...1 THE VICTORIAN AGE The Victorian Compromise The Victorian Age takes its name from Queen Victoria who ruled from 1837 to 1901; it was a complex era characterised by stability, progress and social reforms, and, in the mean time, by great problems such as poverty, injustice and social unrest; that’s why the Victorians felt obliged to promote and invent a rigid code of values that reflected the world as they wanted it to be, based on: * duty and hard work; * respectability: a mixture of both morality and hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards (possessions of good manners, ownership of a comfortable house, regular attendance at church and charitable activity); it distiguished the middle from the lower classes; * charity and philanthropy: an activity that involved many people, expecially women. The family was strictly patriarchal: the husband represented the authority and respectability, cosequently a single woman with a child was emarginated because of a wide-spread sense of female chastity. Sexuality was generaly repressed and that led to extreme manifestations of prudery. Colonialism was an important phenomenon and it led to a patriotism deeply influenced by ideas of racial superiority: British people thought that they were obeying to God by the imposition of their superior way of life. The concept of “the white man’s burden” was exalted in the works of colonial writers (such as Rudyard Kipling). This code of values, known as “Victorian Compromise”...
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...The social history of England evidences many social changes over the centuries. These major social changes have affected England both internally and in its relationship with other nations. The themes of social history include demographic history, labour history and the working class, women's history, family history, the history of education in England, urban history and rural and agricultural history. The topic generally excludes politics, diplomacy and intellectual and constitution. Prehistoric society The distant past does not offer us much information on the structures of society, however, major changes in human behaviour make it likely that society must have changed dramatically. In common with much of Europe, the switch from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming around 4000 BC must have heralded an enormous shift in all aspects of human life. Nobody knows what changes may have occurred, and recent evidence of permanent buildings and habitation from 3,000 years ago means that these may still have been gradual shifts. One of the most obvious symbols of change in prehistoric society is Stonehenge. The building of such stone circles, burial mounds and monuments throughout the British Isles seems to have required a division of labour. Builders would have needed to dedicate themselves to the task of monument construction to acquire the required skills. Not having time to hunt and farm would make them rely on others to such an extent that specialised farmers would emerge...
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...domestic duties in the reign of Queen Victoria. A woman's place was in the home, as domesticity and motherhood were considered by society at large to be a sufficient emotional and economic fulfillment for females. These constructs kept women far away from the public sphere in most ways, but during the 19th century charitable missions did begin to extend the female role of service, and Victorian feminism emerged as a potent political force. The transformation of Britain into an industrial nation due to the industrialization had profoundly influenced the ways in which women were to be believed ideally in Victoria times. Newly emerged urban jobs formed an urban living style that no one had lived before, it prompted a change in the ways in which appropriate male and female roles were perceived. In particular, the notion of separate spheres, which woman was in the private sphere of the home and hearth, man was in the public sphere of business, politics and sociability - came to influence the choices and experiences of all women. The Victorian era from 1837 to 1901 is characterized as the domestic age, idealized by Queen Victoria, who came to represent a sort of femininity that was centered on the family, motherhood, and respectability. Accompanied by Albert, Prince Consort, her beloved husband, and by her many children in Balmoral Castle, Victoria became an icon of late 19th-century middle-class femininity and domesticity. In fact, Queen Victoria came to be seen as the very model...
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...not encouraged to pursue a career, Mary enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the age of sixteen. She quickly felt frustrated by the male faculty and students who were patronising and resentful of her attendance. Regardless of these obstacles and her father’s disapproval of her career choice, she continued to pursue art and painting. Cassatt, an impressionist painter, did not conform to standard male images of women and therefore her paintings differ from the more general male representations, especially of women readers during the Victorian period. Cassatt expresses her world through women and therefore “…offers a new vision of the unconsidered facts of everyday bourgeois life…” (Yeh, 1976:359). Cassatt’s work is regarded by Yeh (1976:359) as women-centred art as she regards women as complete within themselves. In her work she represents women as independent, pursuing interests which are not necessarily directed toward the need of her family. Reading women, portraying the reader’s inner strength often occur as a theme in her paintings. Femininity in the Victorian era In the latter Victorian period women artists and their work were considered inferior. In an attempt to overcome the stereotypical female image their work became increasingly more vocal and confident and promoted the emerging image of the educated, modern and free women. Femininity in the Victorian era was generally thought to be connected with both maternal and wifely functions in a family. Women...
