Victorian age

The Victorian era of the United Kingdom and its overseas Empire was the period of Queen Victoria's rule
from June 1837 to January 1901. The era was preceded by the Georgian period and succeeded by the
Edwardian period. Some scholars would extend the beginning of the period—as defined by a variety of
sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians—back five years
to the passage of the Reform Act 1832. This was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as
profits gained from the overseas Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed a
large, educated middle class to develop.

The era is often characterized as a long period of peace, known as the Pax Britannica, and economic,
colonial, and industrial consolidation, temporarily disrupted by the Crimean War. In fact, Britain was at
war every year during this period. Towards the end of the century, the policies of New Imperialism led
to increasing colonial conflicts and eventually the Anglo-Zanzibar War and the Boer War. The empire's
size doubled during the era. The latter half of the Victorian era roughly coincided with the first portion
of the Belle Époque era of continental Europe and other non-English speaking countries within Europe.

Domestically, the agenda was increasingly liberal with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual
political reform and the widening of the voting franchise. The term Victorian morality is often used to
describe the ethos of the period, which embraced sexual proprietary, hard work, honesty, thrift, a sense
of duty and responsibility towards the less well off, provided that they deserved help (alcoholics and the
work-shy did not). Anomalies existed, not least of all how the British treated their colonial subjects. Yet,
sometimes unwittingly, the Victorians did much to create an increasingly inter-connected world, in
which some people could speak of co-responsibility to make the world a better place. When Victorians
spoke about justice, ending poverty or child-labor and about improving the quality of life, even if their
practice was often parochial, their vision was global.

Politics

In the early part of the era the House of Commons was dominated by the two parties, the Whigs and the
Tories. From the late 1850s onwards the Whigs became the Liberals even as the Tories became known
as the Conservatives. These parties were led by many prominent statesmen including Lord Melbourne,
Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury.
The unsolved problems relating to Irish Home Rule played a great part in politics in the later Victorian
era, particularly in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political settlement.

Population

The Victorian era was a time of unprecedented population increase in England. One reason for the
increase was that there was no catastrophic epidemic or famine in England or Scotland in the
nineteenth century. On the other hand, Ireland’s population decreased rapidly, primarily due to the Irish
Potato Famine (1845–1849), from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901.
Culture

The middle of the nineteenth century saw The Great Exhibition of 1851, the first World's Fair and
showcased the greatest innovations of the century. At its center was the Crystal Palace, an enormous,
modular glass and iron structure—the first of its kind. It was condemned by critic John Ruskin as the very
model of mechanical dehumanization in design, but later came to be presented as the prototype of
Modern architecture. The emergence of photography, which was showcased at the Great Exhibition,
resulted in significant changes in Victorian art with Queen Victoria being the first British monarch to be
photographed. John Everett Millais was influenced by photography (notably in his portrait of Ruskin) as
were other Pre-Raphaelite artists. It later became associated with the Impressionistic and Social Realist
techniques that would dominate the later years of the period in the work of artists such as Walter
Sickert and Frank Holl.

Gothic Revival architecture became increasingly significant in the period, leading to the Battle of the
Styles between Gothic and Classical ideals. Charles Barry's architecture for the new Palace of
Westminster, which had been badly damaged in an 1834 fire, built on the medieval style of Westminster
Hall, the surviving part of the building. It constructed a narrative of cultural continuity, set in opposition
to the violent disjunctions of Revolutionary France, a comparison common to the period, as expressed in
Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History and Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.[3]

Entertainment

Popular forms of entertainment varied by social class. Victorian Britain, like the periods before it, was
interested in theater and the arts, and music, drama, and opera were widely attended. There were,
however, other forms of entertainment. Gambling at cards in establishments popularly called casinos
was wildly popular during the period: so much so that evangelical and reform movements specifically
targeted such establishments in their efforts to stop gambling, drinking, and prostitution.

Brass bands and 'The Bandstand' became popular in the Victorian era. The band stand was a simple
construction that not only created an ornamental focal point, but also served acoustic requirements
whilst providing shelter from the changeable British weather. It was common to hear the sound of a
brass band whilst strolling through parklands. At this time musical recording was still very much a
novelty.

