8. Impact of Industrial Revolution
• The emergence of overcrowded cities
• Due to advance of technology there was
unprecedented growth in the population of cities
• People in search of work left the country side to work
in factories in the various urban areas of the country
• They had to live in very dirty and unhealthy conditions
• There were not enough houses, so people lived like
animals
• Diseases rose, hunger, poverty, deprivation prevailed,
crime increased and as a result misery increased
14. • Charles Darwin
• Darwin's book The Origin of Species in which the
theory of evolution was proposed, transformed the
way people thought about the natural world
• The book was extremely controversial because it
implied that man was simply another form of animal
and that he might have evolved from Apes
• Darwin was strongly attacked particularly by the
Church
• The theory of evolution led to a crisis of faith and
spiritual doubt among many people
15. • John Straut Mill
• John mill was the champion of individual rights
and wrote the same in his book On Liberty 1869
• He was a pioneer of women's rights And
published the book The Subjugation of women
1869
• Mill attacked the training of the majority of
people who believed in denying Liberty to
individuals through public opinion
16.
17. Literature of Social Protest
• The social and cultural background of the Victorian
age had a deep impact on the literature of the
period
• The novelist of the 1840s and 1850s responded to
the Industrial and the political scene
• Many works of literature depicted the deplorable
work conditions in factories and mines, the plight of
child Labour, the discrimination against women and
other social issues
18. Major Novelists
• The novel was the dominant genre in the Victorian Age
• Charles Kingsley The Water Babies
• Benjamin Disraeli Sybil
• Elizabeth Gaskell North and South, Mary Barton - was one of the first novel to
warm warn against the problems of Industrialisation
• Charles Dickens 1812 to 1870 created a host of unforgettable characters in such
novels as Oliver Twist Great Expectations David Copperfield hard times and a tale
of 2 cities
• William Thackeray 1811 to 1863 his most famous work is Vanity Fair
• Charlotte Bronte 1816 to 1855 Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte 1818 to 1848
Wuthering Heights are classics of English literature
• George Eliot 1819-1880 most important works are Middlemarch The Mill on the
Floss and Adam Bede
• The major novelist of the later part of the period was
• Thomas Hardy 1842-1928 whose best works include Tess of the Uber Wiles, Far
from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure
19.
20. Victorian Poetry
• Victorian poetry shows a strong influence of the romantics but they
could not sustain the confidence of the romantics in the power of
imagination
• Victorian poetry is less subjective than the romantic poetry
• Interest in the past both the classical and the medieval and use of
mythological and historical allusions
• The use of dramatic monologue by the poets
• The themes are more realistic discussing such issues as child Labour
the rights of women science and religion
• Poetry is highly pictorial relying heavily on visual imagery
• Elegy is one of the most popular poetic forms in the period a form of
poetry that laments the dead or the past
• Victorian poetry is often characterised by doubt and psychological
conflicts
• Conflict between the private poetic self and the public social role
21. Greatest
Poets of
the Age
• Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Robert Browning
• Matthew Arnold
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Christina Rossetti
• Thomas Hardy - considered as
the best poet of the late
Victorians
• Pre-Raphaelite Poets
22.
23. Victorian Drama
• Throughout the 19th century Drama continued its decline since
the Restoration.
• Most dramatic works of the period let depth and originality the
most popular dramatist of the period work Oscar Wilde (1856
to 1900) he wrote comedy such as
• The Importance of being Earnest
• Lady Windermere's Fan which abound in verbal polish and
Cynicism
George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
• His plays addressed such social questions as Education,
Marriage and the Class system in a comic vein
• His works include man and Superman Pygmalion and St. Joan
