Encyclopedia
The
Victorian era of
Great Britain marked the height of the British
industrial revolution and the apex of the
British Empire. Although commonly used to refer to the period of
Queen Victoria's rule between 1837 and 1901, scholars debate whether the Victorian period--as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians--actually begins with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The Victorian era was preceded by the Regency era and succeeded by the Edwardian period.
Queen Victoria had the
longest reign in British history, and the cultural, political, economic, industrial and scientific changes that occurred during her reign were remarkable. When Victoria ascended to the throne, England was essentially agrarian and rural; upon her death, the country was highly industrialized and connected by a massive railway network. Such a transition was not smooth by any stretch of the imagination, nor were the early decades of the period without incident. The first decades of Victoria's reign witnessed a series of epidemics , crop failures and economic collapses. There were riots over enfranchisement and the repeal of the Corn Laws, which had been established to protect English agriculture during the Napoleonic Wars in the early part of the 19th century.
Discoveries by
Charles Lyell and
Charles Darwin began to question centuries of assumptions about man and the world, about science and history, and, finally, about religion and philosophy. As the country grew increasingly connected by a massive network of railway lines, small, previously isolated communities were exposed and entire economies shifted as cities became more and more accessible.
The mid-Victorian period also witnessed significant social changes: an evangelical revival occurred alongside a series of legal changes in women's rights. While women were not enfranchised during the Victorian period, they did gain the legal right to their property upon marriage through the Married Women's Property Act, the right to divorce, and the right to fight for custody of their children upon separation.
The Census of 1851 revealed that women outnumbered men by 4%, which meant that large numbers of women were incapable of marriage simply because there were not enough men. The result of these findings was a tremendous popular concern over what would come to be two of the most public mid-Victorian concerns: "superfluous women" and prostitution. These two issues, for obvious reasons, brought together a motley crew of evangelicals and women's rights activists, all of whom were concerned with what would come to be known as "the woman question."
When the passage of the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1864 authorized any constable to order
any woman suspected of being a prostitute infected with a venereal disease to undergo mandatory internal examinations and medical treatment, these various groups would be unified by their desire to repeal the acts.
By the time the CD Acts were repealed in 1886, Victorian England had been completely transformed. This era, which at its outset looked no different from the century before it, would end resembling far more the era that would follow.
Politics
The period is often characterised as a long period of peace and economic, colonial, and industrial consolidation, temporarily disrupted by the
Crimean War, although Britain was at war every year during this period. Towards the end of the century, the policies of
New Imperialism led to increasing colonial conflicts and eventually the Boer Wars. Domestically, the agenda was increasingly liberal with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform and the widening of the franchise.
In the early part of the era the
House of Commons was dominated by the two parties, the Whigs and the Tories. From the late 1850s onwards the Whigs became the Liberals. Many prominent statesmen led one or other of the parties, including
Lord Melbourne, Sir
Robert Peel,
Lord Derby,
Lord Palmerston,
William Ewart Gladstone,
Benjamin Disraeli and
Lord Salisbury. The unsolved problems relating to Irish Home Rule played a great part in politics in the later Victorian era, particularly in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political settlement.
In May of 1857, the
Indian Mutiny, a widespread revolt in
India against the rule of the
British East India Company, was sparked by
sepoys in the Company's army. The rebellion, involving not just sepoys but many sectors of the Indian population as well, was largely quenched after a year. In response to the Mutiny, the East India Company was abolished in August 1858 and India came under the direct rule of the British crown, beginning the period of the
British Raj.
In January 1858, the Prime Minister
Lord Palmerston responded to the Orsini plot against French emperor
Napoleon III, the bombs for which were purchased in Birmingham, by attempting to make such acts a felony, but the resulting uproar forced him to resign.
In July 1866, an angry crowd in
London, protesting
Russell's resignation as prime minister, was barred from
Hyde Park by the police; it tore down iron railings and trampled the flower beds. Disturbances like this convinced Derby and Disraeli of the need for further parliamentary reform.
During 1875 Britain purchased
Egypt's shares in the
Suez Canal as the African nation was forced to raise money to pay off its debts.
In 1882 Egypt became a protectorate of Great Britain after British troops occupied land surrounding the Suez Canal in order to secure the vital trade route, and the passage to
India.
In 1884 the Fabian Society was founded in London by a group of middle-class intellectuals, including
Quaker Edward Pease, 27, Havelock Ellis, 25, and
Edith Nesbit, 26, to promote socialism.
George Bernard Shaw and
H.G. Wells would be among many famous names to later join this society.
On Sunday, November 13, 1887, tens of thousands of people, many of them
socialists or unemployed, gathered in
Trafalgar Square to demonstrate against the government. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren ordered armed soldiers and 2,000 police constables to respond. Rioting broke out, hundreds were injured and two people died. This event was referred to as
Bloody Sunday.
Culture
This inescapable sense of newness resulted in a deep interest in the relationship between modernity and cultural continuities.
Gothic Revival architecture became increasingly significant in the period, leading to the Battle of the Styles between Gothic and Classical ideals.
Charles Barry's architecture for the new
Palace of Westminster, which had been badly damaged in an 1834 fire, built on the medieval style of
Westminster Hall, the surviving part of the buiding. It constructed a narrative of cultural continuity, set in opposition to the violent disjunctions of Revolutonary France, a comparison common to the period, as expressed in
Thomas Carlyle's
The French Revolution and Charles Dickens's
A Tale of Two Cities. Gothic was also supported by the critic
John Ruskin, who argued that it epitomised communal and inclusive social values, as opposed to Classicism, which he considered to epitomise mechanical standardisation.
