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    The Victorian Age

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    The Victorian Age from 1837-1901 saw progressive reforms that expanded voting rights from the middle class to working class men. Industry and inventions like railroads transformed Britain, but urban poverty increased. Social reforms addressed public health, child labor, and trade unions. The British Empire expanded dramatically under Queen Victoria, though some colonies gained independence. Charles Dickens captured the contradictions of the era through novels depicting both social progress and injustice, while Alfred Tennyson served as poet laureate.

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    The Victorian Age

    Uploaded by

    Desiree
    74 views14 pages
    The Victorian Age from 1837-1901 saw progressive reforms that expanded voting rights from the middle class to working class men. Industry and inventions like railroads transformed Britain, but urban poverty increased. Social reforms addressed public health, child labor, and trade unions. The British Empire expanded dramatically under Queen Victoria, though some colonies gained independence. Charles Dickens captured the contradictions of the era through novels depicting both social progress and injustice, while Alfred Tennyson served as poet laureate.

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    The Victorian Age from 1837-1901 saw progressive reforms that expanded voting rights from the middle class to working class men. Industry and inventions like railroads transformed Britain, but urban poverty increased. Social reforms addressed public health, child labor, and trade unions. The British Empire expanded dramatically under Queen Victoria, though some colonies gained independence. Charles Dickens captured the contradictions of the era through novels depicting both social progress and injustice, while Alfred Tennyson served as poet laureate.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    74 views14 pages

    The Victorian Age

    Uploaded by

    Desiree
    The Victorian Age from 1837-1901 saw progressive reforms that expanded voting rights from the middle class to working class men. Industry and inventions like railroads transformed Britain, but urban poverty increased. Social reforms addressed public health, child labor, and trade unions. The British Empire expanded dramatically under Queen Victoria, though some colonies gained independence. Charles Dickens captured the contradictions of the era through novels depicting both social progress and injustice, while Alfred Tennyson served as poet laureate.

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    The Victorian Age

    1837-1901


    An age of industry and
    reforms

     In the Victorian age there was a progressive democratization, ruled by
    the Reform Bills: the first Reform Bill(1832) about 150 seats were taken
    away from the so-called rotten boroughs and given to the new
    industrial town, moreover the right to vote was enlarged to great part
    of the middle class but little or nothing had been done for working
    class.
     The second Reform Bill(1867) gave town workers the right
    to vote, but still exluded miners and agricultural workers.
     In 1884 the third Reform Bill was passed: the right to vote
    was extended to all male workers and allowed that many
    representatives of the working class could enter the
    House of Commons.
    An age of industry and
    reforms

     In 1851 the Great International Exhibition of London
    opened by Queen Victoria displayed the wonders of
    science and industry. The triumph of industry
    coincided with the invention of steam locomotive,
    railways and was introduced gas lighting in city streets;
     At the same time the poor endured terrible conditions and
    the new Poor Law wasn’t a great solution for the problem:
    they were amassed in workhouses. In large cities,
    urban slums became synonymous with the Industrial
    Revolution;
     Britain’s modern-day parties were born during Victoria’s reign: the
    Conservatives and the Liberals. The growth in political importance of
    the working class was marked by the foundation of the Labour Party
    (1900).
    Social Reforms

     The Public Health Act obliged local authorities to improve local
    conditions by the provision of sewers, water and street cleaning;
     The Mines Act, which forbade the employment of women and children
    in mines;
     The Emancipation of religious sects , which allowed Catholics to hold
    government jobs and to enter the universities of Oxford and
    Cambridge;
     The Trade Union Act, which legalized the activities of the unions
    workers. The unions grew steadily and came to play an important role
    determining internal policy.
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    The British Empire


    The Irish question: the relations with Ireland worsened, due to the potato
    blight
    The(1845),
    BritishsoEmpire
    when the
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    it greatest, emigration to theofUnited
    only in terms States
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    also of commercial power. Charles S. Parnell
    and political conviced
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    the Irish HomeVictoria.
    of Queen Rule Bill but it was twice
    rejected.
    • European policy
    • Colonial policy
    Empire and
    Commonwealth

     The Empire wasn’t just a military and a
    commercial corncern. Trough extensive
    propaganda, it was generally believed that
    having an empire was a necessary duty.
    Among the colonies, India was «the jewel
    in the crown» the richest and most exotic
    part of the empire.
     In the 19° century, some colonies were already being given limited
    independence. This meant that they were free from direct British
    control in their internal affairs, though not in matters of foreign policy
    and defence. They retained Queen Victoria as head of State, and made
    up the British Commonwealth of Nations.
    The Victorian compromise
    The Victorian period was a time of contradiction, often referred to as the Victorian
    Compromise: on the one hand there was the progress brought about by the
    Industrial Revolution, the rising wealth of the upper and middle classes and the
    expanding power of Britain and its empire; on the other hand there was the
    poverty, disease, deprivation and injustice faced by the working classes.


    The writers’ compromise
    Victrorian readers epexted to be instructed and at the same time to be
    entertained. Novelists were conditioned by their readers’ expectations;
    this explains why early Victorian novels present conformity to accepted
    moral standars together with a great liveliness. Charles Dickens is the
    most representative novelist of the age.


    Charles Dickens
    (1812-70)
    Themes of Dickens’ novels:
    • The sufferings of an orphan
    brought up in a workhouse;
    • Cruelty in boarding school;
    • The sufferings of the factory
    system ;
    • The victorian love for money
    and lack of disinterested
    affections.

    Characters of Dickens’ novel:


    • He created lively, unforettable
    characters and they are mainly
    from the lower and middle
    classes and are easily divided
    into good and bad.
    Dickens’ novel

    Oliver Twist(1837-38)
    The Parish Boy’s Progress, novel by
    Charles Dickens, published serially under the
    pseudonym “Boz” from 1837 to 1839 in Bentley’s
    Miscellany and in a three-volume book in 1838.
    The novel was the first of the author’s works to
    realistically depict the impoverished London
    underworld and to illustrate his belief that
    poverty leads to crime.
    Dickens’ novels

    Hard Times (1854)
    Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century
    England’s overzealous adoption of
    industrialization threatens to turn human
    beings into machines by thwarting the
    development of their emotions and
    imaginations. This suggestion comes forth
    largely through the actions of Gradgrind and
    his follower, Bounderby: as the former educates
    the young children of his family and his school
    in the ways of fact, the latter treats the workers
    in his factory as emotionless objects that are
    easily exploited for his own self-interest.
    Dickens’ novel

    A Christmas Carol(1843)
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens contains several themes:
    Change or transformation, forgiveness, compassion, choices,
    family, guilt, and memories are some. The most evident of all of
    these is probably the change Ebenezer Scrooge experiences
    because of the spirits he encounters.
    Alfred Tennyson
    (1809-92)

    Born in England in 1809, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
    began writing poetry as a boy. He was first
    published in 1827, but it was not until the 1840s that
    his work received regular public acclaim. His "In
    Memoriam" (1850), which contains the line "'Tis
    better to have loved and lost than never to have
    loved at all," cemented his reputation. Tennyson was
    Queen Victoria's poet laureate from 1850 until his
    death in 1892.
    Ulysses
    Poems(1842)

    Ulysses is a complex figure: he is the fierce
    Homeric warrior and a restless spirit ever
    open to knowledge. He fully expresses the
    Victorian theme of withdrawal from a dreary
    reality into a dreamy world. This is presented
    with bitter awareness that dreaming is an
    escape into a dead end.

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