatest good for the gratest number of person.

•  Charles Darwin : In 1859 it was published his book On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection . His theory of evolution says that man has a natural origin from apes and that world is regulated by the law of natural selection. So he denied that man is the result of God's creation.

•  Karl Marx : He based his theories observating British economy. He advocated a new social organisation and an equal distribution of wealth.

•  Auguste Compte : He is the founder of Positivism.

Cultural Context

•  The genres

The novel is the most widespread genre in that period and also the most appreciated by middle-class. Novels were often read aloud by a member of the family to all the household. Books' diffusion was favoured by :

•  circulating libraries;

•  better ways of communication, which made it easier to bring reading material;

•  the invention of new printing machinery, which made this material cheaper;

•  the fact that prose fiction became also a vehicle to ask and to support the ideas.

There is a determinant factor which contributed to modify the structure of the novel: this is the publication in serial instalments . The consequences were:

•  more readers among the lower classes, because books printed separately costed a lower price (one schilling);

•  the plot was constructed according to a defined structure;

•  episodes could be unlimited;

•  this method originated a "mass literature".

Types of novels:

•  sensation novel : The features were the recourse to the "sensational", mystery, compicated plot, drama. Some of sensation novels' writers are Dickens and Collins.

•  imaginative romantic novels : as the novels of the Bronte Sisters.

•  historical novels and romances ;

•  fantastic novels : the ones written by Lewis Caroll.

•  The reading public

The Victorian age reader wanted to find realistic aspects and fiction at the same time, to allowed himself to escape from routine life. Stories shouldn't be complicated, it shouldn't have any reference to sex and it had to be in accordence with to Christian morality.

•  The Aesthetic Movement

Developed in 1880, it claimed that art should not have any moral, social or political purpose, because this is not necessary to true art and real beauty. This theory was adopted by artists and writers who believed that themselves and their works were non-conformist

When Victoria died, her son Edward VII ascended the throne. He had a good relationship with neighbouring countries; only in German the king's efforts for peace were not successful, because German emperor wanted to extend German influence over all Europe.