VictorianAge

Part 8 The Victorian Period

I. Historical Background

The Victorian period covers the greater part of the nineteenth century. Chronologically it roughly corresponds to the reign of Queen Victoria who ruled over England from 183 to 1901. In the history of England, the period has generally been regarded as one of the most remarkable in the development of the country. As a historian points out that the age \"is one of strenuous activity and dynamic change, of ferment of ideas and recurrent social unrest, of great invention and expansion\". The early years of the Victorian England was a time of rapid economic development as well as serious social problems. After the Reform Bill of 1832 passed the political power from the decaying aristocrats into the hands of the middle-class industrial capitalists, the Industrial Revolution soon geared up. Steam-powered engines were exploited for railways and iron ships, for looms, printing presses, and farmers' combines; scientific discoveries and technologic inventions quickly brought amazing changes to the country. For a time England was the \"workshop of the world\". Large amounts of profit were accumulated both from expanding its foreign trade markets and from exploiting its huge-sized colonies. Towards the mid-century, England had reached its highest point of development as a world power.

1. Three Periods

However fast England was developing into a rich, advanced industrial country

in the Victorian age, this was also an age that saw the greatest disparity and the sharpest contrast between the rich and the poor. Now the industrial capitalists had taken over the political power after a long struggle with the landed aristocracy. In the struggle the working people had done their bit but were later betrayed by the capitalists. The new Poor Law of 1834 brought along with it the workhouse system which made thousands of poor free toilers for nothing but a rat's den and never adequate cheap food for a bare sustenance. The continuance of the Corn Law (1815) made bread too expensive for the poor. The severe depression, widespread unemployment, and the intensified exploitation of man, woman and child labor brought great miseries to the poor people.

Life in early Victorian mines and factories was poor, nasty, and brutish. Workers and their families in the slums of such cities as Manchester lived like packs of rats in a sewer, and conditions under which women and children toiled in mines and factories were unimaginably brutal. Even a 5-year-old dragged heavy tubs of coal through low-ceilinged mine passages for 13-16 hours a day.

So, in the 1830s and 1840s, the conflict between the capitalists and proletariat in industrialized England began to assume the dominant position in the then social and political life. Disheartened at the betrayal of the bourgeoisie, the workers started bitterly their own independent struggle. By 1836, the working class movement known as Chartism had risen, and in 1837, the London Workmen's Association put forward its six-point demand in the People's Charter, in which , they were demanding the right to vote and to be voted, and to have better working and living conditions Thousands upon thousands of people had signed

the charter, but for three times it was rejected by the Parliament. With the rejection of the third attempt in 1847, the famous movement began to decline: the repeal of Corn Laws (1846), the passage of the ten-hour factory bill (1847), and the comparative improvement of, the sanitary conditions of city slums had gradually pacified the majority of the working-class people. Unable to look far beyond the present, they were silenced and sent back to their slums and toils.

The mid-Victorian period (1850 - 1870) was a period of economic prosperity with a revival of trade and production and social peace. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, towards the mid-nineteenth century, England reached its highest point of development as a world power. It had completed its shift from a way of life based on the ownership of land to a modern urban economy based on trade and manufacturing.

But the last three decades of the century witnessed the decline of British Empire and the decay of Victorian values. Abroad, Britain still maintained its strong economic and military forces and its colonial territory was still the vastest. But its absolute leadership in industry and military force was already facing challenge from Germany. The competition with America also hurt British monopoly in trade and commerce. At home, the Irish problem remained unsolved. The growth of labor force - the proletariat - disturbed the political power balance, which used to be maintained between the Whigs and the Tories. The Victorian morality which had been the spiritual prop for the national consolidation, as the century came to its end, began to lose its glamour; and the old moderate, respectable life style was to be replaced by a more \"loose and dissipating\" one. This kind of typical

`sentiment was best reflected in the works of such aestheticists as Oscar Wilde (1854 --1900) and Walter Pater (1839-1894), vehement advocators of the theory of \"art for art's sake\".

2. The Problem of Women

At the time, sexual inequality in politics, economic life, education and social positions still prevailed; women were still regarded as second-class citizens. Many of the religious sermons as well as secular writings were eloquent in defining and reaffirming women's position and role in the society. In Tennyson's \"The Princesshe king voices the traditional view of woman's position and role:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth;

Man for the sword and for the needle she;

Man with the head and woman with the heart;

Man to command and woman to obey.

On the other hand, the explosive growth of industry, especially the textile industry, brought hundreds of thousands of women into factory jobs. And factory work presented an increasing challenge to the conventional ideas of women and opened up new and wide spheres for them. Women now were able to walk out of the home, to share part of the responsibility of men and help support the family,

and, at the same time, were entering into social services. Some outstanding women appeared, among whom were Florence Nightingale, the founder of nursery, Mrs. Samuel Smith, the campaigner, Charlotte and Emily Bronte and George Eliot, famous women writers. But old convention and prejudice remained dominant. In factories, women were employed as cheap labor and were forced to do very heavy and hard jobs for about half the usual pay. The unbearable working conditions and unemployment drove thousands of women into prostitution. And the only occupation for unmarried middle-class women would be teachers or governesses to some families, a position that could expect no security of employment, minimal wages, and a status not higher than that of a domestic slave. So, in the late period of Victorian age, a feminist movement started, fighting for women's equality and freedom, and for their educational and employment opportunities. Though not the first in its kind, the influence and effect was by far the most profound and widespread. The spirit of the movement was best reflected in the literature of the period, especially in the writings of women writers such as the Bronte sisters, Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot, etc.