the victorian period: great change and great peace
DESCRIPTION
Peace and Economic Growth: Britain Rules (cont.’d) Political and social stability (cont.’d) –Queen Victoria was empress to over 200,000,000 people living OUTSIDE Britain –“The sun never sets on the British empire.”TRANSCRIPT
The Victorian Period: Great Change and Great Peace
Peace and Economic Growth: Britain Rules
• Queen Victoria has long reign: 1837-1901
• Political and social stability– Napoleon had been defeated at
Waterloo in 1815– “Empire” of 1600s and 1700s w/
interests in India and U.S. continued to grow
Peace and Economic Growth: Britain Rules (cont.’d)
• Political and social stability (cont.’d)– Queen Victoria was empress to over
200,000,000 people living OUTSIDE Britain– “The sun never sets on the British empire.”
Industrial Revolution• new towns
– Liverpool• new goods• new wealth• new jobs• gradual political reforms• middle-class and working-class politicians achieve political
power• monarchy and aristocracy left in place
– monarchy left as figurehead of today
The Idea of Progress• “An Acre in Middlesex” (Thomas
Babington Macaulay)– For him (and other Victorians), history
meant material possessions– He had an amazed regard for squalor
and disorder of the past. – He had typical confident Victorian
pride on their material advances and on their ability to solve social problems
Religious Movements• Growth of Evangelicalism and
Utilitarianism• Wide sweeping reforms
Questions and Doubts• Victorian writers begin asking, “Does
material comfort fully satisfy human needs and wishes?”
• Exploiting of the earth and humans is questioned
• Codes of authority/decorum mocked• Some writers state that materialist ideas of
reality overlook the spirit and the soul that made life beautiful and just
Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman views of Macaulay’s
and Huxley’s ideas of history and nature as flawed
• Other writers were saying that man didn’t see the universe the way it really is– Charles Dickens (wrote in 1830s to 1865)
• He writes about hollow, glittery, superficial and excessive people
• Cost of progress resulting in description of huddle and waste of cities and the smoke and fire of industrial landscapes
Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman thought Macaulay’s
and Huxley’s ideas of history and nature were flawed (cont.’d)
• Other writers (cont.’d)– Robert Browning in
“My Last Duchess” writes about a murderously possessive (hence excessive) duke
Thomas Hardy
“Smog” is described in 1871 by historian and social critic John
Ruskin as…• “the plague wind”• “the storm-cloud of the
nineteenth century”• “[m]ere smoke [that] would
not blow to and fro in that wild way… [which] looks more to me as if it were made of dead men’s souls.”
From Trust to Skepticism and Denial• Trust in transcendental
power true of EARLY Victorian thought because they’re heirs of Romantic idea of the finite world interfused with divinity
• Later in Victorian Era this idea would change radically.
From Trust to Skepticism and Denial (cont.’d)
• The highest function of writer and poet was to make man aware of connection between earth and heaven
• Thomas Carlyle expressed this idea in his essay “The Poet as Hero”
Thomas Carlyle
Newer Victorian Writers• Gerald Manley Hopkins• Christina Rossetti
– Some thought it unnecessary; these two, and others, celebrated relationship between man and nature that could be redemptive and joyous:
• Algernon Charles Swinburne• Rudyard Kipling
Gerald Manley Hopkins
Newer Victorian Writers (cont.’d)• Others are saddened by
what seemed to be the withdrawal of the divine from the world:– Matthew Arnold (“Dover
Beach”)• the only thing certain is that
existence is not governed by a benevolent intelligence that could care for its creatures
Matthew Arnold
Newer Victorian writers (cont.’d)• Whereas Dickens and
George Eliot, a woman, had shown achievement through sympathy and unselfishness, Hardy and Housman pessimistically showed relationships bereft and betrayed by unfaithfulness, war, and other problems.
Charles Dickens
Newer Victorian writers (cont.’d)• Over the century, the trust in a
transcendental power inherited from the Romantics eroded, giving way to uncertainty and spiritual doubt. Late-Victorian writers turned to a pessimistic exploration of the human struggle against indifferent natural forces.
Revealing Reality, Creating Coherence• Victorian writers have a variety of
purposes:• scare/shame into effective moral and political action• What it’s like to live in a pleasurable moment of
intense feeling (ex., dramatic monologue of a character)
• entertained• inform• reassure
Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde show two purposes:
• One, make readers hope or wonder if reality was really like it had been painted (ex., in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” or in Browning’s poetry or in an essay by Macaulay)
• Two, however bleak, the writer could make a pleasurable order in the world
Oscar Wilde