Victorian England 1832-1901
Great Exhibition Hall 1851 represents 19th century
progress!
This view of 19th century London shows
the darker side of progress, the Industrial
Revolution at its height.
Queen Victoria as a young girl and as queen. Her reign
lasted over 63 years, the longest of any British monarch.
Like Elizabeth I, she gave her name to this period of
British history and literature.
Queen Victoria took the crown at 18.
Queen Victoria
She was a popular queen,
the first to take residence in
Buckingham Palace. She
spoke English, French,
German, Italian, and
Hindustani.
She became queen when the
monarchy was unpopular
with the people, but she won
them over with her modesty,
practicality, personality, and
style.
Victoria met Prince Albert, a cousin who was a minor German Prince, when she
was 16. Four years later at age 20 and already queen, she fell in love with him
and married. Some believe he married her only to gain social status; however,
their marriage was a happy one. They parented 9 children. He died in 1861 and
from that time on she dressed only in black. For the next 40 years until her death,
she ordered that a fresh suite of clothing be laid out for him daily.
She started the tradition of a bride wearing white at her wedding.
Marria
ge
Queen Victoria at 20 and as a widow.
The Queen on the morning or her coronation.
After Albert’s death she wore widow’s black
and a widow’s bonnet in public, never a
crown.
THE VICTORIAN
ERA (1830-1900)
Positiv Negativ
•
into world’ses
Queen Victoria turned England
leading eswere
Changes to traditional
British society
military/economic power disturbing and frightening:
• Period of intense change: *Increased urban poverty
Railroads *Challenge to British
Postal system Empire’s power through
foreign wars
Improvements in medicine,
sanitation *Workers fighting for
power
Gov’t-supported schools
*Women entering work
Political reforms (more could force
vote)
Increase in industry
THE WORLD OF
J&H
• Britain in 1880s: social, economic,
spiritual changes
• Jekyll and Hyde represents
1. “Natural man”: free of civilizing
influences of society and religion
2. Darwinism
3. Freud’s studies in psychoanalysis
4. Symbolic representation of the
threats of innovations in economics,
science, workings of the mind
Historical/Cultural
Context
• Calvanism - strict form of Protestant
religion founded by Swiss reformer John
Calvin 16th century-associated with
moral restraint and demanded austerity
and a grim respectability we have come
to associate with Victorian times
• Predestination-the Elect were certain
people-known only to God-who would be
granted entry to Heaven
Historical/Cultural Context
• Appearance is an important feature of
the story-the façade which conceals the
reality is often important in this work of
prose – note how the appearance of
buildings often reflects the nature of the
inhabitants
• The story is a psychological exploration
of evil and forces the reader to examine
the nature of morality through its
conflicting characters Jekyll and Hyde
who are, as we know, representations of
different moral extremes within the
Victorian Social
Classes
• Victorian society was highly stratified.
Social classes did not mix, and
behavior, especially among members
of the upper class, was expected to be
exemplary at all times.
• The unrealistically rigid morality of
upper class Londoners led many to
live double lives.
Breakdown of Victorian
Society
• At the end of the 1800s, Britain was experiencing a
period of intense social, economic, and spiritual
change, after many decades of confident growth and
national self-fulfillment.
• Population doubled creating a demand for housing, food
and clothing. Irish potato famine created a flood of new
immigrants.
• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde perfectly captured some readers’
fears that their carefully built society was hypocritical.
Breakdown of Victorian
Society
“The sun never sets on the British
Empire.” England was a imperial
nation gaining control of countries
around the world. During Victoria’s
reign, 25% of the world’s
population, was part of the British
Empire.
Imperialism: policy of extending a nation’s
authority be acquiring territory or by
dominating their politics and economy.
Hegemony: dominating over groups with or
without the threat of force.
British Empire during Victoria’s reign, controlled one quarter of the world’s
population, about 458 million people. It covered 14.2 million square miles,
about a quarter of Earth’s total land area.
This is the reason why the English language was at one time the language of
business, law, and government.
Victorian Society
Social conventions for WOMEN remain similar to those of
the Bennet sisters. Women were to marry and provide homes.
A working class woman, if married, could be a servant and if
unmarried, a teacher or governess. Many women did not
marry simply because there were not enough men. This led to
the creation of the phrase “redundant women.”
Legal changes were to their advantage. Although they still
could not vote, WOMEN had the right to retain their own
property after marriage, to sue for divorce, and to fight for
the custody of their children in a separation.
Victorian literature expresses a world of ideas in a culture
comfortable enough with itself to ponder and debate these.
