The Victorians “British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead.
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Transcript The Victorians “British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead.
The Victorians
“British history is two thousand years
old, and yet in a good many ways the
world has moved farther ahead since
the Queen was born than it moved in
all the rest of the two thousand years
put together.”
Mark Twain, 1897
at Queen Victoria’s
Jubilee
Queen Victoria
reigned 1837-1901
May 24, 1819: born at Kensington Palace – only child of
Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III
1837: on the death of her uncle, William IV, she became
queen at the age of 18
1840: married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
1861: Prince Albert died
Nine children
Presided over an Empire “upon which the sun never set”
It was during Victoria's reign that the modern idea of the
constitutional monarch, whose role was to remain above
political parties, began to evolve.
January 22, 1901: died after a reign of 64 years – longest in
British history
Prince Albert
Son of Duke Ernest of Coburg, Victoria’s maternal uncle –
he and Victoria were first cousins, born the same year
Became Victoria’s closest advisor
A serious patron of the arts, a composer and a painter, an
architect and an educator
As chancellor of Cambridge, he modernized the traditional
classics-and-theology curriculum with science and
technology
Arranged for the design and building of experimental
houses to better serve working class families
Organized and oversaw the Great Exhibition of 1851 -- the
first World's Fair.
"Machinery, Science, and Taste…are of no country, but
belong, as a whole, to the civilized world."
The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park
site of the 1851 Great Exhibition
The Royal Family
Political Reform
1832: The Reform Bill extended voting rights to all
males owning property worth £10 in annual rent –
lower middle classes
1832: redistribution of parliamentary representation –
elimination of “rotten boroughs”
1838-48: Chartist Movement “People’s Charter”
advocated universal suffrage, secret ballots and
legislative reforms
1867: Second Reform Bill: extended right to vote to
some of working class
1870-1908: Married Women’s Property Acts – granted
women the right to own property –”women were legally
recognized as individuals in their own right for the first
time in history.”
Social Reform and Education
1846: Repeal of Corn Laws – elimination of tax on
grains – free trade
1833-78: Factory Acts – restricted child labor, limited
work hours, required public education
1839: Custody Act
1857: Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act
Higher Education for Women
1848 – establishment of first Women’s College in
London
By the end of Victoria’s reign, women could get
degrees at 12 universities and study at Oxford and
Cambridge
Technology
1830: Liverpool and Manchester RR – first
public steam railway in the world
steam ships
telegraph -- intercontinental cables
photography
high speed printing
cast iron for building
anesthetics -- ether
Technology on the
Victorian Web
Gustav Doré, London Underground
Science: Geology and Astronomy
Geology
“the hottest science going”
all accredited geologists agreed that the earth was millions of
years old, that strata were layers from different times and that
Genesis was incompatible with the findings of modern geology
or irrelevant
many discoveries about dinosaurs throughout the 19th c.
http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/courses/v1001/dinodis3.html
Astronomy: new planetary and cosmic discoveries
Geology “gives one the same sort of bewildering view of the
abysmal extent of Time that Astronomy does of Space.” – John
Sterling, 1837
The Great
Exhibition
1851
included first
exhibition of
dinosaurs
Science: Biology
Charles Darwin (1809-82)
1859: On the Origin of the Species
1871: The Descent of Man, and Selection in
Relation to Sex
1872: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95)
Populizer and advocate of Darwin’s theories
On a Piece of Chalk influenced thinking about
education
Huxley advocated broad primary school
instruction: reading, writing, arithmetic, art,
science, and music.
