The Victorian Age

1327 Words3 Pages

The Victorian Age of Literature “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair” (Dickens n. pag.). These words by Charles Dickens, one of the most famous writers of the Victorian Period, were intended to show the connections between the French Revolution and the decline of Dickens’s own time, the Victorian Era (“About” n.pag.). Dickens wanted to show how the trends of his time were following a tragic path that had already played out and not ended well in France. According to an article about this historical period, the Victorian Era was “a time of change, a time of great upheaval, but also a time of great literature” (“Victorian” n.pag.). The Victorian Period reflects the great changes in the social, political, and economical shifts of the time. To start with, some information is in order about the Victorian Period itself. Queen Victoria, England’s longest reigning monarch, sat on the throne from 1837 to 1901. The span of time is referred to as the Victorian Period (Abrams 1860). At the death of Queen Victoria, her subjects reacted in such a way that they rebelled against many of the ideas put forward during her reign. Even her own country recognized her life and rule as a distinct historical period separated from the rest (Abrams 1861). Also in the Victorian Period, other events were going on that changed the way many people thought about life. Among those changes were advances in scientific research, which created conflict with biblical beliefs. With Darwin’s contribution of The Origin of the Species in 1859, which set off a scientific revolution, many Victorians lost faith in the church. His theories stirred doubt about where humanity really started from, and the... ... middle of paper ... ... the era brought with it a change to the people of England and the globe. Thanks to England’s ideas of their responsibly and rights to the rest of the world, civilization as we know it would never be the same. Just like this change impacted England, the effects of Queen Victoria’s ruled shaped the world as it is now. One cannot imagine much less chart how different things would be if it were not for Queen Victoria’s influence on global economy, philosophy, biology, geology, psychology, religious beliefs, etc. Thanks to her and her support of reform from the Industrial Revolution, even the most simple of things that people take for granted today would not exist like being able to call it a day after eight hours of work, overtime pay, healthy and safe working conditions, and rights to defend themselves against unfair practices both in the workplace and out of it.

Show More
Related

  • The Gilded Age

    942 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Gilded Age gets its name from a book by Mark Twain called The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today. It was written in 1873, and unfortunately was not that successful. While the Gilded Age conjures up visions of ostentatious displays of wealth and decorative parties, the over all topic was politics. The book gives an extremely negative assessment of the state of American democracy at that time. Which does not come as a huge surprise coming from Twain, who famously said "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” So when faced with sweeping changes in the American economy after the Civil War, the American political system both nationally and locally dealt with these problems in the best way possible, by inevitably and incredibly becoming corrupt.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Morality In Victorian England

    207 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Victorian Era was under the Anglican Church. England was very religious, that they go to church twice every Sunday, and read the Bible. Religion was behind everything; they viewed the Bible as their foundation of moral behavior. They also believed that if all accepted “religion”, the morality would end the crime and poverty. Furthermore, Victorian education mostly focused on Religion

    Read More

  • Women In The Victorian Era

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Victorian Era had lasted from the years 1837-1901. People in this era were known through their social class and how efficiently they were able to present themselves. Those who were obligated to carry themselves is such a proficient manner, were the women of Victorian Era. Although they had been expected to perform and execute many tasks, they were never recognized just as equal to the men in society. They were never acknowledged to make judgments or decisions, rather were best known for marriage, prostitution, and motherhood. As the men, dominated and took control of every decision possible. They were known for their aggressive and independent attitude. This led an extraordinary women named, Charlotte Brontë to begin a revolution of change and improvement in the social standings. As her living in the Victorian Era, set her upon a journey of many hardships but her well-known classics, Jane Eyre, depicted her strength and courage to step up for women equality and portray who she truly was in society.

    Read More

  • The Gilded Age

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Gilded Age is marked as the thirty-five years between the end of the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century. During this period of time, the economy grew at an astonishing rate, producing enormous amounts of wealth. This was also a time where the majority of the population was struggling to get by, and was classified as poor workers, while the industrial and financial aristocracy lives in beautiful homes and lived their lives with opulent amusement. Life was very different between different groups such as the rich and the poor, and even the men and the women. I definitely would not fit into the urban society of the Gilded Age because everything had to do with the men being in power, racism, and men’s constant control over politics, which would make being a women in this period of time very difficult.

    Read More

  • Essay On Inequality In The Victorian Era

    1291 Words  | 3 Pages

    Basically the Victorian era sucked for women. During the beginning they were expected to be smart, but to not have an opinion. They were to be beautiful, yet act and appear virginal. Women were also

    Read More

  • The Gilded Age

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mark Twain collaborated with Charles Dudley Warner on The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Published in 1973, as Twain’s earliest work of extended fiction, The Gilded Age gives a name to the period of opulence and corruption at the end of the 19th century. Portraying the superficial luxury of Washington and high society, the authors describe “The general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself” (Twain 203). Twain’s The Gilded Age, like Wharton’s The Age of Innocence focuses on high society. Yet, the imperfections in the gilding betray the dramatic change of the period. Forces of corporatization, unionization, immigration, urbanization, populism, post-reconstruction racism and machine politics were among the drastic changes in American lifestyle churning beneath the brittle “gilded” surface.

