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The victorian context Part 2
SOCIETY and LETTERS
The Victorian Compromise
The Victorian Frame of mind - Key Thinkers
The rise of the Novel
• A general understanding by which a violent revolution was prevented by covering the bad aspects of progress (and through reforms)
• The Victorians veiled the unpleasant aspects of industrialization with a FAÇADE of RESPECTABILITY
• Contradictions: Great progress and prosperity of the middle classes VS. the terrible living conditions of the working classes and the poor.
The Victorian compromise: what was it?
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W. H. Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853-4, London, Tate Britain.
The Victorian Compromise: what was it ?
• The extreme, moralistic attitude of a society which actually particularly cared for APPEARANCE.
• Great moralism + great hypocrisy
• Vice was publicly condemned, but actually tolerated if in small amounts and concealed
The Victorian Compromise• Houses of prostitution, gambling dens, and all
sorts of vice were tolerated in great cities
• Thus, the Victorian compromise operated to maintain a facade of respectability in public while sin occurred in the dark recesses of the private sphere
• This Double standard was the essence of the Victorian Compromise
The Victorian Compromise• The Victorians were great moralisers
• They had a strict code of values:
• Hard work • Personal duty• Decorum & Respectability • Chastity (for women)• Patriotism
The Victorian compromise• These values supported by the upper and
particularly by the middle classes
• But all strata of society had to conform to these values
• Hard work & Personal duty• Strong believers in hard work: they saw the material
progress they had reached as a result of this• Personal duty valued more than inclination• At school: discipline, diligence, good behaviour, time
keeping
• The middle-class was obsessed with respectability, decorum.
• Respectability (morality+hypocrisy/keeping up appearance) distinguished the middle from the lower class (conformity to standards)
• = Having a nice house with servants,
a carriage, regular attendance to
church, charitable activities
The Victorian compromise
The Victorian Age
John Lamb, Victorian family portrait, 1879.
• ‘Victorian’, synonym for ’prudish’ , stood for extreme repression; even furniture legs had to be concealed under heavy cloth not to be “suggestive” of some sensual idea.
• ‘prude’ =someone who is easily shocked or embarassed by anything relating to sex (if you say someone is a prude, you show disapproval)
• (prudery=excessive modesty estremo pudore )
9. The Victorian compromise
The Victorian Age
W. H. Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853-4, London, Tate Britain.
Decorum (appropriate, polite behaviour)
meant:
a.Victorian private lives were dominated by an authoritarian father.b.Women were subject to male authority; they were expected to marry and make home a “refuge” for their husbands, to take care of the house and children
9. The Victorian compromise
The Victorian Age
John Lamb, Victorian family portrait, 1879.
9. The Victorian compromise
• Patriotism /Jingoism• (Jingoism = the belief that a country is better than another, expressed in a
threatening way)
• British proudness tending to racial superiority ( they were the ones destined to be the leaders)
• Hypocritical jingoistic attitude• They almost had the right to colonize other
“uncivilized countries” to teach them their superior way of life (actually they exploited them for economic reasons)
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND –
Key Thinkers • EVANGELICALISM (inspired to methodism founded by Wesley)
• shaped the Victorian mentality.• Enthusiastic commitment in society within
the Church of England • Humanitarian causes & social reform • Strict code of morality (against entertainment)• Attendance to church• Bible reading
John Stuart Mill and his ideas based on Bentham’s
Utilitarianism….
The Victorian Age
John Stuart Mill
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10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND Key Thinkers
• UTILITARIANISM• Philosophical doctrine founded by Jeremy Bentham
(18th cent)• Based on the Epicurean principle that man looks for
pleasure and tries to avoid sufferance. • Any action (even the government’s) must be judged
in terms of the pleasure [= material benefit] provided to the greatest number of people possible (materialistic view)
• Basic principle: The greatest happiness of the greatest number of people (happiness=material happiness)
• Any problem could be resolved through reason (statistics, overviews). It suited the middle classes
John Stuart Mill and other intellectuals of the time (Dickens, Ruskin)
• Attacked the Utilitarian indifference to human values (culture) showed by this doctrine.
• MILL, educated according to its principles , revised them: happiness not = material happiness, but spiritual happiness (not just a job and a home)
• Legislation should help men develop their personalities
• Importance of education and art.• Promoter of reforms: education act, trade unions,
emancipation of women.
Charles Darwin and the theory of natural
selection
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND – Key thinkers
The Victorian Age
Charles Darwin
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Charles Darwin• 1859 On the Origin of Man• Different living creatures not created by God (as
according to the Bible) but the result of a slow process of adaptation in a struggle of survival: the strongest and fittest to the environment will survive, the weakest will deserve to be defeated
• (The philosopher H. Spencer will adapt D.’s theories to society, arguing that economic competition was the same: no compassion for the poor and the oppressed)
• 1871 The Descent of Man• Man like any other being was the result of of
evolution and derived from the ape• SHOCKING IDEAS, contrasting what was expressed in the bible
Karl Marx and his studies about the harm caused by industrialism in man’s life.
He did research in England, studying its industry
10. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND Key Thinkers
The Victorian Age
Karl Marx
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The rise of the novel• There was a communion of interests and opinions
between the writers and their readers.
• This was due to the growth of the middle classes and literacy (even if at different levels)
• The Victorians were avid consumers of literature. They borrowed books from circulating libraries and read various periodicals.
The Victorian Age
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11. The rise of the novel• Novels made their first appearance in instalments
on the pages of periodicals (direct relationship reader-writer / reviewers) = the greatest form of enterteinment
• A new kind of novel (scientific approach) : realistic, dealing with social problems. Educating, opening the people’s eyes on the evils of society and entertaining at the same time.
The Victorian Age
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The features of the Victorian Novel?• The voice of the omniscient narrator provided a
comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier between «right» and «wrong», light and darkness.
• The setting chosen by most Victorian novelists was the city, both the symbol of industrial civilization and anonynmous lives .
• The plot was long and often complicated by sub-plots.• Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of
characters and achieved a deeper analysis of their inner life.
• In the final chapter there was retribution and punishment - Everything (events, incidents) was explained and justified.
LITERARY PHASES of the VICTORIAN NOVEL
• 1) Early Victorian Novels The authors are critical towards their
age, but they still identify themselves with it (Dickens, Thackeray)
• 2) Mid-Victorian Novels Linked to the persistence of Romantic
and Gothic traditions and to a psychological vein (the Bronte sisters, Stevenson)
LITERARY PHASES of the VICTORIAN NOVEL• 3) The Late Victorian Novel• Nearer to the development of
“Naturalism”, an almost scientific look at human behaviour, upon which the narrator no longer had power to comment.
• Authors like Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde began to express a sense of disatisfaction with the values of the age
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