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...Dickens was born in the year 1817, Victorian Era Mid 19th century till to beginning of 20th century, Hard Times published on 1854, Schools become mandatory in 1889. _____________________________________________________________________ OUR TALK WILL BE DIVIDED INTO 4 PARTS: INTRODUCTION OF VICTORIAN ERA The Victorian era of British history: was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death, on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence for Britain, where during that time, the British Empire has existed for centuries and was able to maintain a world order which rarely threatened Britain’s wider strategic interests. By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, The British empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth’s surface and at least a quarter of the world’s population. One of the ways they achieved such a thing is through the Industrial Revolution. What is the Industrial Revolution exactly? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a working person would be lucky to have 1 or 2 shirts. To make fabric, these people had to spend their whole lives weaving this shirt and as demand for british goods increased, they needed a way to speed up things in a way without affecting it economically. As a result, they came up with the idea of factories where workers would repeat the same thing over and over again. So I want you to think like a business man in the victorian era right now. What would make...
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...Discuss the 'Fallen Woman' as a Familiar Feature of Victorian Writing Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton may be characterised as a 'social problem' novel. Basch (1974: 263) states, 'Mrs Gaskell's impure women came from ... the work and exploitation which she knew, relatively speaking, better than other novelists.' Gaskell was the wife of a Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. She devoted her time to setting up homes for fallen women, and after Mary Barton women became her central characters, her novels primarily seen through women's eyes. Thomas Hardy, since his career began, has been notably associated with his portrayal of female characters. Erving Howe even writes about 'Hardy's gift for creeping intuitively into the emotional life of women.' (Boumelha 1982: 3) From this point of view, I intend this essay to establish a comparison between Gaskell's 'fallen woman' in Mary Barton and the way in which Thomas Hardy frames his central female character in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.In the context of the nineteenth century, there emerged an increasingly ideological 'rethinking' of sexuality, particularly of the female. Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man later in 1871 argued that men and women were somehow mentally different. Darwinian sociology led to sexual stereotypes such as Clement Scott's 'men are born "animals" and women "angels" so it is in effect only natural for men to indulge their sexual appetites and, hence, perverse, "unnatural" for women to act in the...
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...Brtlt20a.wpd Lesson 20a: The Victorian Novel (Day: 168-170) The Victorian reading public firmly established the novel as the dominant literary form of the era. Virtually the entire literate population consisted of novel-readers. Herbert Spencer, that rigorous apostle of science, exempted George Eliot's works works from his general condemnation of "mere" novels; Newman and Arnold were avid readers of fiction; and Darwin stated in his Autobiography that to him novels were "a wonderful relief and pleasure." Carlyle, however, dourly excluded the novelist from the category of the hero as writer. Amazingly, Tennyson compared the novel to verse drama and gave it higher rating: "I am of the opinion that if a man were endowed with such faculties as Shakespeare's, they would be more freely and effectively exercised in prose fiction with its wider capabilities than when "cribbed, cabined, and confined" in the trammels of verse." Certainly the novel may well be termed the most distinctive and lasting literary achievement of Victorian literature. At the outset of the Victorian period no one, except possibly Thackeray, considered the novel a significant art form. By 1853, however, Clough, writing in the North American Review, recognized that cultured readers had turned their attention from poetry to the novel. By the century's end the novel had completely triumphed over poetry as aesthetic and spiritual nourishment for English readers. The novel by this time claimed writing...