Another form of entertainment involved 'spectacles' where paranormal events, such as hypnotism,
communication with the dead (by way of mediumship or channelling), ghost conjuring and the like, were
carried out to the delight of crowds and participants. Such activities were more popular at this time than
in other periods of recent Western history.

Technology and engineering

The impetus of the Industrial Revolution had already occurred, but it was during this period that the full
effects of industrialization made themselves felt, leading to the mass consumer society of the twentieth
century. The revolution led to the rise of railways across the country and great leaps forward in
engineering, most famously by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Another great engineering feat in the Victorian Era was the sewage system in London. It was designed
by Joseph Bazalgette in 1858. He proposed to build 82 mi (132 km) of sewerage linked with over 1,000
mi (1,600 km) of street sewers. Many problems were found but the sewers were completed. After this,
Bazalgette designed the Thames Embankment which housed sewers, water pipes and the London
Underground. During the same period London's water supply network was expanded and improved, and
gas reticulation for lighting and heating was introduced in the 1880s.

During the Victorian era, science grew into the discipline it is today. In addition to the increasing
professionalism of university science, many Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to the study of
natural history. This study of natural history was most powerfully impacted by Charles Darwin and his
theory of evolution first published in his book "On the Origins of Species" in 1859.

Photography was realized in 1829 by Louis Daguerre in France and William Fox Talbot in the UK. By
1900, hand-held cameras were available.

Although initially developed in the early years of the nineteenth century, gas lighting became
widespread during the Victorian era in industry, homes, public buildings and the streets. The invention
of the incandescent gas mantle in the 1890s greatly improved light output and ensured its survival as
late as the 1960s. Hundreds of gasworks were constructed in cities and towns across the country. In
1882, incandescent electric lights were introduced to London streets, although it took many years
before they were installed everywhere.

Poverty

Nineteenth-century Britain saw a huge population increase accompanied by rapid urbanization

stimulated by the industrial revolution. The large numbers of skilled and unskilled people looking for
work suppressed wages down to barely subsistence level. Available housing was scarce and expensive,
resulting in overcrowding. These problems were magnified in London, where the population grew at
record rates. Large houses were turned into flats and tenements, and as landlords failed to maintain
these dwellings, slum housing developed. Kellow Chesney described the situation as follows "Hideous
slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up a substantial
part of the, metropolis... In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a
single room." (The Victorian Underworld)

Child labor

The Victorian era became notorious for employing young children in factories and mines and as chimney
sweeps. Children were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long hours in
dangerous jobs and low wages. Agile boys were employed by the chimney sweeps; small children were
employed to scramble under machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins; and children were also employed to
work in coal mines to crawl through tunnels too narrow and low for adults. Children also worked as
errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or selling matches, flowers and other cheap goods. Many
children got stuck in the chimneys that they were sweeping and eventually died. In factories it was not
uncommon for children to lose limbs crawling under machinery to pick things up.

Several Factory Acts were passed to prevent the exploitation of children in the workplace. Children of
poor families would leave school at the age of eight and were then forced to go to work. School was not
free at this time.

Prostitution

Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organizations, clergymen and single women became
increasingly concerned about prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil." Although
estimates of the number of prostitutes in London by the 1850s vary widely (in his landmark study,
Prostitution, William Acton reported that the police estimated there were 8,600 in London alone in
1857), it is enough to say that the number of women working the streets became increasingly difficult to
ignore. When the United Kingdom Census 1851 publicly revealed a 4 percent demographic imbalance in
favor of women (i.e. 4 percent more women than men), the problem of prostitution began to shift from
a moral/religious cause to a socio-economic one. The 1851 census showed that the population of Great
Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply
because there were not enough men. These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or
"redundant women," and many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with
them.

