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Victorian Age: Society and Ideologies

During the Victorian Age: - Society emphasized morality and respectability which dictated proper manners, home ownership, and church attendance. The family unit was patriarchal with women responsible for childrearing and household duties. - There was a difference between the public morality and private vices of the middle class and the poverty of the lower class, who often worked in workhouses which were unpleasant places people went if they could not support their families. - Writers brought attention to the conditions of the lower classes, while science, social Darwinism, and utilitarianism were dominant philosophies that shaped Victorian thought.

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Lorenzo Messina
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161 views2 pages

Victorian Age: Society and Ideologies

During the Victorian Age: - Society emphasized morality and respectability which dictated proper manners, home ownership, and church attendance. The family unit was patriarchal with women responsible for childrearing and household duties. - There was a difference between the public morality and private vices of the middle class and the poverty of the lower class, who often worked in workhouses which were unpleasant places people went if they could not support their families. - Writers brought attention to the conditions of the lower classes, while science, social Darwinism, and utilitarianism were dominant philosophies that shaped Victorian thought.

Uploaded by

Lorenzo Messina
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THE VICTORIAN AGE

FEATURES
● The Victorians were great moralizers.
● The idea of respectability distinguished the middle from the lower class.
Respectability was a mixture of morality, hypocrisy and conformity to
social standards; it implied:
- possession of good manners;
- ownership of a comfortable house with servants;
- regular attendance at church.
● The family was a patriarchal unit where the position of the husband was
dominant. The man was the breadwinner as well as the source of
discipline.
● Women had the role of educating the children, managing the servants and
budgeting. Single women with a child were considered fallen women and
were ostracized by society.
● Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms.
● Patriotism was deeply influenced by ideas of racial superiority. The
British considered themselves superior to other races and they thought that
they had to impose their superior way of life (institutions, laws, politics,
religion) on native peoples throughout the world.
During the Victorian Age, earlier Victorian writers wanted to attract the attention
of the upper classes to the condition of the lower classes.

VICTORIAN COMPROMISE
When we speak about the Victorian Compromise, we mean two problems that
characterized the society during the Victorian Age.
1. The first element is the double face of the middle class: there was a great
difference between the public life of middle-class people, characterized by
respectability, and the private life, which was characterized by vices and
dissolute life
2. There was a big difference between the middle class and the lower class. In
fact, the lower class lived in poverty, degradation; children exploitation was
a major fact, together with the system of the workhouses.

WORKHOUSES
The system of the workhouses was founded in 1834, thanks to the New Poor Law.
Workhouses were unpleasant places where those who did not have enough money
to raise their children went; they did not have the possibility to choose whether to

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go there or not. The main idea behind workhouses was to encourage people to
improve their condition.

POSITIVISM
In this period, there was a great faith in science: Victorians believed that it could
solve any problem.

NATURALISM AND SOCIAL DARWINISM


Naturalism is a movement based on the idea that man was the result of the race,
environment and time he was living. It was also connected to darwinism: Darwin,
in fact, developed the Theory of Natural Selection, used in this period in society
to maintain that there was also a natural selection in society. Those who were
poorer found themselves in this situation because they just did not work enough.
Naturalism did not start in Britain, but it came from France. One of its major
personalities was Emile Zola, who influenced in particular Robert Stevenson.

UTILITARIANISM
Another important doctrine of this period was utilitarianism: it considered
positive every action that was useful and produced happiness to the majority of
people. The most important philosopher in this matter was Jeremy Bentham.

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