THE VICTORIAN AGE

The Victorian age was a long period in English history. When the king William the fourth
died, he was successed by a great important queen, Queen Victoria. She was born in 1819
and she became queen of England in 1847, her reign lasted for a period of 64 years from
1847 to 1901. When she was a young girl of 18 years old, she was a girl without experience
but with the passing of time queen Victoria became the symbol, not only of a great and long
period of english history, but she became the symbol of a cool era, called Victorian Age, that
took the name from the queen Victoria.
She was a very great queen, an important queen who governed in a particular period of
English history. During this period we can say that there were many important changes,
many important cultural movements and many important events. Infact was a period of
great growth, of richness, of prosperity, of economic development for England.
The Victorian age can be divided into 3 important periods.
1. The first years of the Victorian age are called “The early victorialism”, when after the
influence of the french revolution, of the american revolution, of the industrial
revolution, England obtained a great wealth, a great power, a great richness and
became a nation of greatness and prestige.
2. Then the second part is called “the middle Victorianism”. In this phase there was a
strong economic growth, there was the development of the international trade and
thanks to the strong colonialism, that were the different colonies, in north Africa, in
south America and in other countries around the world, in particular in India, South
Africa, Egypt, Suez Canal and Afghanistan. Queen Victoria was declared Empress of
India to consolidate popular support for the empire. Trade with India included tea,
spices, silk and cotton. It was vital to the British economy. It was partly for this
reason that the prestige of England became international. This was the period of the
Great exhibition of London in 1851, when in England there was a contraction of a
palace, the crystal palace, made up of iron and glass. With this international
exhibition England required the international prestige in all the world. England now
was one of the greatest and the most powerful countries in the world.
3. Then the fird period, called “the late Victorianism”. During this period England was
undermined by different social political forces, so there were other important
changes and all the great optimism of the first years changed into a strong
pessimism.

England during this period was a country were everything was based on respect that
became the key word. This was a puritan age, full of morality, of apparence. This age was
characterized by many novelist for example Lowrence who spoke about sex, considered as a
taboo.
The victorian age was also a period of great writers, we have different literary movements,
for example the realism of same important novelists, as Tomas Hardy, the social novels and
the Bildungsroman, that is the novels of formation written by Charles Dickens, than the
aesthetic movement of Oscar Wilde, the positivism with the important figure of Charles
Darwin, and this is also the period of Decadentism with important italian authors
D’annunzio. So from literary point of view the victorian age was an important period of
great great writers. Queen Victoria came to the english throne when she was a little girl of
18 years old and she had long experience, however in her government she was helped by
series of prime ministers and she was helped by the important figure of the Whig, the
democratic Lord Melbourne. In this period there was the alternation of democratic and
conservative prime minister, democratic-Lord Melbourne, conservative, the Tories for
example Robert Peel and Disraeli. Queen Victoria married her cousin prince Albert of Saxe
Gotha, a german prince, she strongly loved him, they had 9 children and when Albert died it
was an important blow for the queen, who isolated herself, she lived in a period of isolation
and she war with the black tools for the rest of her life. We can say that during the Victorian
age there was this great change from the agricultural country to an industrial country, that
is the result of industrial revolution, the factories became very important, there was an
economic growth, there was the international trade foreign countries, many people left the
countries and they moved to the cities in search of a new jobs in the factories in cities like
London, Pristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool. London became one of the most
populated city in the world, there was a growth of population from two to six million of
abitants. The most important social classes were the upper social classes and the middle
social classes of merchants and artisans, they had the most important benefits from
industrialization, but this fact created many important social problems. (The victorian
compromise) The victorian age is characterized by two sides, in one side there is the
industrial development of England, richness, wealth, power, but on the other side there is a
great misery, poverty, injustice of the lower social classes and there is the ugliness for the
consequence of the industrial revolution. In this period we can say that the factory workers
lived in the overcrowded slums. This slums were characterized by the lake of sanitation, the
lake of system of cawelt water, but there was also a greatest diffusion of diseases, colera,
tuberculosis and there weren’t hospital. But however in order to contrast the terrible
condition of life of this factories workers, the government thought to promove, to clean up
the towns and to create a new hospital. During this period there were many problems, for
example the pollution of the towns because of the smog of factories, there weren’t
hospitals. During the Victorian age there was the great figure of Florence Nightingale, an
italian girl, she was called the lady with the lamp, when she was born, her mother wanted
that she become a noble woman so her parents opposed against Florence Nightingale
because she wanted to become a nurse. At the age of 43 years old started to be a nurse, so
during the Crimean war she went to visit the soldiers with a lamp, she was important
because she improved the army medical system, she wanted to create the hospital, and to
created forces of training for nurses. she was one of the pioneers of international red cross.