While the Magdalene Asylums had been "reforming" prostitutes since the mid-eighteenth century, the
years between 1848 and 1870 saw a veritable explosion in the number of institutions working to
"reclaim" these "fallen women" from the streets and retrain them for entry into respectable society—
usually for work as domestic servants. The theme of prostitution and the "fallen woman" (an umbrella
term used to describe any women who had sexual intercourse out of wedlock) became a staple feature
of mid-Victorian literature and politics. In the writings of Henry Mayhew, Charles Booth and others,
prostitution began to be seen as a social problem.

When Parliament passed the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1864 (which allowed the local
constabulary to force any woman suspected of venereal disease to submit to its inspection), Josephine
Butler's crusade to repeal the CD Acts yoked the anti-prostitution cause with the emergent feminist
movement. Butler attacked the long-established double standard of sexual morality.

Prostitutes were often presented as victims in sentimental literature such as Thomas Hood's poem The
Bridge of Sighs, Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton and Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The emphasis on
the purity of women found in such works as Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House led to the
portrayal of the prostitute and fallen woman as soiled, corrupted, and in need of cleansing.

This emphasis on female purity was allied to the stress on the homemaking role of women, who helped
to create a space free from the pollution and corruption of the city. In this respect the prostitute came
to have symbolic significance as the embodiment of the violation of that divide. The double standard
remained in force. Divorce legislation introduced in 1857 allowed for a man to divorce his wife for
adultery, but a woman could only divorce if adultery was accompanied by cruelty. The anonymity of the
city led to a large increase in prostitution and unsanctioned sexual relationships. Dickens and other
writers associated prostitution with the mechanization and industrialization of modern life, portraying
prostitutes as human commodities consumed and thrown away like refuse when they were used up.
Moral reform movements attempted to close down brothels, something that has sometimes been
argued to have been a factor in the concentration of street-prostitution in Whitechapel, in the East End
of London, by the 1880s.

Religion

Religion was a dominant interest throughout the Victoria era, impacting almost every aspect of life and
culture.[8] Whether the issue was politics, marriage, sexuality, class relations, literature or attitudes to
other peoples and countries, religion played a central role in discussion. Doctrinal disputes within
Christianity generally and the Church of England in particular, as well as debate between religion and
science, characterized the era. Although the Church of England remained the Established Church, other
denominations increased in size and in influence, especially in the new industrial cities, which were
often dominated by civic leaders from the Free Churches. The Victorian era saw much missionary
activity. Societies founded by different denominations sent personnel to countries within the British
Empire and to countries ruled by other powers. Commentators point out that Victorian Britain was the
most religious society that the world had ever known.[9] Church attendance was as high as 50 percent.
As Erickson notes, “Biblical Christianity was thickly intertwined in the fabric of Victorian society.”
Christian symbols were prominently displayed everywhere, such as signs reading “choose this day whom
you will serve,” and “be sure your sins will find you out” on prison walls. English men and women were
“serious about their faith,” which “undergirded their lives to an extent unimaginable to nonchurchgoers
in our own time.”

Concepts such as sin and ungodliness, says Erickson, “defined experience.”[10] Belief that it was Britain's
god-given “duty to save the world [resulted in] a huge increase in foreign missionary activity, along with
an upsurge in moral imperialism ... that abetted and reinforced the everyday patriotism of parades,
naval reviews, music-hall songs, and saber-rattling literature.”[9] For some, Britain was the New Israel
through which God's providential purposes would unfold. This would especially influence British policy
in the Middle East, which always had a “biblical dimension… more than any other European people,
nineteenth and early twentieth century Britons spoke of resettling Jews in the historic land of Israel,” an
idea towards which “two imperially minded [Victorian prime ministers] were also well disposed:
Benjamin Disraeli (who pioneered the idea in a book) and Viscount Palmerston (who thought a British
client state in the Middle East would be economically advantageous).”

Victorian religion thus informed the idea that Britain had a special role to play in Christianizing and
civilizing the world. On the one hand, this was associated with attitudes of religious and cultural
superiority that denigrated and demonized other religions. It was also associated with ideas about race;
it was the burden of the white race to govern lesser races, expressed by Rudyard Kipling's "Take up the
White Man's burden."[ Much that was written about other cultures and faiths, even when offered as
objective scholarship, reflected attitudes of superiority. It can, though, be questioned whether the
Queen herself shared these attitudes. On the other hand, the British Empire stretched around the globe,
and by constructing transport and communication infrastructure, ended up stimulating the
development of ideas about common Values and of shared human obligations. Victorian morality, too,
which placed a premium on concepts such as duty and social responsibility, also spread across the
empire on which the sun never set.

