1) Gender in Victorian society

Victorian society was organized hierarchically. While race, religion,

region, and occupation were all meaningful aspects of identity and

status, the main organizing principles of Victorian society were

gender and class. Gender was considered to be biologically based

and to be determinative of almost every aspect of an individual’s

potential and character. Victorian gender ideology was premised on

the “doctrine of separate spheres.” This stated that men and women

were different and meant for different things. Men were physically

strong, while women were weak. Men were independent, while

women were dependent. Men belonged in the public sphere, while

women belonged in the private sphere. Men were meant to

participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to

run households and raise families. Women were also thought to be

naturally more religious and morally finer than men. While most

working-class families could not live out the doctrine of separate

spheres, because they could not survive on a single male wage, the

ideology was influential across all classes.

Victorian society was organized hierarchically. While race, religion,

region, and occupation were all meaningful aspects of identity and

status, the main organizing principles of Victorian society were

gender and class. Class was both economic and cultural and

encompassed income, occupation, education, family structure,

sexual behaviour, politics, and leisure activities. Many middle-class

observers thought that working-class people imitated middle-class

people as much as they could, but they were mistaken;

working-class cultures (which varied by locality and other factors)

were strong, specific, and premised on their own values. The middle

class, which got its income from salaries and profit, grew rapidly

during the 19th century, from 15 to over 25 percent of the

population. During the 19th century, members of the middle class

were the moral leaders of society (they also achieved some political

power). The very small and very wealthy upper class got its income

from property, rent, and interest. The upper class had titles, wealth,

land, or all three; owned most of the land in Britain; and controlled

local, national, and imperial politics.

Most Victorian Britons were Christian. The Anglican churches of

England, Wales, and Ireland were the state churches (of which the

monarch was the nominal head). The Church of Scotland was

Presbyterian. There was some religious diversity, as Britain also was

home to other non-Anglican Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews,

Muslims, Hindus, and others (at the end of the period there were

even a few atheists).

Alongside their faith, Victorians made and appreciated

developments in science. The best-known Victorian scientific

development is that of the theory of evolution. It is typically

credited to Charles Darwin, but versions of it were developed by

earlier thinkers as well. Victorians were also fascinated by the

emerging discipline of psychology and by the physics of energy.

The formal political system was a constitutional monarchy. It was in

practice dominated by aristocratic men. At the national level,

government consisted of the monarch and the two houses of

Parliament, the House of Lords and the House of Commons.During

the Victorian period, the House of Commons became the centre of

government, the House of Lords lost power (though it remained

influential), and the monarchy transformed into a symbol of the

nation. Most women over age 30 got the right to vote in 1918. Full

adult suffrage, with no property requirement, was achieved with the

second Representation of the People Act (1928). Important political

events during this period included the abolition of slavery in the

British Empire; working-class political activism, the rise of

liberalism as the dominant political ideology, and the

nationalization of Conservative and Liberal parties.

The Victorian British Empire dominated the globe, though its forms

of rule and influence were uneven and diverse. The traffic of people

and goods between Britain and its colonies was constant, complex,

and multidirectional. Britain shaped the empire, the empire shaped

Britain, and colonies shaped one another. British jobs abroad

included civil and military service, missionary work, and

infrastructure development. People from various imperial locations

traveled to, studied in, and settled in Britain.

Dramatic expansion of the empire meant that goods came to Britain

from all over the world. Between 1820 and 1870 the empire grew,

shifted its orientation eastward, and increased the number of

nonwhite people over whom it exerted control. Much of this

expansion involved violence. India became central to imperial

status and wealth. Britain took control of large parts of Africa

(including Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya), which together were home to

about 30 percent of the African population. The same period also

saw the start of anticolonial movements that demanded freedom

from British domination in India and elsewhere. These would

ultimately lead to decolonization after World War II.

Britain’s status as a world political power was proven by a strong

economy, which grew rapidly between 1820 and 1873. With the

earliest phases of industrialization over by about 1840, the British

economy expanded. Britain became the richest country in the

world, but many people worked long hours in harsh conditions. Yet,

overall, standards of living were rising. Most families not only had a

home and enough to eat but also had something leftover for alcohol,

tobacco, and even vacations to the countryside or the seaside. Of

course, some decades were times of plenty, others of want. Relative

prosperity meant that Britain was a nation not only of shopkeepers

but of shoppers. Increased wealth, including higher real wages

meant that even working-class people could purchase discretionary

items. Mass production meant that clothes, souvenirs, newspapers,

and more were affordable to almost everyone.

More access made British cultural products more important. Not

only did they reveal much about the society from which they

emerged, but during the Victorian period Britain was the cultural

capital of the English-speaking world (including the United States,

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). Victorian performance and

print culture were rich and varied, a blend of melodrama, spectacle,

and morality.

Theatre thrived. Melodrama was the most important and most

popular genre early on; later, sensation drama became popular.

Even more popular were music halls, which featured varied

programs of singing, dancing, and more; music halls attracted

people of all classes.

Print culture was also large and diverse, aided by relatively high

literacy rates. There were hundreds of magazines and newspapers

available at ever cheaper prices. Novels were another key feature of

Victorian print culture. By mid-century, Britons of all classes could

afford and read novels. Some were aimed at highly educated and

well-off people, others at less-educated readers looking for

appealing and exciting stories. Victorian novels were often quite

long, with complicated plots and many characters.

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 Victorians promoted a code of values that reflect the

world as they wanted it to be, not as it really was, based on

personal duty, hard work, respectability and charity.

Since the Victorians, under the strict reign of Queen Victoria,

had to compromise many essential features of individuality

and modes of expression, the term ‘Victorian Compromise’

came to be coined and applied to this particular age. As

expected, this characteristic of the Victorian era also came to

be reflected in the literature of that age.