1832 The Reform Bill was passed.
1837 Queen Victoria ascended the throne.
1901 Queen Victoria died.
The 65 years of the reign of Queen Victoria show three more
or less sharply defined stages.
THE EARLY VICTORIAN PERIOD (1837-1855)
During the Industrial Revolution, this period witnessed
social unrest. The middle-class people started agitating for social and political
justice. Steep fall in the agricultural produce made England face the menace of
famine. The working-class people submitted a charter of demands. The period
ended with the triumph of the middle class.
THE MID-VICTORIAN PERIOD (1855-1879)
This period witnessed the rise of the middle class in Victorian
society. There was scientific and technological progress, commercial development
and the expansion of British territory through a number of colonies like
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and India. This period saw Victorian
society enter upon a period of unprecedented prosperity, profound optimism and complacency.
England became ‘the workshop of the world’ and ‘mistress of the seas’.
THE LATE VICTORIAN PERIOD (1879-1901)
During this period optimism and conference declined. Doubt and
disillusionment crept in. England had become an imperial power but in any case,
the spirit of imperialism, did not last long. The period could not hide the
doubt and anxiety following upon economic depression, the rise of working class
and socialism as an active force. The spirit of discontent and revolt rose, and
the eighties and nineties were marked by a spirit of Anti-Victorianism. The revolt
was led by Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde with the ideology of ‘Art for Art’s sake’,
and aesthetic movement against Victorianism began.
The general characteristics of the Victorian Era which
influenced Victorian Literature are:
STEADY ADVANCE OF DEMOCRATIC IDEAS – The British Government
feared that the contagion from the continent might spread throughout the
country. France had already experienced the revolutionary turmoil, sot eh change
to the democratic form of government was peaceful.
The democratic movement involved not only the extension of
political privileges but also equal educational opportunities to all. The rising
middle class struggled to shape the uncultured and rowdy lower classes in its
own image by example, preaching and propaganda. The lower class along with the
middle class therefore desired for a culture which till then had been the
precious possession of the aristocratic class. Journalism and periodical literature
developed. Reviews of literary works in journals became a useful way of popularizing
literature. Novels came to be serialized in magazines and periodicals.
PROGRESS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT – In the nineteenth century
science held a place of prime importance among intellectual pursuits of common
man. Sir Charles Lyell in his ‘Principles of Geology’ (1833) established first
that the earth was millions of years old, when according to the book of Genesis
the earth was a few thousand years old. He also maintained that man lived on
earth for a much longer period than that given in the Bible.
Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ (1859) and ‘Descent of
Man’ (1871) propounded the theory of natural selection and survival of the
fittest on the basis of ‘might is right’ and ‘the weakest go to the wall’.
The second book gave a scientific explanation for the theory
of evolution and man’s descent from the monkeys. With this man’s faith in Christianity
was shaken.
MATERIAL PROGRESS – This was an age of tremendous material progress.
Industrialization advanced. The advancement in France was applied to industry
and the material resources of nature were put to its best use. There was a
revolution in commercial enterprise, due to the great increase of markets, in
consequence of the expansion of the British colonies like Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, Canada and India. As a result of this expansion in commercialization
there was an immense advance in the use of mechanical devices.
The great exhibition organized by Prince Albert, Queen
Victoria’s husband, in 1851, reflected the material prosperity and the mood of
optimism and was greeted as the inauguration of a new era of prosperity.
FERMENT OF SOCIAL IDEAS – The interaction between
literature and society was tremendous during this period. Dickens and Carlyle were
concerned with description and analysis of ‘the condition of England’ as a
result of industrialism. Economists like Ricardo and Malthus were busy with the
examination of economic doctrine, concerning poverty, population and the scope
of public responsibility.
PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALISM – The Philosophy of Utilitarianism
advocated by Jeremy Bentham was radical but a popular philosophy of his time.
it was a philosophy of Liberalism in the field of commerce and industry and
aimed at the achievement of material progress. Bentham opposed all privileges enjoyed
by the landed gentry and he firmly believed that by leaving an individual free
to think and do as he pleased, could for the greatest good of the greatest
number be promoted. This in short is the philosophy of utilitarianism. He also
favored the abolition of all artificial restrictions imposed by the government
on Jews and Catholics.
But John Steward Mill a champion of individual liberty,
gave a new direction to Bentham’s utilitarianism. He realized the limitations
of the Utilitarianism philosophy. He agreed that the working class needed
protection from the western interests of capitalists and merchants. He therefore
favored, not less, but more interference by the government to ensure the
greatest number. Mill thus gave a socialistic orientation to the utilitarian
advocacy of laissez faire.
Mill was also a great believer in the equality of the sexes
and his advocacy of the cause of women led to a better appreciation of women’s
status in society. Women were further appreciated in the work of Florence the Nightingale
and the Loyal Band of Nurses in the Crimean war which created a new profession
for women.
MORALITY – The rise of the middle class made English
society more orthodox. The spirit of puritanism permeated the social
environment and respect for traditions and dimensions increased. People like
Collen consent welcomed strict morality. They considered smoking in public and
a lady riding a bicycle as indecent. The loose morals of the upper class which
had disgraced English society during the reign of King George IV and during the
eighteenth century had disappeared. The aristocracy which had earlier consisted
of land owners had also people from the middle class who had become rich because
of commerce and industry. These people set the tone of society by insisting on
traditional ideals of morality and respectability.
LOVE FOR THE PAST – The principle of the preservation of
the past in the present acquired a broader influence. Poets turned to other ages
for inspiration. The classical myths received new life and without sacrificing
any of their old beauty expressed new meanings. Mathew Arnold lived in habitual
converse with the Greeks and derived his art and ideas from them more than from
any other English source. Tennyson turned to the Legend of King Arthur of
Britain and wrote The Idylls of the King.
Browning’s chief field of interest was the renaissance. Swinburne
wrote a tragedy ‘Atlanta in Calydon’
after the Greek models (plays).
William Thackeray turned to the eighteenth century and
wrote the historical Henry Esmond.
William Morris wrote about the Middle Ages.
RELIGION AND THE CHALLENGE OF EXPANSION – The Victorian Age
might be regarded as an age of religion. It was an age in which the religion of
the middle class set the tone of manner, dress and taste which the lower
classes adopted in their struggle towards respectability. It was an age in which
even ministers used religious vocabulary in their speeches.
Yet the Victorian age might be regarded as an age of
religious decay and controlled sectarianism, scientific discoveries like Darvin’s
theory of Evolution about human life on earth shook orthodox Christians but
they refused to face the challenge of science and tried to ignore problems with
the spirit of inquiry raised. But others upheld rationalistic theories and
justified the materialist basis of society. Gissing (the novelist) made a
character in his novel ‘Born in Exile’ say what we have to do is reconstruct a
spiritual edifice on the basis of scientific revolution. Puritanism thus found
itself more and more powerless against the new biblical criticism.
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