Background to the Victorian Era
Queen Victoria (reigned 1837-1901); term “Victorian” first used in 1851
Heavy social changes brought about by the industrial revolution
“The sixty-three years of Victoria’s reign were marked by momentous and intimidating social changes, startling inventions, prodigious energies; the rapid succession of events produced wild prosperity and unthinkable poverty, humane reforms and flagrant exploitation, immense ambitions and devastating doubts.” (1009)
Between 1800 and 1850 the population [of Britain] doubled nine to eighteen million, and Britain became richest country on earth, the first urban industrial society in history (emphasis mine). For some it was a period of great achievement, deep faith, indisputable progress. For others, it was an “age of destruction,” religious collapse, vicious profiteering.” (1009)
Source: Longman Anthology of British Literature (2nd Ed) Ed. Heather Henderson and William Sharpe. New York: Longman, 2003.
Victorian Britain was an age of transition, and an era of contradictions: Unimaginable prosperity and desperate squalor; incredible technical improvements and awful social conditions.
Crystal Palace (1851) as part of the Great Exhibition Of the Works of Industry of All Nations; Britain controlled over ¼ of all the world’s land mass by 1897.
Industrial Revolution: speed of life increased (railways, etc.)
-a 2 week journey from Edinburgh to London in 1800 was shortened to less than a day
-mass movement from rural areas to industrial cities (Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow)
-British population explosion: from 9 million in 1800 to 36 million in 1911
-Rise of a large middle class; rampant consumerism, materialism; articles that had previously been hand made could be produced industrially in very large quantities in a fraction of the cost
-Communications revolution: mail cars on trains; invention of telegraph (submarine cables allowing transmission to New York and Bombay in mere minutes); 1901 Marconi’s transatlantic wireless radio message; photographic negative invented in 1841; by 1890s motion pictures, gramaphones; steam printing presses, etc.
Desperate Poverty: urban poor – the industrial revolution; life expectancy in 1841 Manchester was twenty years: highly industrialized work settings (factories, mines, etc.); division of labour (first considered in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) now fully realized. Steam-powered machines, not time of day or seasons, dictated work cycles.
Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848): workers to rise up and seize power away from capitalists and industrialists who were exploiting their labour
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)
“Social Darwinism” applied to industry and “laissez-faire capitalism”; cut-throat competition, “survival of the fittest” applied in a social, economic, and even colonial context;
Religious principles – A Crisis of Faith (Evangelicalism and Sectariansim)
-dissolution of “social fabric” and demise of close-knit communities