The Crimean War was a war between Turkey and Russia and it was caused for questions of
borders. So France and England declared war on Russia. This war was important beacause
here we can say that English people understood that in England there weren’t any hospital.
The Crimean war ended with the treaty Of Paris that gave the peace. However during the
second half of the 19th century Germany And France became economic powers And started
to rival with the Britain empire. In this period the conservative and democratics, the Tories
and the Whigs, didn’t want to extend the right to vote to the lower social classes. For this
motive the factories workers organized the “chartist movement”, that was important
because this movement was made up of factories workers organized in an army against
government, many leaders of the chartist movement were arrested, the chartists asked for
same importante request, they asked for the universal male suffrage, for the secret vote,
they wanted the general annual election and they wanted their representation in the
parliament, but the parliament rejected the chartist movement but in period of 10 years the
chartist slowly obtain their rights.
1) First of all was the First Reform Bill in 1842, gave the right to vote to most
mercantilist-middle classes.
2) In 1867 there was the Second Reform Bill and extended the right to vote to the town
workers.
3) Later in 1884 there was the third Reform Billand extended the right to vote also to
the miners, so with this Reform Bill the right to vote was extended to all social
classes.
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the cost of living was kept high by the Corn
Laws. The corn Laws were taxes imposed on corn, so poverty people couldn’t buy the bread.
in Ireland there was a strong potato famine and with the failure of the corn crocs the Irish
people were forced to starvation, to emigration. This potato famine caused the deaths of
almost a milion people. In England in 1834 there was the new poor law that reflected the
view that poverty was a moral problem. Tory prime minister, Robert Peel (1788-1850), who
finally repealed the Corn Laws. Charles Dickens was an opponent of the Poor Law, which he
considered as inhuman. He documented the terrible conditions of the workhouses in Oliver
Twist, the first major English novel to feature a child protagonist.
THE LATE VICTORIAN AGE
During the second part of the 19th century, the late Victorianism, is characterized by two
importante prime ministers Gladstone and Disraeli. Gladstone was the founder of the actual
liberal party, he was a liberal and he was supporter of the free trade, while Disraeli was the
founder of the modern conservative party, he was more conservative. Disraeli and
Gladstone were important because they extended the right to vote to the working classes,
they created also a national system of education and they were important for the
legalization of the trade unions. While in first moment children worked and lived in the
workhouses and couldn’t read and write, (only children belonging to the upper social classes
had a system of education), in England with Gladstone and Disraeli there was a new system
of national education with the introduction of the education acts that reorganized the
elementary education system in England that became public and free for everyone. Then
there was the union act, where the unions became important because there was the
legalization of the unions and of the right to strike. This was a period influenced by the
liberal creed as a consequence of France and American revolutions, there was feminism and
marxism.
John Stuart Mill was an important figure because he struggled for the right to vote for
women, he struggled for women rights and for female equality. This was the period when
there was the national union of women's suffrage societies, that is the movement of
Suffragettes and they struggled for their rights. The women obtained the right to vote only
after the first world war in 1918 only the women of 30 years old, in 1928 the women of 21
years old, and finally in 1969 the women of 18 years old had the right to vote. There was
also the Fabian Society, a marxist society that was inspired by the marxist ideas, a group of
marxist intellectuals that wanted gradual social reforms rather than revolutions.
But this is also the period of positivism, with the Theories of Charles Darwin. He was a
scientist and philosopher and he was the founder of the Theory of Origin of Species about
the natural selection of man. He underlined that in the struggle for existence in nature only
the strongest could survive. Also he thought that man descended from the monkeys and so
he founded the theory of heredity, that man is influenced by heredity and by environment.
From a literary point of view, the Victorian Age was a Golden Age for the novel, in fact, the
novel became an important form of art as a means of entertainment for middle classes, the
victorian novelists often published their work in instalments (in parts, specified intervals), in
magazines and in periodicals and with their novels they reflected the problems of their time.
