Assignment on Background of Victorian Literature

Name : Hetal chauhan M.

Roll no.: 13

Paper no. 6: Victorian Literature

Unit no: 4

Enrolment no: 2069108420180008

Class : Sem- 2/ 2018

Email Id: hetalchauhan137@gmail.com

Submitted to: M. K. U. B, Department of English.

Word count: 2313

Victorian Literature :

Victorian literature is literature, mainly written in English, during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901) (the Victorian era). ... While in the preceding Romantic period poetry had been the dominant genre, it was the novel that was most important in the Victorian period.

The Reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1900)

Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Kent, succeeded her uncle, William IV, in 1837 when she was a girl of eighteen.She had character, a great sense of public duty and resposibility, and was perhaps the best possible monarch for nineteenth-century Britain.Her reign lasted almost 64 years, making her the longest reigning monarch in the history of England. This period of great expansion for the British Empire.

                            

  Coleridge, Shelly, Keats, Byron and Scoot Had passed away, and it seemed As if there were no writers in England to fill their places. Wordsworth had written 1835,

Like clouds that rake the mountain summits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,

How fast has brother followed brother.

From sunshine to the sunless land!

In these liens is reflected the sorrowful of a literary man of the early nineteenth century who recommended the glory that had passed away from earth.

Background of Victorian Age

Historical Summary/Background:

In this history of Victorian time many political changes of the world here this period influence of literature and many skill and work development of this area.Victorian Period political background main point of them:

         Democracy :

Amid the multitude of social and political forces of this great age, first the long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for personal liberty is definitely settled and democracy becomes the established order of day. The king ,who appeared in a age of popular weakness and ignorance and the peers who come with the Normans in  triumph, are both stripped of their power and left as figureheads of a past civilization. The last vestige of personal government and of the driven right of rulers disappears; the house of common become the rulings power in England and a series of new reform bill rapidly extend the sufferings.

Social unrest:

second the age of democracy,it is an age of popular education of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood and of profound social unrest.The slaves are not necessarily Negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold cattle in the market place,but that multitudes of men ,women and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. To free these slave also.

The Idea of peace & prosperity: 

Third is it is an age of comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and false glitter of fighting and more of its moral evils as the nation realizes that it the common people who bear the burden and sorrow and the poverty of war. While the privileged classes reap most of the finical and political rewards. Moreover, with the growth to trade and friendly foreign relations in become evident that social equality for which England was contending at home belongs to the whole race of men.

Arts and science:

forth the Victorian age is especially remarkable of its rapid progress in all the arts and science and it mechanical invention.A glance at any record of the industrial achievements of the 19th century will show how vast they are and it is unnecessary to repeat here the list of inventions from spinning looms to steamboats and from matches to electrics lights. 

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social background of Victorian era in 19th century in England:

The Victorian era is considered to extend from 1837-1901 during the reign of Queen Victoria.  This era is characterized by the great expansion of the British Empire, a period also that was one of extended peace, interrupted only by the Crimean War and the conflicts of the Zanzibar and Boer wars.  In English society there was a growing liberalism which brought about social reforms, reforms in which author Charles Dickens great involved himself.

The Victorian era is considered to extend from 1837-1901 during the reign of Queen Victoria.  This era is characterized by the great expansion of the British Empire, a period also that was one of extended peace, interrupted only by the Crimean War and the conflicts of the Zanzibar and Boer wars.  In English society there was a growing liberalism which brought about social reforms, reforms in which author Charles Dickens great involved himself.

The family was considered of paramount importance during the Victorian Age.  Women's main purpose in life was to find a husband and to manage domestic affairs; while doing so, they were completely repressed by their husbands. In short, the society was clearly patriarchal.  Religious faith was also paramount; there was an exaggerated morality as well as an exaggerated adherence to form and manners.  With the Industrial Revolution coming, there was also an emergence of people into the burgeoning middle class, a class that aspired to raise itself to that of the upper class because social ranking was so important.  This admiration of a rather frivolous aristocracy is one of the attitudes that Dickens often satrizes in his works such as Great Expectations.

The Victorian compromise was the attempt to find a solution to the deep gap between the rich and the poor.

Marx and Engels’s revolutionary theories were linked to the terrible living and working conditions of workers. They influenced English socialists in the last years of Victoria’s rule. In 1848 the Communist Manifesto was published.

According to the utilitarian philosophy, best represented by Jeremy Bentham, the value of a thing was determined by its utility, and an action was right if it brought about the greatest happiness forict cultural rules were created and people were supposed to follow them. For example, the upper and middle classes refu the greatest number of people.

The Victorian society was full of contradictions: stressed the word “leg”. On the other hand, they were the main cause that led many poor women to prostitution. They were obsessed with order. Identity was important and it depended on gender, class and race. Both men and women had their own places to stay. As to men, their place was the outside world; as for women, they had to stay at home and if they had to go out, they needed to be accompanied by a man in order to be protected.

In contrast with Victorian moral and social codes, in “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” Darwin affirmed that man was the result of gradual evolution. So, this theory refused the Christian belief according to which man had been created by God.

The Victorian compromise was the attempt to find a solution to the deep gap between the rich and the poor.

Marx and Engels’s revolutionary theories were linked to the terrible living and working conditions of workers. They influenced English socialists in the last years of Victoria’s rule. In 1848 the Communist Manifesto was published.

