Victorian Period and Victorian Literature

1. Victorian Period and Victorian Literature

2. Victorian Realism • Realism is literature that portrays life as it really is. • Victorian realism portrays life during Queen Victoria’s reign..

3. Victorian Period • Technically 1837 to 1901 • Period of Queen Victoria’s reign • Though often dated 1830 (end of Romantic Period in Britain) to 1900 (end of the century) incorrectly

4. British Expansion During the 19th Century • British empire existed for centuries by now • A significant blow to the empire was the revolt of the 13 American colonies that led to formation of United States • British empire expanded in Africa, India, the middle east and other parts of Asia

5. Results of Colonization • More people in the world speaking English • Increased trade between Europe and distant regions • Long-standing animosity in colonized regions

6. Industrial Revolution • Manufacturing, business, and the number of wage laborers skyrocketed. • Technology changed: handtools were replaced by steam or electricity driven machines.

7. Industrial Revolution • The economic transformation was accompanied by a social transformation. • Population boomed • Because industrial resources like coal and iron were in Central and Northern England, people moved northward. • Northern cities like Manchester grew tremendously and became overcrowded, dirty, and unsanitary.

8. Industrial Revolution • With the growing number of factories there was a demand for laborers. • Children were often worked long hours and in dangerous conditions. • Their small stature made children ideal for factory work.

9. Industrial Revolution • Children often worked in coal mines and as chimney sweeps.

10. Victorian Literature: The Drive for Social Advancement  It may be primarily financial. • In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Pip, a young orphan, hopes to become rich so he can marry a beautiful young girl named Estella. 

11. Victorian Literature: The Drive for Social Advancement  It may involve marrying above one’s station. • In Charlotte Brontë’sJane Eyre. Jane Eyre falls in love with the Master of Thornfield, Mr. Rochester, for whom she works as a tutor to his ward Adele.

12. Victorian Literature: The Drive for Social Advancement  It may also be intellectual or education-based. • Typically, any such attempt to improve one’s social standing must be accompanied by “proper” behavior (thus helping to provide the period with its stereotype).

13. Victorian Literature: The Drive for Social Advancement • Pip hopes the wealthy dowager Miss Havisham will help make him a gentleman.

14. Victorian Literature: The Drive for Social Advancement • Jane Eyre studies at Lowood school for orphan girls. She spends several years at Lowood as a student and the last two years as a teacher, which leads to her job as tutor.

15. The Civilized Englishman • The period saw the rise of a highly idealized notion of what is “English” or what constitutes an “Englishman.”  • This notion is obviously tied very closely to the period’s models for proper behavior, and is also tied very closely to England’s imperial enterprises. 

16. The Civilized Englishman • Colonists and politicians saw it as their political (and sometimes religious) duty to “help” or “civilize” native populations in colonized regions.  • It was important to model a set of standards and codes of conduct, and the idealized notion of what is “English” often provided this model. 

17. Late Victorian Literature • Characterized by rebellion against idealized notions and stereotypical codes of conduct.  • “Proper” behaviors served as subjects of satire

18. Late Victorian Literature • Oscar Wilde’s plays are an excellent example of such rebellion.  • In The Importance of Being Earnest Jack Worthing, a landowner, justice of the peace, a patriarch in Hertfordshire, and guardian of Cecily Cardew pretends to have a brother who leads a scandalous lifestyle so he can rush off to “assist” the brother when actually Worthing is getting away to pursue the same type of behavior!

19. Late Victorian Literature • Characterized by a rise of aestheticism • The “art for art’s sake” movement, which directly contradicted the social and political goals of much earlier Victorian literature.