The basic form of nearly every American college
curriculum is what Huxley advocated more than
100 years ago: two years of more liberal basic
studies followed by two years of specialization
Huxley emphasized doing and observing in science
classes
Religion
1829: Catholic Relief Act – granted Catholics the same
political rights as Protestants
1835: Jews are granted the right to vote
1857: Sir David Salomons elected Lord Mayor of London
1868: Benjamin Disraeli, a convert to Anglicanism, becomes
Prime Minister
The Church of England
Low Church – evangelical, highly individual, abolitionists,
Puritanical ( Christian right )
Broad Church – open to modern advances in science,
emphasized inclusion ( liberals )
High Church – emphasized tradition, ritual and authority –
the Oxford Movement – resistant to liberal ideas
(conservatives)
Biblical Studies
Linguistic and Historic: “Higher Criticism”
Study of original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic
texts – history of composition
Historical contexts
David Friedrich Struass’s Das Leben Jesu –
translated by George Eliot as The Life of Jesus
Biblical Archaeology vs. Mesopotamian
Archaeology – Sumerian texts
Philosophy: Utilitarianism
Philosophical Radicalism
All humans seek to maximize pleasure and
minimize pain.
Morality – that which provides the
greatest pleasure to the greatest number
Religion – outmoded superstition
Fails to provide for spiritual needs
Attacked by:
Jeremy Bentham
James Mill
Carlyle, Sartor, Resartus (1833-34)
Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860)
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography ( 1873)
John Stuart Mill
Philosophy:
Marxism
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels
in London, 1867
Friedrich Engels
1844: The
Condition of the
Working Class in
England in 1844
1884: The Origin
of the Family
Private Property
and the State
Karl Marx
1867-94: Das
Kapital
1848: Co-authored
The Communist
Manifesto
The British Empire
Imperialism: The British Empire
1853-1880: Over 2 million Britons emigrated to settle in British
colonies – especially Canada and Australia
1839-42; 1856-60: Opium Wars with China
1857: Parliament took over rule of India from East India Co. and
set up a civil service government
1867: Canadian provinces united into Dominion of Canada
1876: Victoria declared Empress of India
1880s – the Irish question – Home Rule
1899-1902: Boer War in South Africa
By 1890, the British Empire contained ¼ of the earth’s territory,
and ¼ of the earth’s population.
Victorian Literature
The Novel
Dominant Victorian literary form
Initially published in serial form in periodicals
Usually appeared in 3 volumes – “three deckers” –
in book form
Focus on social relationships in middle class world
Ample opportunities for women novelists although
many choose male pseudonyms to be taken more
seriously
Thackeray
Eliot
Trollope
Gaskell
Novelists
E. Bronte
C. Bronte
Dickens
Disraeli
Social Realism
Social novels deal with the nature, function and
effect of the society which the characters inhabit –
often for the purpose of effecting reform
“ Condition of England” novels in 1840s and 1850s:
response to . the condition of laborers in the
Industrial Revolution: Dickens’ Hard Times,
Gaskell’s Mary Barton; Disraeli’s The Two Nations
Social and political realism: Trollope’s The Palliser
Novels, The Barsetshire Chronicles, etc.
Satirical social commentary: Thackeray’s Vanity
Fair
Probing psychological realism: Eliot’s Middlemarch
Non-fiction Prose
Matthew Arnold
Instructional purpose:
history, biography,
theology, literary and
artistic criticism
Centrality of
argument and
persuasion
Professional writers
Walter Pater
Victorian Poetry
Highly pictorial – “picturesque” – combines
visual impressions to create a picture that carries
the dominant emotion of the poem
Narrative
Long narrative stories – poetic novels: Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
Aurora Leigh, Robert Browning’s The Ring and the
Book
Dramatic monologues – esp. Robert Browning
Distinctive sound experimentation
Poetry of mood and character
Poets
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
Robert
Browning
Aestheticism
“Art for art’s sake”
A cult of beauty: Life should imitate Art
Strong connection between visual and literary arts
Anti-Victorian reaction, post-Romantic roots
The Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure,
rather than convey moral or sentimental messages
Pre-Raphaelites and Arts and Crafts Movement
William Morris
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Christina
Rossetti
William Holman
Hunt
Algernon
Swinburne
Aubrey
Beardsley
Gilbert and Sullivan
Dramatists
George Bernard Shaw
Oscar Wilde