Legacy

The legacy of the Victorian era continues through its literature, music and art, through technological and
scientific advances that enriched and still enrich human life. One significant aspect of Victorian morality
was its focus on public duty and responsibility. Victorian imperialism was in many respects patronizing
and exploitative but the idea that government has a duty to improve people's lives took deep root. At
the beginning of the era, dealing with poverty or the welfare of the body politic was more or less left to
private philanthropy. As such Acts as the Mines Act (1842), the Education Act (1870), and the Health Act
(1875) became law, responsibility for public welfare was gradually transferred from private philanthropy
to government. Since Victoria reigned over a global empire, the ideals that stimulated concern for public
welfare also spread across the globe. As a consequence, many more people throughout the world
started to regard themselves as members of a common culture, as co-citizens of an inter-dependent
world. Calder suggests that while it is undeniable "That the Victorians wanted to make the world a
better place" they often "had to settle for making the home a better place" instead. Nonetheless,
perhaps more than their predecessors, the Victorians were not parochial in their interests. The
Victorians may have seen themselves as the world's police; yet despite the arrogant aspects of this, it
assumes that all people belong to a single world community, and that certain standards in governance,
civil life, law and order are universal, to be shared by everyone.

Victorian Era Religion and Religious Beliefs

Victorian age was an interesting time when old religious beliefs started getting questioned due to
progress made in science and technology. Let’s look at different aspects of the belief system and how
and why those started to change.

Christianity in the Victorian era

During the Victorian period, the people of England were very religious. There were many who regularly
visited the church or went to chapel on Sunday. The Victorians belonging to the different strata of the
society read the Bible very often. People were not only very religious but also were god fearing.

Despite all this, the Victorian period suffered from a time when Christianity was questioned. It was
towards the end of the Victorian era when the foundations of the well-organized religion that people
followed in an extremely disciplined manner received a severe blow.

Why did Victorian era beliefs start changing?

The changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the emergence of new scientific ideologies
played a crucial role in challenging the old religious beliefs and superstitions which had a deep impact on
the lives of the people for many years.

One of the reasons that attributed to the upset in religious beliefs was the fact that owing to the
industrial development in the country, the number of people who pursued education increased. Also,
the rise of industries provided for job opportunities for many people who left their agricultural job and
came to cities for work.

With the advent of technology, communication became easier and even travelling was no longer an
uphill task. These developments provided material comfort to the people who slowly drifted away from
religion and spirituality.

All these changes had a deep impact on the society as a whole. The Victorians before the
industrialization era did not even know that any life existed beyond their farming occupation or as a
matter of fact outside their small hamlets.

People had now starting prioritizing their work and wanted to be free from the kind of lifestyle they had
in small counties and ventured out to different cities in lead a better life. After the industrial growth,
there were hardly any people left who wanted to become priests or ministers as most chose to do
business and scientific work.

It was during this period that the Church lost its authority and power over the people because of the
new industrial and scientific developments. Scientific growth in England during the Victorian period was
a major reason why questions were raised against the religious ideologies.

Charles Darwin’s work helped question the religious beliefs

One person responsible for shaking the religious beliefs was Charles Darwin, the Victorian era Naturalist.
Darwin in his book The Origin of the Species had propounded the theory that man had evolved just like
any other species and was not a separate creature as was a common belief.

Darwin further said that man had evolved through the process of natural selection, which was in
response to the environment around him and his pursuit for pleasure. This very argument put forth by
Darwin shocked many as it challenged the very foundations of their old beliefs which had been passed
to them through generations.

This expedition of Darwin resulted in shifting of the focus of an ordinary person from religion to more
basic things. Charles Darwin’s book made people change their perception towards religion. It was by
virtue of this scientific progress that people were gradually withdrawing from the traditional religious
ideologies.