The middle of the century saw the
Great Exhibition of 1851, the first
World's Fair and showcased the greatest innovations of the century. At its center was
The Crystal Palace, an enormous, modular glass and steel structure -- the first of its kind. It was condemned by Ruskin as the very model of mechanical dehumanisation in design, but later came to be presented as the prototype of
Modern architecture. The emergence of photography, which was showcased at the Great Exhibition, resulted in significant changes in Victorian art.
John Everett Millais was infuenced by photography as were other
Pre-Raphaelite artists. It later became associated with the
Impressionistic and
Social Realist techniques that would dominate the later years of the period in the work of artists such as
Walter Sickert and Frank Holl.
Events
In 1851 the
Great Exhibition was held in The Crystal Palace, with great success and international attention.
In 1888, the
serial killer known as
Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated
prostitutes on the streets of London, leading to world-wide press coverage and hysteria. Newspapers used the deaths to bring greater focus on the plight of the unemployed and to attack police and political leaders. The killer was never caught, and the affair contributed to Sir Charles Warren's resignation.
Victorian Entertainment
Brass bands and 'The
bandstand' became popular in the Victorian era typically associated with the British brass band. The band stand is a simple construction which not only creates an ornamental focal point, it also serves acoustic requirements whilst providing shelter for the changeable British weather. It was common to hear the sound of a brass band whilst strolling through parklands. At this time musical recording was still very much a novelty.
Another form of entertainment involved 'spectacles' where paranormal events, such as
hypnotism, communication with the dead ,
ghost conjuring and the like, were carried out to the delight of crowds and participants. Such activities were very popular during this time compared to others in recent Western history.
Science, technology and engineering
The impetus of the
industrial revolution had already occurred, but it was during this period that the full effects of industrialisation made themselves felt, leading to the mass society of the 20th century. The revolution led to the rise of
railways across the country and massive leaps forward in engineering, most famously by
Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
During the Victorian era, science grew into the discipline it is today. In addition to the increasing professionalism of university science, many Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to the study of natural history.
Charles Darwin's
On the Origin of Species by English [i] naturalist [i] ...
was published in 1859 and had a tremendous effect on the popular mindset.
In 1882, incandescent electric lights were introduced to London streets, although it took many long years before they were installed everywhere.
Prostitution
Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organs, clergymen and single women became increasingly interested in prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil." Although estimates of the number of prostitutes in London by the 1850s vary wildly , it is enough to say that the number of women working the streets became increasingly difficult to ignore.
When the 1851 census publicly revealed a 4% demographic imbalance in favor of women , the problem of prostitution began to shift from a moral/religious cause to a socio-economic one. The 1851 census showed that the population of Great Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply because there were not enough men. These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or "redundant women," and many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with them.
While the Magdalen Hospital had been "reforming" prostitutes since the mid-18th century, the years between 1848 and 1870 saw a veritable explosion in the number of institutions working to "reclaim" these "fallen women" from the streets and retrain them for entry into respectable society—usually for work as domestic servants. The theme of prostitution and the "fallen woman" became a staple feature of mid-Victorian literature and politics. In the writings of Henry Mayhew, Charles Booth and others,
prostitution began to be seen as a social problem, rather than just a fact of urban life.
When Parliament passed the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1864 , Josephine Butler's crusade to repeal the CD Acts yoked the anti-prostitution cause with the emergent feminist movement. Butler attacked the long-established double standard of sexual morality.
Prostitutes were often presented as victims in sentimental literature such
Thomas Hood's poem
The Bridge of Sighs is one of many bridge [i]s in Venice [i] built in the...
,
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel
Mary Barton and
Dickens' novel
Oliver Twist is an 1838 [i] novel [i] by Charles Dickens [i]. ...
. The emphasis on the purity of women found in such works as Coventry Patmore's
The Angel in the House led to the portrayal of the prostitute and fallen woman as soiled, corrupted, and in need of cleansing.
This emphasis on female purity was allied to the stress on the homemaking role of women, who helped to create a space free from the pollution and corruption of the city. In this respect the prostitute came to have symbolic significance as the embodiment of the violation of that divide. The double standard remained in force. Divorce legislation introduced in 1857 allowed for a man to divorce his wife for
adultery, but a woman could only divorce if adultery was accompanied by cruelty. The anonymity of the city led to a large increase in prostitution and unsanctioned sexual relationships. Dickens and other writers associated prostitution with the mechanisation and industrialisation of modern life, portraying prostitutes as human commodities consumed and thrown away like refuse when they were used up. Moral reform movements attempted to close down brothels, something that has sometimes been argued to have been a factor in the concentration of street-prostitution in
Whitechapel by the late 1880s.
See also
Sources and further reading
- Altick, Richard Daniel. Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature. W.W. Norton & Company: 1974. ISBN 0-393-09376-X.
- Burton, Antoinette . Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain: A Reader. Palgrave Macmillan: 2001. ISBN 0-312-29335-6.
- Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. W.W. Norton & Company: 2004. ISBN 0-393-05209-5.
- Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Greenwood Press: 1996. ISBN 0-313-29467-4.
- Wilson, A. N. The Victorians. Arrow Books: 2002. ISBN 0-09-945186-7
and so on
External links and references