Comfortable:
100 years of peace 1815 (Napoleon, Waterloo) to 1914 (WWI)
Industrial Revolution expanded the middle class
By 1860’s all men except agricultural workers had the right to
vote
1860-1900 literacy rate went from 40% to 90% (marriage
certificates)
Obsessed with being gentile, decorous amounted to prudery
A young women of personality and
charm, Queen Victoria was
influenced by the prudery of the time.
Some say the queen often used the
expression “We are not amused”
whenever a conversation “took a
ribald turn”.
Language in particular reflected the
uptight prudishness of the era. Since it
would be improper to refer to body
parts, a family at the dinner table would
be embarrassed to ask for a thigh or a
breast from a plate of chicken, so they
used the euphemistic dark and white
meat.
Victorian Poets
Wordsworth said the “A poet is a man speaking to
other men.” Poetry was an individual experience and
spoke of that experience.
Robert Shelley, a Victorian, expanded the role of the
poet when he said “Poets are the acknowledged
legislators of the world.” Poetry confirmed what the
Victorians valued or pointed out problems in their
society. Their poetry often related to
society’s problems or misdirection.
Victorian Social Consciousness
These poets questioned the
cost of exploiting the earth
and human beings to
achieve comfort for the few.
They protested or made
fun of the codes of decorum
or manners as well as
authority.
The attitudes of the poets toward their world will change as we read.
The beginning of the era is similar to the Romantics. The world was orderly
and nature’s beauty was a reflection of God’s plan and goodness.
Alfred Lord Tennyson represents this beginning. His poetry “assures readers. .
.that everything was part of a benevolent plan in which eventually all losses
will be made right.” He saw God in his world. He also looks to the past to the
lives of several mythical characters to find ideals of human behavior.
The Victorian created the concept of smog, called “the storm cloud of the 19th
century.” John Ruskin describes “. . .the sky is covered with greasy cloud; now
raincloud, but a dry black veil, which not ring or sunshine can pierce; partly
diffused in feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible, yet without
any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. . . . It looks partly as if it were
made of poisonous smoke. . . . But mere smoke would not blow to and fro in that
wild way. It looks more to me as if it were made of dead man’s souls.”
By the middle of the 19th century, other writers
seemed less certain about a spiritual or divine
presence in the world. Matthew Arnold writes
that “the sea of faith had ebbed. There was no
certainty or if there was, what was certain was that
existence was not governed by a benevolent
intelligence that cared for its creatures.”
Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” is the
grimmest of these questioning poems. It was
written on January 31st 1899 and marked the
close or death of the 19th century.
Victorian Social Consciousness
Victorian authors continued to reflect their social concerns in their writing. In his
novels, Charles Dickens attacked the hollowness, glitter, superficiality as well as the
poverty and cruel conditions of those like Tiny Tim and the orphan Oliver Twist.
“Many of Dickens's
most memorable
scenes showed
decent people
neglected, abused,
and exploited.”
Dickens’s last novel, Our Mutual Friend,
features a family called the Veneerings. “ They
are ‘bran-new people in a bran- new house in a
bran-new quarter of London.”
Veneer is a thin surface layer, as of finely
grained wood, glued to a base of inferior
material. Cherry, ebony walnut veneers are
used in making furniture often instead of solid
wood; therefore the craftsman conceals,
something common or inferior, with a
deceptively attractive outward show. So
what sort of people do you suppose the
Veneerings were?
Victorian Drama
Oscar Wilde was the Victorian
playwright who, like Dickens, poked fun
at those who were socially pushy or
insincere. He makes delicious fun of the
idle, often phony upper class in his play,
The Importance of Being Earnest. This
play is called a comedy of manners.
If you enjoy watching Boston Legal,
you are watching a contemporary comedy
of manners.
All in all, Victorian literature is about change and a
culture’s reaction to change.
The telegraph, telephone, photography (Victoria
was the first royal to have her portrait “taken”
rather than “painted”) the advent of the automobile
and electric lighting changed not only the way
people lived, but their view of the world in which
they lived.
Darwin unsettled the world by offering another
view of creation while Nightingale, who founded
the first modern nursing school, gave women a
role model.
Information from…
• mysite.cherokee.k12.ga.us
• 5b1.wikispaces.com/file/view/
Jekyll+and+Hyde+powerpoint.ppt
• www.docstoc.com/docs/82461938/Dr-Jekyll-and-
Text quotes taken from:
Hyde-Intro-PPT
Elements of Literature: Literature of Great Britain.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: Austin, Texas,
1993.
Images from: www.boostyourenglish.net/…/queen_victoria.htm
www.google.com/images