However, despite religion taking a back-seat during the Victorian time, it was also a period when some
faithful ministers, missionaries, theologians and authors who kept the Christian truths alive.
There were other believers of religion who dedicated their lives in travelling from one country to
another and spread their religious beliefs. Some authors using their writing as a tool kept the religion
alive. You can also read more about Victorian era religion and morality and also about Victorian beliefs
in the supernatural.

Characteristics of Victorian age:-

(1). An age of Prose and Novel

(2). Deep Moral Not

(3). Realism

(4). Intellectual Development

(5). Search For Balance

(6). Humanitarian Approach.

An age of Prose and Novel:-

The Victorian age was essentially the age of prose and novel W.J.Long in his book history of English
literature says Though the age produced many poets nevertheless this is emphatically an age of prose
and novel. (The novel in this age fill a place which the drama held in the days of Elizabethan).

The novels were looking like the bright stars in the sky of england during the Victorian era. The great
novelists like:- Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, William Thackeray, GeorgeEliot, Charlotte Bronte, Emily
Bronte and Anne Bronte filled the sky of the Victorian era with their novels.

Moral Note:-

The Victorian literature was marked by a deep moral note. In literature this tendency is reflected in the
early poetry of Tennyson and in the novel of Charles Dickens. Dickens novels show great respect for
tradition and morality. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle and Ruskin were interested in spreading their
message and moral philosophy to their country men.

Realism:-

The literature of the Victorian age is literature of realism. The literature of this age is related with the
socialand political life of his age. The Victorian writers tried to represent the problems of their own age.
There for the Victorian literature is the literature of realism rather than of romance. During this time
literature became an instrument of social reform (the literature of this age was marked by didacticaims).
Intellectual Development:-

There was a great revolution in the scientific thoughts during this period. The well-known scientist
durvin published his theory of evalution in his famous work “The origin of species”. (This book realism of
ideas).

Tennyson responded this new thought in his famous poem “In Memoriam” Mathew Arnold showed the
science of new intellectual development in his prose and poetry. This new science created a note of
passinism in many thinkers.

Search For Balance:-

During this period the writers tried to balance the romentic as well as the classical influence. This is well
obsereved in the works of J.S.Mill during this time. The new religious movement called the oxford
movement was started. This movement shows a search for balance.

Humanitarian Approach:-

In the novels of Charles Dickens, J.S.Mill and certain other novelist. We came accross the humanitarian
approach. It is important to note that this age was an age of industrial revolution this industrial
revolution creates two classes:-

(1). Labourers

(2). Capitalists.

Some Victorian novels deals with the class consciousness and also present the problems of poverty
during this period.

Moral Purpose:-

Victorian literature in its varied aspects was marked by a deep moral note. “the second marked
characteristic of the age is that literature, both in prose and poetry, seems to depart from the purely
artistic standard of art’s sake and to be actuated by a definite moral purpose.” Tennyson, Browning,
Carlyle, Ruskin were primarily interested in their message to their countrymen. They were teacher of
England and were inspired by a conscious moral purpose to uplift and instruct their fellow man. Behind
the fun and sentiment of Dickens, the social miniatures of Thackeray, the psychological studies of
George Eliot, lay hidden a definite moral purpose to sweep away error and to bring out vividly in
unmistakable terms the underlying truth of human life. We found good example in ‘The Mill on the
Floss’ by Eliot. We found many of the writers write about family and morality in their literary work.

The Victorian literature seems to deviate from “art for art’s sake” and asserts its moral purpose. Many
of the writer gives the moral message to the world.

Realism:-
The literature of the Victorian age was correlated to the social and political life of the age. The Victorian
literary artists, living aside a few votaries of art for art’s sake represented by the Pre-Raphaelite school
of poets, were inspired by a social zeal to represent the problem of their own age.

