The Victorian era in Britain was a period of both progress and hardship. It saw the height of the British Empire, powered by the Industrial Revolution which transformed the economy but also led to overcrowded and unhealthy cities with high rates of poverty and child labor. While economic theories advocated for free markets and limited government intervention, the realities of urban and industrial life exposed social issues that authors sought to illuminate through novels, poetry, and plays addressing themes of social injustice, poverty, and the complex new modern world. Literature emerged as an influential force for social reform and commentary on the political and economic changes shaping Victorian society.

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

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
 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
 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) (Mary Anne Evans)
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 Wilde (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 (God-
mystery), 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 - “Transformations”) . Text

34. RobertBrowning
Alfred Tennyson
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Thomas Hardy
Christina Rossetti

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 _