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...The Style of Victorian Novels The Victorian Age is marked roughly by the reign of Queen Victoria of England from 1837-1901. The Victorian reading public firmly established the novel as the dominant literary form of the era. The novel is the most distinctive and lasting literary achievement of Victorian literature . The publication of novels in monthly installments enabled even the poor to purchase them .The Victorian novel featured several developments in narrative technique , full description and exposition , authorial essays and multi plotting featuring several central characters . Furthermore, the practice of issuing novels in serial installments led novelists to become adept at sub climaxes . Dickens was the most successful of the English Victorian novelists, a master of sentiment and a militant reformer . The literature of the Victorian age entered in a new period after the romantic revival. The literature of this era expressed the fusion of pure romance to gross realism. Though, the Victorian Age produced great poets, the age is also remarkable for the excellence of its prose . Literature of this age tends to come closer to daily life which reflects its practical problems and interests . Moral purpose : The Victorian literature seems to deviate from "art for art's sake" and asserts its moral purpose . Idealism : It is often considered as an age of doubt and pessimism. The influence of science is felt here. The whole age seems to be caught in the conception...
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...People living in the Victorian era had many dangers to their health due to so many diseases and lack of knowledge of medicines. Death rates were high and children never lived long because of all the horrible conditions people lived in. Because of these horrible illnesses, diseases, and lack of medicinal knowledge, many people suffered. Consequently, Victorian age health was horrible with nutrition, general health, and diseases affecting their daily life. Back then, general health was greatly affected by simple things such as a window being closed. Due to this, life expectancy was very low and women's health was highly affected. Life expectancy was so low that even at the of the Victorian period, infant mortality was about ten times as high as it is today (Mitchel 192). Rural people lived longer than the city dwellers due to the fact that they weren't packed together spreading diseases, rural people had lots of space between each others so that getting sick or dying was not as common. Women were also extremely affected to the uncontrolled illness and sickness being passed around. Because of women's working class, many of them got sick off of the patients they worked with....
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...Gray” which was immediately attacked in many papers for its homoerotic theme it had, which was considered immoral by Victorian standards and would come to play a huge role in his legal trials.( Ellmann) .He went on to write a play, “Lady Windermere’s Fan” which was a literary and financial success for Wilde which prompted him to continue writing plays. These included “ A Woman of No Importance”, “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance Of Being Ernest”. In the summer of 1891, Oscar Wilde first met Lord Alfred Douglas. They soon became lovers, both infatuated with each other until Wilde was arrest some years later. Wilde sued Alfred Douglas’s father for accusing him of homosexuality. The case was later thrown out, but Wilde was sentenced to two...
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...The importance of being Earnest Values and attitudes of 1895 – The aristocratic Victorians valued duty and respectability above all else • Earnestness — a determined and serious desire to do the correct thing — was at the top of the code of conduct. Appearance was everything, and style was much more important than substance. So, while a person could lead a secret life, carry on affairs within marriage or have children outside of wedlock, society would look the other way as long as the appearance of propriety was maintained. For this reason, Wilde questions whether the more important or serious issues of the day are overlooked in favor of trivial concerns about appearance. Gwendolen is the paragon of this value. Her marriage proposal must be performed correctly, and her brother even practices correct proposals. Gwendolen's aristocratic attitude is "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing." The trivial is important; the serious is overlooked. • The tea ceremony in Act II is a hilarious example of Wilde's contention that manners and appearance are everything. The guise of correctness is the framework for war. Both women, thinking they are engaged to the same person, wage a civilized "war" over the tea service while the servants silently watch. When Gwendolen requests no sugar, Cecily adds four lumps to her cup. Although she asks for bread and butter, Gwendolen is given a large slice of cake. Her true feelings come out only in an aside that Cecily...
