The Victorian era in Britain was a period of both progress and hardship. It saw rapid industrialization, which led to immense wealth but also overcrowded and unsanitary cities with high rates of poverty, disease, and crime. Children often worked long hours in dangerous factories and mines. While thinkers like Adam Smith advocated for free market policies, writers like Charles Dickens drew attention to the grim realities of industrial life in their works of social protest. During this time, the novel flourished as a genre and poets explored themes of doubt, morality, and the human condition through dramatic monologues and vivid imagery. Overall, the document discusses the key social, economic, and cultural developments of the Victorian period in Britain.

1. THE VICTORIANS

2. The Victorian era - period of Queen Victoria's reign (1837 – 1901)
• period of peace, prosperity, refined culture, great
advancement in mechanization and technology,
• Britain was the world's most powerful nation.
• British empire extended over about one-fifth of
the earth's surface.
• England saw great expansion of wealth, power,
and culture.
• Lower class misery and urban degeneration.

3.  VICTORIAN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
- The British Empire
- The Industrial Revolution
- Impact of the Industrial Revolution
I. Overcrowded Cities
II. Child Labor
- Political Thought : Smith, Darwin, and Mill
 LITERATURE
- Literature of Social Protest
- The Victorian Novel
- Victorian Poetry
- Victorian Drama

4. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
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End of 18th c.
theoretical knowledge and practical technology
were connected.
Scientific ideas were applied to the making of
machines
machines transformed the way things were made
and dramatically changed people’s lifestyles.
An agricultural nation concerned with urban and
industrial growth
as industry grew -> a rapid increase in the numbers
of the urban working-class poor.
Workers in the cities lived in miserable conditions.
Urban mismanagement and misery were signs of a
massive change in English society.

5. The Age of Steam

7. Mass Production

8. Chimney Sweeper

12. The Impact of the Industrial Revolution
I. Overcrowded Cities
Advance of technology – growth of cities. People
left the countryside to work in factories in the
city
Unsanitary and unhealthy conditions – too many
workers and not enough houses.
Disease, hunger, poverty, and deprivation
prevailed, crime rate amplified exponentially as
the miserable conditions of life worsened.

13. The country was undergoing great change with unfettered
industrial growth – Laissez Faire economic policy (Jeremy Bentham et al.)

16. Gustav Doré

21. Social Realist Movement in Britain.
Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward – Sir Luke Fildes, 1874.

22. II. Child Labor
Children supporting families worked long hours
• dangerous jobs
• difficult situations for very little wages: ie.
chimney sweeps
• children crawling under moving machinery, down
coal mine shafts, scuttling through narrow, low
tunnels.

26. Idealist Political thought vs. Crude Reality
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ADAM SMITH: great influence on Victorian economic policy.
The Wealth of Nations (1776), advocated free trade and free market.
Government intervention prevents progress of growth of economy
opposed any government interference with business.
against trade restrictions
minimum wage laws – harmful to a nation's economy.
This laissez-faire policy of government non-intervention remained popular
throughout the Victorian Era. (despite public outcry for child labor laws,
maximum working hours, and factory health codes).
 CHARLES DARWIN: Darwin’s theory of evolution, The Origin of Species (1859),
transformed the way we think about the natural world - led to a crisis of faith
and spiritual doubt
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JOHN STUART MILL:
a champion of individual rights - On Liberty (1869),
a pioneer of women’s rights in The Subjection of Women (1869).
attacked the tyranny of the majority who would deny liberty to individuals
(direct involvement in elevating public opinion)

28. Waterhouse ,
1891

30. THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
Novel was the dominant genre in the Victorian period.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) unforgettable characters
William Thackeray's (1811-1863)
Charlotte Bronte’s (1816–55)
Emily Bronte’s (1818–48)
George Eliot's (1819–80)
Later Victorian Novelists – Naturalists
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Elisabeth Gaskell, George
Gissing - almost documentary style of narrative - a
situation and not advocating change. The Naturalist
simply “shows” the world as it is, for good or ill.

31. LITERATURE OF SOCIAL PROTEST
The social and cultural background – deep impact on literary works
Writers protested the grim reality of the industrial age by
their brutal descriptions
• of the plight of laboring classes,
• the discrimination against women,
• other social issues and were a direct means of social
reform.
• Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton was one of the first
novels to warn against the problems of industrialization.
• Charles Dickens’ works Oliver Twist and Hard Times, only
2 of the works that dealt with the themes of child abuse,
poverty, urban misery, crime, and harsh educational
systems.

32. Drama had declined since the Restoration.
Most works lacked originality. 2
playwrights : Oscar Wild (1856-1900) and
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
Shaw’s plays addressed social questions –
education, marriage, the class system in a
comic/ironic strain. Pygmalion.
Oscar Wild (1856-1900) : comedies, The
Importance of Being Earnest
and Lady Windermere's Fan - verbal
polish and sarcasm.

33. VICTORIAN POETRY
Romantic taste overflowed into the poetry of the Victorian period.
 Victorian poetry is less subjective than the romantic.
 Strong interest in the past, classical and the medieval – use of
mythological and historical allusions.
 The dramatic monologue
 Themes are realistic such as the transience of life (Godmystery), great battles, etc.
 Victorian poetry – visual imagery.
 The elegy – laments the dead or the past.
 Victorian poetry characterized by doubt and psychological
conflicts
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning.
- Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
- Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
- Thomas Hardy (late Victorian poetry: voice is already rather
original and stylistically hermetic - pg.7 “Transformations”) .
Text

34. Robert Browning
na
isti
Chr
Ger
ard
Ma
nley
H o
pkin
Ro
s
ti
s et
s
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
Thomas Hardy
Alfred Tennyson

35. Matthew Arnold – Dover Beach
Description of a night scene – seaside.
The lyrical self calls listener’s/reader’s attention to the
window, to share the visual beauty of the scene.
The poet/persona in third-person point of view and shifts to
second person at various points when he addresses the
listener (exhorting imperatives): to his beloved (?).
Direct reference to the aural experience, which is somehow
crushing and brings the first hint of melancholy.
Past and Present become and ebb and flow of the same air
– classical antiquity (Sophocles) and Himself who hears
the winds of doubt – “night wind, down the vast edges” (27)
Lastly, makes a personal reflection on the future – on what
lies ahead (repetition and contrast, alliteration and rhythm.

36. Dover Beach _