There were different kinds of novels, for example the bildungsroman (describes
psychological growth), an example was Oliver twist of Dickens or Jane Eyre written by
Bronte; the realist novels for example balzac or Gogol that described reality in a field full
manner; the naturalistic novels with Hardy or Zolà; the aesthetic novels of Oscar wilde;
finally the decadentism with D’annunzio, art was superior to nature and exalted the final
beauty in the decaying things. Fiction spread thanks to the invention of printing machines,
better means of communications, also prose fiction became an important instrument to
describe or to question the problems of the time.
DICKENS
The Victorian novelists had this strong relationship between man and society in their works,
described a society in strong change and often their novels were instruments to criticize the
social injustice and inequality of the period. The narrator was omniscient, that is the
narrator that knew everything and everybody and this narrator was a kind of moral guide
for the reader but he was also important to analyze the psychology of the characters.
Important was the social novels, Charles Dickens was a social writer. Dickens was one of the
best novelists of the Victorian age. He was born in Portsmouth in 1812. His family moved to
London where Dickens went to school, he attended the school and he was an avid reader of
the main novelists of the 18 century for example Richardson, Fielding and others. At the age
of 12 years old, he had to leave the school because of the economic problems and his father
was arrested for debts, so the young Dickens was sent to a workhouse. Here he lived and
worked and he felt strongly humiliated, he suffered the terrible conditions of this places. He
was sent to work in a boot factory which was cold, dirty. After 2 years the economic
condition of his family improved so he returned to go to school and at the age of fifteen he
left the school because he became a parliamentary reporter and then a journalist. He also
started his long career as novelist writing many important novels and he married Catherine
Hogarth, at the age 46 he fell in love with a young actrice of 18 years old. After a tour in the
united states of america he had a stroke and so he died at the age of 58 years old and was
buried in Westminster Abbey. Dickens was a social writer that described in his novels the
vices and evils of his age. In some novels, for example Oliver Twist he described the terrible
condition of the poor. The poor laws, the social injustice and inequality and the terrible
situation of the orphans. Christmas carol is a didactic novel with a moral but it's also a ghost
story set in a christmas atmosphere. He wrote Little Dorrit where he described the terrible
conditions of the Victorian prisons because his father was arrested for a period. He wrote
Hard times where he described the negative consequences of industrial revolutions that had
changed human beings into machines. He wrote David Copperfield, an autobiographical
novel with an optimistic view where he described the life of this young orphan but after a
series of adventures he is able to become a successful writer (the story of charles dickens’s
life). He wrote other works where he spoke about the main events and problems of his time,
social abuses but he had a strong closemiss with his readers. He said that, taking the theory
of william collins (victorian novelist), in his novels he made his audience laugh, cry and wait.
He was also the writer of didactic novels with a moral, he was considered as a moralist and
sentimentalist, who stressed the importance of some qualities such as generosity, gratitude
or the hard work, then he is appreciated for being an acute observer of the world where he
lived, stressing, underling, describing the most obscure sides, the darkest sides of this work
and so he became a critic of his time. In his novels he described specular characters, who
have two characters that are morally equal and they are the symbols of good and evil, but
they are physically different, these characters are able to anticipate the figure of doctor
Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Stevenson. Dickens in his works spoke about children that were
persecuted, they were suffering, children that suffered solitude, poverty, but in this
description of children he was influenced by his childhood, because himself lived in a
workhouse for two years and he suffered this terrible condition and even if Dickens is not a
social reformer, he is a social writer, with his novels, where he criticized the main problems
of Victorian Age, he had a strong influence on the reform movement and he described the
dirt and squalor of london and slums. So he described the indifference of the Victorian
respectable gentlemen in front of the poverty, of poor children, of women, of old men. He
used an ironic tone to criticize the victorian injustice and indifference in front of poverty. His
style is ironic and it is a simple style, characterized by a great precision of details.