According to the utilitarian philosophy, best represented by Jeremy Bentham, the value of a thing was determined by its utility, and an action was right if it brought about the greatest happiness forict cultural rules were created and people were supposed to follow them. For example, the upper and middle classes refu the greatest number of people.

The Victorian society was full of contradictions: stressed the word “leg”. On the other hand, they were the main cause that led many poor women to prostitution. They were obsessed with order. Identity was important and it depended on gender, class and race. Both men and women had their own places to stay. As to men, their place was the outside world; as for women, they had to stay at home and if they had to go out, they needed to be accompanied by a man in order to be protected.

Victorian Age – Historical context

Brief note about ‘Victorian Age – Historical context’ divided into: Victorian Age, home policy, the empire, The white Man’s burden.

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Victorian Age – Historical context

Victorian Age

The name comes from Queen Victoria (an Hannover), the second big queen after queen Elizabeth. Her reign was very very long: to 1837 to 1901.

During her reign Britain was the most powerful country in the world.

She married Prince Albert, they had nine children: she wanted to give the example of the importance of the family.

Home policy

This age is characterized by a super power due to the second industrial revolution and the economic boom:

-     Heavy engineering;

-     Machine tools productions;

-     Whole and cotton industry.

This economy was characterized by (lasseiz-fair), (free-trade).

-     The state couldn’t interfere with individual relationships.

-     No limit to the exportation and no taxes to the importations

The historical and social context

The period of the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), which is usually called "The Victorian Age", was an age full of contradictions, of industrializations and technological progress, of extreme poverty and the exploitation of factory workers, of social reforms, of scientific discoveries and religious unrest.

The application of steam-power to machines and textile industry, the cutting of new canals and t 141f58b he building of new roads and railways (which made transport easier and cheaper), transformed Great Britain from an agricultural country to an industrial one.

This transformation resulted in the migration of rural people from the countryside to the industrial areas in search of job. Many of the cities and towns of the North, the most industrialised area, were actually created in this period. So within a few years more English and Welsh people lived in cities and towns than in the countryside. Urbanisation created an intolerable overcrowding: houses were mainly built back to back and side by side. They had no piped water, no sanitarians. The living conditions in this slums were very poor. As a consequence, typhus and cholera were very common.

The political parts in this period was liberalism, which defended the freedom of individual from any external restraints likely to prevent the complete realization of his/her potential. The economic theory of free trade was an important aspect of liberalism and popular among both the Whigs and the Tories. It advocated an unlimited competition and objected any interference by government in industry and commerce.

For much of this period, industrialization meant the exploitation of factory workers. Men, women and children worked in factories sometimes up to 14-16 hours a day while factory owners paid very low wages and closed down factories during periods of economic slump. The gulf separating the rich from the poor was so deep that a Tory Prime Minister wrote of two nations, and several contemporary novelists (like Charles Dickens) criticized the desperate situation of the working class in their novels.

When Queen Victoria came to the English throne, the nation could be divided into the aristocracy, the middle class and the working class. If such were the living conditions of labourers, those of the other two social classes of Victorian society were quite different.

Industrialization and technological progress further advanced the position of the middle class. By the end of the century, they held power previously held by the aristocracy and class distinction became more financial than hereditary.

Victorian middle classes were very proud of the nation's triumphs in technology and engineering which had so changed the look of the environment, as well as of its political stability, the freedom of its press its legal system. Optimism was their dominant mood. They believed the way of living could be exported to all parts of the growing empire. Their material progress, their interest in making money and reaching a good position was also reflected in the house they lived in: there was a proliferation of ornaments in buildings and an accumulation of pieces of furniture inside the Victorian house.

There was a strong belief in the family, which was usually large and in which the father's authority was unquestioned. Middle class girls were closely guarded by their parents till marriage. There was a prudish attitude towards sex, in fact, a lady was supposed to live in ignorance of it. Generally middle class girls spent their time reading novel, having singing lessons, and learning to play the piano. This was the good side of the picture. The other side, the bad one, was represented by prostitution and very high crime figures in large cities (London in particular).

Major Writers of the Victorian Period

Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)

Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855)

Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)

Browning, Robert (1812-1889)

Carroll, Lewis (1832-1898)

Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)

Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928)

Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-1889)

Housman, A. E. (1859-1936)

Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1802-1838)

Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894)

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909)

Tennyson, Alfred (Lord) (1809-1892)

Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-1863)

Wells, H.G. (1866-1946)

Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900)

Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939)

Literary Periods

Renaissance Literature

The Enlightenment

Romanticism

Transcendentalism

Victorian Literature

Realism

Naturalism

Modernism

Bloomsbury Group

Existentialism

Beat Generation

English Literature History

From the Conquest to Chaucer 1066-1400

From Chaucer to Spenser 1400-1599

The Age of Shakespeare 1564-1616

The Age of Milton 1608-1674

From the Restoration to the Death of Pope 1660-1744

The Death of Pope to the French Revolution 1744-1789

The French Revolution to the Death of Scott 1789-1832

From the Death of Scott to the Present Time 1832-1893

Citation :

http://www.online-literature.com/periods/victorian.php

http://www.inftub.com/italiano/inglese/THE-VICTORIAN-AGE-The-historic24154.php

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/write-note-social-background-literature-victorian-361617

http://sagarladhvabetch2014-16.blogspot.in/2015/03/background-of-victorian-literature.html?m=1