Perhaps for this reason the Victorian literature is the literature of ‘realism’ rather than of romance, not
the realism of Zola and Ibsen, but a deeper realism which strives to tell the whole truth, showing moral
and physical diseases as they are, but holding up health and hope as the moral conditions of humanity.
Literature became an instrument of social reform and social propaganda and it was marked with
purposeful, propagandistic and didactic aims. The Victorian literature is full of realism. We can say that
Oliver twist is a realistic character; in Victorian age we found there is child labor in workhouse. So it
called realism, and in Frankenstein there is no real character like monster in real life, but we found
character like Oliver in real life. So the Victorian literature represents realism. There is no imaginative
character in the literature. In Victorian literature we found realistic character rather than romantic
character.

Pessimism:-

A note of pessimism, doubt and despair runs through Victorian literature and is noticed especially in the
poetry of Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough. Though a note of pessimism runs through the
literature of the age, it cannot be dubbed as a literature of bleak pessimism and dark despair. A note of
idealism and optimism is also struck by poets like Browning and prose writers like Ruskin. Rabbi Ben Ezra
brings out the courageous optimism of the age. Stedman’s Victorian Anthology is, on the whole, a most
inspiring book of poetry. Great essayists like Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and great novelists like Dickens,
Thackeray and George Eliot inspire us with their faith in humanity and uplift us by their buoyancy and
large charity.

The literature of the age is considerably modified by the impact of science. “It is the scientific spirit, and
all that the scientific spirit implied, its certain doubt, its care for minuteness and truth of observation, its
growing interest in social processes, and the conditions under which life is lived that is the central fact in
Victorian literature.”

The questioning spirit in lough, the pessimism of James Thomson, the melancholy of Matthew Arnold,
the fatalism of Fitzgerald, are all the outcome of the skeptical tendencies evoked by scientific research.
Tennyson’s poetry is also considerably influenced by the advancement of science in the age, and the
undertones of scientific researchers can be heard in ‘In Memoriam’.

Patriotism:-

A note of patriotism runs through Victorian literature. Tennyson, Dickens and Disraeli are inspired by a
national pride and a sense of greatness in their country’s superiority over nations. Tennyson strikes the
patriotic note in the following lines

It is the land that freemen till

That sober-suited freedom chose

 A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown,

Where freedom slowly broadens down

From precedent to precedent.

In one direction the literature of the Victorian age achieved a salient and momentous advance over the
lecture of the Romantic Revival. The poets of the Romantic were interested in nature, in the past, and in
a lesser degree in art, but they were not intensively interested in men and women.

To Wordsworth the dalesmen of the lakes were a part of the scenery they moved in. He treated human
being as natural objects and divested them of the complexities and passions of life as it is lived. The
Victorian poets and novelists laid emphasis on men and women and imparted to them the same warmth
and glow which the Romantic poets had given to nature. “The Victorian age extended to the
complexities of human life, the imaginative sensibility which its predecessor had brought to bear on
nature and history. The Victorian poets and novelists added humanity to nature and art as the subject
matter of literature.”

We can say that in the literature the effect of patriotism. The writer focuses on national identity and
patriotism in Victorian age.

Some other characteristics of this age:-

The Materialistic tendencies of the age, and sought to seek refuge in the overcharged atmosphere of the
Middle age.an escapist note is also perceptible in the Victorian literature, and this is particularly noticed
in the works of the pre-Raphaelite poets. Morris busied himself in its legends and sagas. “There were
some minor reversions to classicism, but taken largely, literature of the age continued to be romantic, in
the novelty and variety of it’s from, in its search after undiscovered springs of truth and beauty, in its
emotional and imaginative intensity.”

Idealism is often considered as an age of doubt and pessimism. The influence of science is felt here. The
whole age seems to be caught in the conception of man in relation to the universe with the idea of
evolution.

Though, the age is characterized as practical and materialistic, most of the writers exalt a purely ideal
life. It is an idealistic age where the great ideals like truth, justice, love, brotherhood, are emphasized by
poets, essayists and novelists of the age.

Conclusion:-

Thus the Victorian era was peaceful reign Englisn people made a remarkeble progress in industrial,
commercial and social life. This age witnessed a variety of tendencies in literature.