OLIVER TWIST
His best work is Oliver Twist, the story of this Oliver is a novel of formation, that was first
published in instalments and than in only one book, but Oliver Twist is also the story of man,
of an orphan who is born in a workhouse, his mother dies giving birth to Oliver, so in this
workhouse Oliver suffered and then he is brutalized and reduced to starvation by Mr
Bubble, the parish beadle(sacrestano), when he asked for more food because he is angry he
was thrown out of the workhouse. Oliver decided to escape to London, where he met a
wanderer, who offered him to stay in the band of Fagin. Fagin was the leader of a band of
pickpockets and he wanted to transform Oliver into a criminal for his own benefit. So Oliver
was sent on a mission with two other boys but when he sees them steal from an old
gentleman, Mr Brownlow, he remains horrified and runs away. When he is arrested, he is
freed by Mr Brownlow but later he is again captured by Bill Sikes, a criminal, and his
girlfriend Nancy who brought it back from Fagin because this band is trying to deprive Oliver
of the fortune of his father, a rich man. Nancy, secretly, meets Mr Brownlow and informs
him of Fagin’s plans but a member of the Fagin gang hears the conversation. When sikes
finds out about nancy's betrayal, he murders her. In the end the band was arrested and
punished, Bill Sikes dies changed while Oliver was adopted by Mr Brownlow, he went to live
in a beautiful house outside London. The final part is characterized by this contraposition of
the beautiful countryside house and the ugliness ofworkhouses, the slums of London.

THEMES
The first theme of Oliver Twist was the workhouse, the most negative aspects of the
Victorian age. Oliver Twist criticizes the charity organizations that were established with the
Poor Law, which stipulated that the poor could only receive assistance if they moved into
workhouses. Workhouses were very severe and brutal places. Children were separated from
their families and put into forced labor, food was little and clothing was inadequate. Dickens
describes in his novel the horrible conditions in which the poor lived. In Dickens's novel, all
the injustices and violence suffered by the poor occur in the city and seem to be a product
of it. In Dickens's idealized countryside, the poor are free of the squalor that afflicts their
urban counterparts. At the end of the novel, Oliver and his new family settle in a small
village, as if a happy ending would only be possible there, far from the horrors of London.
HARD TIMES
Hard Times was written to denounce exploitation of the working classes during the Victorian
age as a consequence of the industrial revolution that was destroying the lives of men,
children, and women. The story is about the fictitious town of Coketown (città del
carbone=coal, 'coke' is a type of coal + ‘town’), which was modeled on the industrial town of
Preston in the north of England. Thomas Gradgrind is a citizen of Coketown and the school
headmaster. He is a practical man and believes only in facts and figures. His motto is facts
facts facts. He has two children luisa and tom and they live according to the utilitarian
doctrine of their father so Gradgrind suppresses the imaginations of his children. In his
theory of facts facts facts he limits the spiritual growth of his children and his students. He
suppresses the imaginations of the children in his school. Gradgrind finally understands that
his world of facts and figures is very limited. Gradgrind was based on the Utilitarian leader
James Mill.

THEMES
The main themes of this novel are: the critique against the utilitarianism and materialism of
the Victorian age because they limit human qualities. They rejected the human imagination,
they didn't allow the spiritual development of people. Dickens used a sense of humor to
criticize aspects of the Victorian age. Coketown is an example of a city, an industrial city in
northern England, where there was a strong poverty, both economic and spiritual poverty,
that oppressed the working classes. Utilitarianism was an economic and social doctrine
created by James Mill that based everythings on values and on utility. Dickens criticizes
utilitarianism of the 19 th century, that is this philosophy that denied all the other values
rather than the material values. Victorian materialism exalted only the material values and
so Dickens criticized industrialization of the Victorian age because utilitarianism tended to
produce great happiness in a greatest number of people.

COKE TOWN
This novel is a part of Hard Times, a novel about the man in the period of the industrial
revolution, ( da 10:00 a 12:35 è ripetizione su hard times). Coketown is an imaginary town,
this town is the symbol of poverty and of the oppression of the working classes. Coketown is
made up of two words, the town of 04:00, a critic against the industrial revolution, against
the oppression of working masses. In this extract there is the description of this town, the
emphasis is on the repetitive and monotonous , in this town, there is the repetition of same
words, that is people are equal, that work in same manner, people that are repetitive and
monotonous and people besides being monotonous are also dull like the town where they
lived. The description of coketown is negative, with its dark colors, for example the brick
red, the clack of face of savage, and it represents the oppression of working classes. This is a
strong critic against the consequence of the industrial revolution because Dickens is a social
writer.
