THE VICTORIAN PERIOD

TIMELINE 1832 First reform Bill 1837 Victoria becomes Queen 1846 Corn Laws Repealed 1850 Tennyson replaces Wordsworth as Poet Laureate 1851 Great Exhibition in London 1859 Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species Franco-Prussian War 1901 Death of Victoria

BRITISH HISTORY “British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many ways the world has moved further ahead since the Queen was born than it moved all the rest of the two thousand years put together” (Mark Twain 1897). London becomes the largest European city England first industrialized Colonial Power “Sun never sets on the British Empire”

QUEEN VICTORIA AND THE VICTORIAN TEMPER Victorian – earnestness, moral responsibility, domestic propriety By the 1850s and 1860s writers were calling the period Victorian Georgian reaction against the period Overwhelming energy and practical outlook

THE EARLY PERIOD Liverpool and Manchester railroad 1832 Reform bill and breaking up of rotten boroughs 1867 Lower class vote 1830s and 40s know as “Time of troubles” Working conditions Child labor Chartism Corn laws repealed 1846

THE MID-VICTORIAN PERIOD More prosperous time Queen Victoria and Prince Albert seen as models of middle class domesticity Benefits of free trade Factory Acts 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park (Crystal Palace) Exports doubled between 1850 and 1870 Emigration and Empire Utilitarianism and Bentham Challenges to the Church Advancements in Science

LATE VICTORIAN PERIOD Apex of British Empire London’s greatness Increasing cost of Empire The Irish Question US competition Economic depression and emigration in 1870’s Second reform bill Reactions against Victorian ideals

THE ROLE OF WOMEN First petitions for Woman’s suffrage in 1840s, yet no vote until 1918 Married Woman’s Property Acts Divorce laws different for men and women Middle class debate about middle class women The Custody Acts of 1839 The Divorce and Matrimonial act of 1857 Improving women’s education Increased employment opportunities Single woman and governesses

LITERACY, PUBLICATION, AND READING Basic literacy nearly universal by 1900 Repeal of stamp act and improved printing made periodicals much cheaper Periodicals would serialize longer works – Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Trollope, and Gaskell (fiction);Carlyle, Mill, Arnold, Ruskin (essays); Tennyson and the Brownings (poetry) Broad readership and common literary culture

THE NOVEL AND POETRY The novel was the dominant form of Victorian Literature Multi-plot novels: “large, loose, baggy, monsters” (Henry James) Realism Social relationships and middle class society Woman writers – Gaskell, Eliot, Austen, the Brontes Genres – crime, mystery, horror, science fiction, detective stories Poetry builds on romantics, but without same creative enthusiasm Narrative poetry and the dramatic monologue