The victorian age 1830-1880
Historical Outline
The passing of the Reform Bill in 1832 acknowledged a more significant political and economic role for the middle classes and the vote extended to all members of this class. The old conceptions of Whig and Tory were substituted by Liberal and Conservative. Liberals implemented the principles of Adam Smith, unlimited free competition in trade or in laissez-faire economy. In the meantime, several politically important changes took place: in 1833 slavery was abolished; in 1846 free trade became a national policy; in 1845 Jews were allowed into public office; and in 1872 the institution of voting by ballot was inaugurated. Darwin's treatise The Origin of Species (1859), still regarded as a breakthrough in Natural Science, suddenly undermined all the church authority and the biblical creation myth, and made the leading thinkers re-evaluate man's historical role. In 1830, the first Liverpool and Manchester railway was launched; in 1884, the first underground line was opened in London. At the end of the century, when steam power was used for railways and iron steamships, and after introducing the telegraph, intercontinental cable, photography and compulsory education, one could not look back without a sense of wonder. But such swift changes were also very painful as the rapid economic growth brought sharp financial inequality, social and gender issues.
Queen Victoria (reigned 1837-1901), coming to the throne at just eighteen, ruled the world's dominant British Empire, extending to Canada, Australia, India, and parts of Africa. During her reign, three main controversies affected the Victorians: evolution, industrialization, and the woman issue. A People's Charter was written in 1838, starting the Chartist movement, and calling for universal rights to vote by secret ballot. Textile workers were given a half-day holiday on Saturday, the employment of chimney boys came to an end in 1840. In 1842 women and children were excluded from the mines, in 1847 a ten-hour working-day was established. By 1875, the public health system was enacted.
Victorian Literature
Victorian literature is diverse both in style and in subject matter, an indication of its daring independence and passion for literary experiments, but it also signals a lack of a general agreement as to the social functions of literature and art in a newly forming democratic society. Victorian poets from
Robert Browning (1812-1889) to Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) show the strong influence of Shelley. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) frequently writes in the tradition of Keats, and Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) in that of Wordsworth. The most frequent subjects in Victorian literature were a concern for man's relationship to God and a sensitive consciousness of the past, present, and the future.
The increasing prosperity of the middle class and scientific inventions caused a serious disturbance on the part of some writers who felt all the dangers of the progress to the soul. Carlyle suffered at the sight of the dirty lives of factory workers, hated industrial machines and proclaimed that human labour alone was sacred. John Ruskin, though mostly interested in art, stated that only great spiritual values could provide for great art; he condemned Victorian utility and practicality as the ills of industrialized society. In the religious sphere, Cardinal John Newman (1801-1890) found a spiritual beauty in the ritual of the Medieval church and tried to uproot Puritanism, which he felt had damaged the English Church.
While Victorian fiction is filled with love and personal relationships, the non- fictional writings brought to the forefront the fate of humanity in an industrial society. Some of the non-fiction writers are Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), John Mill (1806-1873), John Ruskin (1819-1900), Thomas Huxley (1835-1895), and Walter Pater (1839-1894). Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), wrote essays and histories, quoting the statistics of industrial growth, and celebrating the superior qualities of "the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw." Tennyson, on the other hand, realized that commercial and industrial leadership was achieved by breaking apart the traditional rhythms of ;ife and by the immense exploitation of the labourers both at home and abroad. The Victorian novel, with its emphasis on the realistic portrayal of social life, /oiced many burning social issues through its fictional characters, and made its contribution to the expansion of both the right to vote and women's rights.
In addition, the growth of newspapers and periodicals, covering political and social debate, was also instrumental in the growth of the reading public. As the world of the press became more democratic, more women found opportunities to describe their life conditions, reaching both the slums and the royal chambers. The woman novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) wrote her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), in order to speak for Manchester's poor, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806- 1861) made her poetry a voice of the poor and oppressed.
For the Victorians, reading was the chief form of popular leisure, and British novelists created diverse works to cater for both popular and refined tastes. One important feature of Victorian novelists was Realism, which meant a detailed presentation of life in 19th-century England. The novel dominates the literary landscape of the period; even Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote novels. From Charles Dickens (1812-1870) with his first novel, Pickwick Papers (1837), to the late novels of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), such as Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), appeared outstanding masterpieces that have never failed to attract the reader. Another peculiarity of the Victorian novels was that they usually reached the reading public in periodicals. This mode of publication, called "installments," challenged the authors to keep up the readers' interest till the following issue.
After the 1830s, each decade welcomed new significant novelists, such as Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Emily Bronte (1818-1848), and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), who was even a challenge to Dickens in popularity and is best known for Vanity Fair (1848), which fiercely satirizes pretence and greed.
In the 1860s, Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) appeared as a portraitist of Victorian society, and in the 1870s, George Eliot (1819-1880) came to the reader with her best novel, Middlemarch (1872), after her earlier ones, Adam Bede (1859) and The Mill on the Floss (1860). In the 1880s, George Meredith (1828- 1909) was praised by the critics and public for her novels, such as The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). Furthermore, several minor figures made their contribution to Victorian novel, such as Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) and George Gissing (1857-1903). In the following decades, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) made further critical attacks on the disadvantages of Victorian social life.
The historical novel, reaching its height with Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), was also popular in the Victorian period, but its authorship came from the lesser novelists, such as Bulwer- Lytton (1803-1873), the author of The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) or Charles Reade (1814-1884), the author of The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) concentrated on the horrors of the Gothic novel in his books, such as Jack Sheppard (1839), Windsor Castle (1843) and The Lancashire Witches (1848).
Two other Victorian writers who portrayed the world of fantasy for children and are still widely read, are Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Dodgson (1832-1898), and Edward Lear (1812-1888), famous for his limericks. Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) combine fantasy with queer logic, probably because the author was a mathematician. Also with an appeal for children created Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). His classic Treasure Island (1883) remains one of the favourite books for children.