WORKHOUSES
In 1834, a new Poor Law was introduced. Parishes were grouped into unions and each
union had to build a workhouse, if they did not already have one. Except in special
circumstances, poor people could now only get help if they were prepared to leave their
homes and go into a workhouse.
Conditions inside the workhouse were deliberately difficult, so only those who desperately
needed help would ask for it. Families were split up and housed in different parts of the
workhouse. They were made to wear a uniform and the diet was monotonous. There were
also strict rules and regulations to follow. Inmates, male and female, young and old were
made to work hard, often doing unpleasant jobs such as picking oakum (= untwisting rope)
or breaking stones. Some people spoke out against the Poor Law, calling the workhouses
'Prisons for the Poor. The poor themselves hated and feared the threat of the workhouse so
much that there were riots in northern towns.
Shortly after the new Poor Law was introduced, a number of scandals hit the headlines. The
most famous was at Andover Workhouse, where it was reported that half-starved inmates
were found eating the rotting flesh from bones. In response to these scandals, the
government introduced stricter rules for those who ran the workhouses and they also set up
a system of regular inspections. However, inmates were still at the mercy of unscrupulous
masters and matrons who treated the poor with contempt and abused the rules. Not
surprisingly, the new Poor Law was very unpopular as it appeared to punish people who
were poor through no fault of their own.

THOMAS HARDY
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in the south of England, when he was a child he lived in
close contact with nature, he lived in solitude, so he was a melancholic young boy. At the
age of 16 years old he left school and he became an architect and moved to London, then he
became a church stower. Hardy in London wrote a number of poems the so called the
Wessex Tales, with this Hardy had a great forgion 6:04, so he was encouraged by his wife
Emma to decide to stop his career as architect and he became a great novelist. In London he
wrote 11 novels, the main novels were “Far from Madding Crowd, The return of the Native,
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure and Tess of D'Urbervilles (the last)”, then
when he wrote his last novel with his strong pessimism and he was criticized by the critics,
so he decide to stop his career as novelist, in the last part of his life he wrote a verse Drama
about the Napoleonic Wars, then when he died he was buried in London in Westminster
Abbey, “the poets corner”.
Thomas Hardy was one of most important novelists of the late Victorian age, he was
strongly influenced by the main literary and philosophical currents of this period, he was
influenced by the doctrine of utilitarianism by Mills, where there was the importance of
material valours in life. He felt also the influence of the philosophical works of Comte,
Shopenouer with his strong pessimism and fatalism, and he felt the influence of Charles
Darwin, the great scientist and the great philosopher of the period who spoke about the
origin of species, in this work Darwin considered that the human being was condition by two
important factors: heredity and the environment. These important theories strongly
influenced Thomas Hardy He spoke about the so called “immanent will” and he had a tragic
view of life, he was a pessimist writer, he believed in an indifferent nature and in a nature
that worked against man, who was the victim of the milgnment fate. Most of his novels is
set in wessex region, an anglo saxon word to describe the modern town, wessex is a rural
region with its rural landscapes, wessex allowed Thomas Hardy to give realistic and beautiful
description of nature and with this description Hardy believed in hostile and indifferent
nature unlike of the romantic poets Thomas Hardy didn’t believe in a nature a friend, that
was a moral teacher for the artist, a good nature. He believed in a kind of predestination to
failure for every man and he rejected the cristian doctrine and believed that man was an
insect in a world without any mining, believing that man was a puppet in the hands of a
father God. He believed in so called immanent will, man was ruled by the blind choice to get
worked against every man, against his destiny. This belief (indifferent nature and cruel
Gods) was taken for the Greece Tragic and Thomas Hardy described the things of the
suffering of mam, of life challenges, he believed that nature was negative and against man.
In his works Thomas Hardy used the architecture or cinematic technique, where he started
with a panoramic effect of the scenes, of the situation with a panoramic vision of the fact,
then he focused on the different aspects of nature until to describe the single elements.

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Is the story of two characters, Jude Fawley and Sue Brideshead, together fall in love, they
are already married to other people; Jude married with Arabella Dorn and Sue with another
Man but despite the fact that they were already married they went to live together, this is a
strong critic against the morality of victorian age, this is a critic against the church because
in this period the sex was a taboo. Jude has already another a son, little Jude. After an act of
great violence Jude and Sue are divided forever so the life and the relationship of Jude are
difficult, infact the novel ends in a tragic manner.