Victorian Era

1. Victorian Era Describes things and events that happened during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1907)

2. "I turned half way around and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself” – Oscar Wilde

3. History: Timeline • 1837-1901 Queen Victoria’s Reign • 1848 Women began attending University of London • 1843 William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate • 1860 Florence Nightingale founds school for nurses • 1861 United States: Civil War begins • 1865 Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland • 1888 Jack the Ripper stalks London’s East End • 1891 United States: Basketball is founded • 1901 Queen Victoria dies and ends the Victorian era

4. What caused the movement • Disagreed on the crucial issues of the times • Shared a deep confidence in humanity’s ability to better itself • Industrial Revolution • stirred conflicting feelings among Victorian thinkers • Admired the material benefits industrialization had brought • Deplored brutality of factory life and industrial slums • Debate about business • allowed free reign • should the welfare of people and the government take a strong role in the economy • Theory of Evolution • proposed by Charles Darwin • stirred bitter controversy

5. Characteristics of the Time Period • Prudishness • Excessively modest in speech, conduct, and dress • Legs (gasp) • Old-fashioned • Having conservative behaviors, ways, ideas, or tastes of earlier times • Repression • The rejection from consciousness of painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses http://www.experiencefestival.com/wp/videos/victorian-age-rap/lf_vsESfQWk

6. Purpose of the movement • Produced diverse styles of literature • Entertaining, profound, scholarly, and humorous • Relevant to readers today • So close to modern times • Brilliant storytellers • Read for: • Literary appreciation • Historical understanding • Pure pleasure • Writers showed the horrible working conditions in the factory • Took steps to expand democracy • better the lives of the poor • Trade policy and Electoral reform • Dominated domestic politics during the first half of the Victorian era • Laws discouraged food imports • Kept food prices high • Angered lower classes

7. Queen Victoria • Reigned for 64 years • Born in London, England • Died on January 22, 1901 • Cerebral hemorrhage • Reigned during British industrial progress, artistic successes, and political empire building • Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861 from Typhoid • Affected her “psyche” • Went into seclusion for more than 25 years • Appeared during the Golden Jubilee of 1887: • her 50th year on the throne

8. Social Classes • Starting to change • Middle class growing • Upper class • Simple heredity aristocracy • Changed to • Nobility and wealthy commercial class • Definition of “gentleman and lady” were changing • Working class • Slowly getting reform they wanted • Working conditions: Bad

9. Rise of Feminism • Women of the time were starting to become a power in society • No longer just confined to the home • Allowed to attend universities • Reduce the working day for women and children • Legalize trade unions

10. Male Reform • Complete male suffrage • Couldn’t vote if poor • Voters were tenant farmers and better paid male workers, before just for wealthy http://www.experiencefestival.com/wp/videos/victorian-era-video/YN5b_726_UA

11. Inventions • Great engineers • Created railways, trains, steamships • Built salt factory and sugar refinery • Built a lighthouse so ships wouldn’t crash along the rocks

12. Influential Writers of the time period • Appealed to people in the middle class • Alfred, Lord Tennyson • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning • William Wordsworth • Matthew Arnold • George Eliot • Charles Dickens

13. Matthew Arnold • 1822-1888 • First Victorian poet to focus on “the bewildering confusion” of the Industrial age • The loss of individuals close ties to nature and with each other • Forerunner of the more pessimistic naturalist writers • Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) • A.E. Housman (1859-1936) “Wondering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born…”

14. Madame Bovary • 1856 Madame Bovary was first seen • 1857 Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, was published • Author was taken to court on charges that he was endangering the morals of the very young • Book was banned • Attacked for obscenity, indecent, and banned on sexual grounds • Trial in January 1857 made story notorious • Important French novel • Signaled beginning of feminism

15. Movement of the Victorian Era • Mostly confined to Europe, specifically England and the United Kingdom • Interested in everything

16. Works Cited (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2010, from http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Victorians/sally.html Abrams, L. (2001, August 09). Ideals of Womenhood in Victorian Britain. Retrieved October 22, 2010, from BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_01.shtml Landow, G. P. (2009, August 2). The Victorian Web. Retrieved November 2, 2010, from Victorian and Victorianism: http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/victor4.html Miller, I. (n.d.). Victoria's Pat. Retrieved November 2, 2010, from http://www.victoriaspast.com/FrontPorch/victorianera.htm Collins, K. K. "Arnold, Matthew." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2010. Web.  5 Nov. 2010.