Victorian Era's Introduction

·Introduction:

   The Victorian era was a period full of changes; the most important was the reign of Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837 and ruled the British Empire, restoring stability to the crown. Her reign is considered one of the most prosperous in her time, which eventually became the symbol of a period that took its name, "the Victorian Era".

  Napoleonic Wars finished in 1815, and meanwhile France and the Revolution changed Europe; Great Britain became the main power of the World. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Britain would remain as the leading world power, far above any other. Britain controlled so many areas around the world that the sun always shone in one of them.

  Victoria reigned this large and expansive kingdom during sixty-three years. She was only eighteen years old when she was crowned. Victoria protected the cosmopolitan interests that predominate the epoch and cultivated international relationships between various dynastic families of Europe.

  The British pound became the currency par excellence in world markets; the British fleet was the maximum authority in overseas; factories and the innumerable railroad tracks were the example to follow for all the other powers that imitated the British Industrial Revolution.

  The change in the way of production (before with peasants and craftsmen and now with workmen) soon revolutionized the society and the economy of the world. Meanwhile the development of the railway and other industries promoted the new way of production; Queen Victoria governed her realm courageously influencing the entire world.

  Her reign, became a symbol of the consolidation of the British Empire, was witness of the rise of the middle-class and characterized by a morality deeply conservative. With Queen’s Victoria reign, England carried out a process of electoral and social reforms.

·Literature:

  The writers had to adapt to the reforms of the time. The Romanticism continued being the main theme of the Victorian’s Era novels but some writers focused on the development of English democracy and the industrial progress, education and the situation of the work-class.

  The three more important poets based on Romanticism. However Alfred Tennyson began with Romanticism, soon he was interested in religious issues like faith (In memoriam). His style was like Robert Browning’s style. The third poet, Matthew Arnold, had a very important work as a literary critic.

 The novel became the most important style in the Victorian epoch. The realism, in other words, the observation of individual problems and social relations, was the tendency to follow, as we can check it in Pride and Prejudice of Jane Austen. Dickens wrote about contemporary life, like Oliver Twist or David Copperfield that demonstrate an amazing ability to give live to characters. His works were dedicated to the less favoured. Thackeray had a great subtlety in the characterization, as we can see in Vanity Fair.

·Society:

  In the Victorian Era, the bourgeois belief in discipline, in savings, in such a way those good manners were essential requirements for the development of a civilized lifestyle.

  The family was the fundamental base. The father was the leader, the woman was wife and mother without the same rights that men had, and women were forced to take care of the house and of the children. Was inappropriate for a woman to study at university. In the upper-class women were considered more like angels than humans and they should be cared of any temptation.

  Factories were considered real prisons in that time. They usually worked fourteen hours in very bad conditions, in dark and unhealthy places. Children under ten years were employees who since the year of five did not earn anything, only food and accommodations. They were beaten not to fall asleep. In groups from fifty to a hundred they were sold to companies where they will stay at least seven years.

  ·The upper-class maintained a life of luxury and wealth while the condition of workers did not improved. The upper-class consisted of the King and the Queen, Aristocrats, Nobles, Dukes, and other wealthy families working in the Victorian courts.

   ·The middle-class was more in number. The Victorian time was properous for the middle-class. A very important change that influenced the improving living conditions of the middle-class was that the women of this section started working outside their houses, accompained by their children.

   ·The working-class was very large in number. There is no doubt that the working-class was the worst affected class in the Victorian period. Immigration was a problem for the working-class workers. Because of so much immigration the opportunities of work went down. For some families, the living conditions were so bad, that they required their children to work in order to bring home some extra money to survive. The death of their father meant that there was no income to the family and they eventually were forced to live ons streets or some public housing. There were some families that lived in only one room just for having a ceiling over their heads. The conditions were so brutal taht in some cases, children were forced to work away from their parents. 
  


  Apart from this, criminality and prostitution made to the Victorian society lose prestige.