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...Explore Wilde’s Presentation of Women in “A Woman of No Importance” A woman of no importance was written late in the Victorian period and was first published in 1893. This was a time of change in traditional English society, the class system, that has stood in place for so many years, was brought into question, a long with the role of women in society with early ideas of gender equality and ‘women’s suffrage’ campaigns. In ‘A woman of no importance’ Wilde explores these changing views and offers several, contrasting presentations of women that existed in Upper Class Victorian society, which I will explore in this essay. One presentation, which some may perceive as the most obvious one, is that women are weak, feeble creatures who need male influence in their lives in order to be able to function. There are several examples of women being presented this way throughout the play; firstly, the way in which Mrs Arbuthnot is shown to be completely dependent on the males in her life throughout the play, firstly on George Harford, and then on Gerald. In the passionate speech she makes to Gerald at the end of act 3 she tells him, in the third person, of her undying love for George she felt at the age of eighteen, ‘he made her love him so much that she left her father’s house’, for her to leave her home and ‘(to break her) father’s heart’, Rachel must have felt that she could not live without George, showing her total devotion and dependence on him. Earlier in the play, we see how...
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... II Abstract The purpose of my study is to show the conflict between idealism and society in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. In this novel, Hardy portrays the strife of the two individuals Jude and Sue to make their own ways in society by seeking to realise their ideals. He also reveals the difficulties met by the two idealists in front of society’s attempts to thwart their ideals and to force them to surrender to its norms. This study allows the reader to have a deep understanding of the origin of the conflict, the climax of the confrontation between the two opposing sides and the result of the conflict. In this respect, the present study helps the reader to acquire a thorough knowledge of Hardy’s thought and the values of the Victorian society to which he belongs. III Résumé L’objectif de cette étude est de montrer le conflit entre l’idéalisme et la société décrit dans le roman de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Dans ce roman, Hardy dépeint la lutte des...
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...winner once said, “The hierarchy of class in the UK was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent” (2001). As we read David Copperfield, we realize that this is indeed the case centuries back and particularly in the Victorian era. Barbara Hardy confirms, “David Copperfield is a Victorian novel, and its powers and defects have to be seen in the context of its age” (1987, p.9). Moreover, Social status had always been a major issue in Charles Dickens’s novels due to its great impact on people of various classes. In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens criticizes class hierarchy and social status in the Victorian era, which is highlighted everywhere as major issues throughout the novel by showing how it affected the lives of the upper class as well as the lower class characters in it negatively. One way Dickens criticizes class hierarchy is through Steerforth’s character. Steerforth’s higher social status and the treatment of the people around him corrupted him and made him unsympathetic to the poor, allowing him to treat them badly. Steerforth was a major character whose higher social class affected the course of the events. Actually, social problems highlighted by Steerforth’s character were not a new thing in the Victorian era. In fact, it was a major issue especially at the time David Copperfield is written. Sally Mitchell states, “Victorian’s reign was marked by social and political turmoil, […] Social problems dominated the economic and political scene”...
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...women intentionally to relate to the idea of patriarchy (a system or society governed by men) and how independence or obedience links to their social class’s expectations. Dickens does this by upholding the Victorian ideology of gender, which in ‘Great Expectations’ addressed women as either an angel in the house- the ideal wife, obedient, devoted and submissive to their husband or alternatively, the whore. Independent with the desire for more power than their social class expectations allows, very anti-men. Being an angel in the house was expected of all women in the Victorian era, they had a limited amount of power, enough to be the ideal wife who would be generally rewarded, represented by Biddy. However those women whom abused their power and went against all expectations of social class, the whores, were physically punished by Dickens but given a chance of redemption, evidence of this is shown by Estella and Miss Havisham. Kincaid follows the same idea as Dickens to a certain degree in ‘Lucy’. She focuses on the character of Lucy and her journey to independence, constantly trying to prove her power to break free from her homeland and mother, she manages to achieve freedom but in doing so she also ends up isolated. As Lucy does have so many traits of being the typical Victorian whore the title is questioned by readers. She only acts out this way to allow her to figure out where she belongs in the world but is not physically punished like the whores in ‘Great Expectations’ but...
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