    Read More

  • Domesticity In The Victorian Age

    2016 Words  | 5 Pages

    Domesticity, as defined by The Merriam Webster, is “the state of being domestic; domestic or home life.” When someone mentions domesticity, an immediate association may be drawn to domesticated cats, dogs, or even simply animals people bring into our homes and domesticize. The household trains to be accustomed to home life, rather than life on the streets. We as people, generally, spend half our time in the home and half outside. Thanks to this we are often seen as domesticated creatures. However, as demonstrated clearly by through Dicken’s writing, as well as Cullwick’s, people can also become domesticized. During the Victorian Era, women left home rarely and were not seen as working people. Despite the limited exceptions most working women constrained to work inside homes other than their own. Hannah Cullwick’s relationship to domesticity is a complex one. Despite the fact that she was a working-class woman, who was employed by various different homes, she did not work in each of them for more than a limited amount of time.

    Read More

  • The Life of Queen Elizabeth I

    652 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The first Elizabeth of England, who died not quite four hundred years ago, became such a great queen that she gave her name to her time, the Elizabethan Age” (Thomas 1).

    Read More

  • Patriarcal Society During The Victorian Era

    1903 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Victorian Era started when Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837 and ended roughly the day she died in 1901. Victorian England “was a strictly patriarchal society” (Yildirim 2). It is common knowledge that during the Victorian era men and women had their own specific roles. It is also common knowledge to know that men had complete legal and economical control over the women (Mitchell 1, 142). Women were expected to stay at home to keep house and take care of the children.

    Read More

  • Fashion In The Victorian Era

    1253 Words  | 3 Pages

    The era of dandies are what some people call the Victorian Era when thinking about the fashion in Victorian, England at the time. Corsets and crinolines were big in fashion for women during the time. Women wanted to have an hourglass figure where the torso had to be as small as your age. “Victorian clothes were very much a symbol of who you were, what you did for a living, and how much money was in your bank account” (Rose, Tudor. “Victorian Clothes.”). Fashion is forever changing from how it was made, and the style of men’s fashion as well as women’s fashion in the Victorian Era.

    Read More

  • Victorian Era Fashion

    1837 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Victorian Era is a remarkable time in history with the blooming industries, growing population, and a major turnaround in the fashion world. This era was named after Queen Victoria who ruled United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 1837 until she passed away 64 years later in January 1901.When Victoria received the crown, popular respect was strikingly low. The lack of respect for the position she had just come into did not diminish her confidence. Instead she won the hearts of Britain with her modesty, grace, straightforwardness, and her want to be informed on the political matters at hand even though she had no input. She changed Britain into a flourishing country. She also impacted how women interacted during this era based on her personality.

    Read More

  • Women and Men of the Victorian Era

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Victorian era established strict guidelines and definitions for the ladies and gentleman. Noble birth typically defined one as a "lady" or a "gentleman," but for women in this time period, socioeconomic rank and titles held no prestige or special privileges in a male-dominated society. Commonly, women in this era generally tried to gain more influence and respect but to no avail as their male counterparts controlled the ideals and practices of society. Women were subject to these ideals and practices without any legal or social rights or privileges. In the literary titles by Frances Power Cobbe, Sarah Stickney Ellis, Charlotte Bronte, Anne Bronte, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Sir Henry Newbolt, and Caroline Norton, the positions, opinions, and lifestyles of men and women during the Victorian era were clearly defined. Men in the Victorian era were raised to be intellectually and physically sound in order to be skillful in the workplace and the military while women were typically restricted to fulfilling roles within the home. As the female desire for equal rights and representation under the law mounted, an international vigor for female equality would produce a call for equality.

    Read More

  • Science Versus Faith In Memoriam A. H. H.

    2471 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Victorian Age, named for the queen who reigned nearly the entire century, was characterized by incredible scientific progress. Charles Darwin, for example, came forth with his treatise The Origin of Species, which advanced his radical theories of evolution and survival and rocked the pillars of traditional Christian faith in humankind's superiority to the beasts of the earth. Darwin's theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest conflicted with the story of the Creation related in the Bible. Moreover, scientists now had proof that the Earth was much older than had ever been imagined before, making the history of humanity seem like a blink of the universe's eye. The Victorian population could no longer blindly accept that the world had been created in six days after geologists had proven that the world evolved into its current form over millions of years. In addition, a theory called "Higher Criticism" developed which read the Bible not as the infallible word of God, but as a historical text. In the face of these incredible and disturbing discoveries and theories, the faith of many Victorian Christians was profoundly shaken. The Victorian masses no longer had a bedrock of tradition and Biblical scripture to stand upon; it had been dashed to pieces by fossilized rocks and the skulls of apelike men. The poet laureate of the age, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the voice of the Victorian people, expresses his horror and bewilderment at the implications of these scientific discoveries in "In Memoriam A. H. H." In sections 54, 55, and 56 of this lengthy poem, Tennyson finds his belief in God weakened and his faith foundering in the face of scientific fact.

    Read More

  • The Victorian Period and Literature

    1327 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Victorian Period." Holt Elements of Literature British and World Literature Sixth Edition. Austin, Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2008.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Victorian Era And Modern Era

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Victorian age and the Modern Literature era are two very different times for the literature world. Each era had a big impact through literature, politics, and economics. The Victorian era was a time of change during the reign of Queen Victoria between 1837 to 1901. The Modern Literature era also known as the Twentieth Century and After increased popularity in literature due to the rise of industrialization and globalization from roughly about the 1910 's to the 1990 's. Even though, both of these eras made an impact towards the way people see literature, their literature work is very different in terms of themes, subjects, purposes, and techniques.

    Read More

More about The Victorian Age

Open Document