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THE VICTORIAN AGE (1837-1901)

SOCIAL BACKROUND

Usually it’s called “Victorian Age” not only the period during which Queen

Victoria reigned, but also several years later. Practically we can call Victorian age

all the period from Queen Victoria’s coronation to the beginning of the World War

I.

The Victorian Age was a period of changes and process of democratization. Great

freedom was given to Catholics, that, grouped in the “Oxford Movement”, asked

for more social rights.

Also the middle class was fostered by the new industrial progresses and obtained

more power.

These improvements spread a wave of optimism in the country. Because of these

so diffused hopes, people even started ignoring the problems that afflicted

England: although the Victorian Age is always remembered as a period of

development and prosperity, poverty and illness were frequent and widely

diffused, especially among the lower classes.

The persons that lived in the slums, for example, had lots of health problems.

Poverty was considered as a crime and it was not rare that poor people were

arrested in the streets and kept in jail with the mere accuse of “being poor”, and

the “New poor law”, approved in those years, was not a solution at all.

Moreover, in school teachers often used to give corporal punishments to their

students.

The progress made in industry, economy and literature contrasted with poverty

and corruption.

It is also for this widely spread corruption that people belonging to the upper

classes started to oppose it a strict morality. The so called “Victorian

Compromise”.

Parliament introduced in those years also reforms for humanitarian reasons and

tried to improve poor people conditions of living.

Great importance had also the “Evangelism”, that fostered lots of changes, like

the abolition of certain public entertainments and the observance of Sunday.

In this period also the “Fabian Society” was founded, by Sidney and Beatrice

Webb. The name derived from Quintus Fabius Maximus, the “delayer”. The

movement claimed for gradual reforms instead of drastic and revolutionary

reforms.

The Victorian Age was extremely Puritan. Sex became a taboo and all the words

that were vaguely sexual were abolished from the usual language.

The Victorian family became an example of respectability: the father was

authoritarian and the mother meek and mild. Families were numerous and

women had to be frail and innocent.

The growing puritanism in the country started to influence clothes too, that were,

at that time, very formal in their shape.

VICTORIAN PHILOSOPHY

The Victorian Age was full of contradictions, brought by Materialism and

Positivism.

The most known philosophers of this period were:

1) Jeremy Bentham, that said that only what is useful is good and that every

action should be done only to get what is better for a great number of people.

2) Charles Darwin, that said that men descended from apes and that there’s a

natural selection by which only the stronger survive.

3) Karl Marx

4) Arthur Schopenhauer, that said that God and the immortality of soul are

human illusions.

5) Auguste Compte.

6) Hyppolyte Taine, that underlined the influence of heredity on man’s character.

According to Positivism everything is entirely decided by a sequence of previous

causes, so that men’s actions don’t depend on their free will, but are instead

beyond their control. This led to a spread pessimism.

VICTORIAN POETRY:

The Victorian Age was marked by numerous progresses in industry and

technology. As a reflection of this industrial development a deep crisis of

traditional religious belief took place, replaced by an almost blind faith in science.

Science seemed to be the main enemy to belief, and poetry too, which –together

with faith- always used to exalt the beauty of nature as the evidence of the

existence of a benevolent Creator.

The most famous poets and writers of the Victorian Age were Tennyson and

Browning.

They were, as writers, complementary. In fact, they were different in their literary

characteristics, but similar in their attitudes (they were both strongly interested

in the numerous social problems of their period).

The most important features of Victorian Poetry were:

1) Reaction to every kind of standards;

2) Continuation of the Romantic ideas;

3) A detachment of the artist from every ethical rule.

The new ideas of this period have their roots in the “Pre-raphaelite Brotherhood”,

founded in 1848.

The Pre-raphaelites wanted to come back to nature, a return to the past

simplicity full of the mysticism of the middle ages, when there were important

values and men still had their creativity.

The main representatives of this movement were Dante Rossetti and his sister

Christina, and also William Morris and Angerlon Charles Sirinburne. They were

all against the common standards of their period and they found inspiration from

a sort a spiritual sensuality.

Basically, Victorian poetry is divided into:

1) POETRY OF SENSATION;

2) POETRY OF REFLECTION, which wanted to give moral lessons.

Tennyson started writing his works imitating the Romantics, but then, also

thanks to the pressures of his literary friends and fellows, he managed to develop

his own style, thus beginning to write another kind of poetry that made him

popular and interested in the great social problems: the role of women, evolution,

industrial progress….

In very many ways Tennyson was not only a poet: he can be considered as a sort

of prophet of his time. Only a poet could fight against the unromantic materialism

of modern life.

Actually many poets of that period has been seen as prophets, not only during

their historical period, but even by more modern critics.

It’s not easy to understand why poets were commonly seen as prophets during

Victorian Age. Probably one reason was the growth of the reading public.

A prophet is in fact a person with great and innovative ideas that manages to take

his message to a wide audience.

So, even though artists always had great and innovative ideas, it’s only during

this period that the English writers are able to make them popular and known to

a big amount of people.

Moreover Tennyson wrote in a way that was accessible also to those who were not

particularly learned.

Another important mind of this period is William Paley. He compared universe to

a watch found abandoned on the ground. And as this watch must have had a

maker, the intricate mechanism of natural world demonstrates the existence of a

Creator.

Unfortunately the new discoveries in astronomy and geology challenged the

account of creation given in the Book of Genesis, making it clear that life on earth

evolved gradually.

Tennyson, for example, was worried that the idea of man might be nothing more

than the prelude to other forms of life.

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