The Victorian Era: Social Stratification

• The Victorian Age in Britain spanned Queen Victoria's reign, from 1837 to 1901.
• Despite being a peaceful and prosperous era, marked social problems existed.

Social Stratification

• The Upper class consisted of landowners making profitable investments and hiring lower class workers, divided into Royals, Middle Upper (officers and lords), and Lower Upper (wealthy business owners).
• The Middle class, called 'Bourgeoisie,' expanded due to industrial, transportation, and economic growth, further divided into Higher and Lower Middle classes.
• The Lower class divided into the Working class and Underclass with the Working class facing harsh conditions without access to basic necessities, often turning to drugs and alcohol.
• The Underclass depended on support, with unskilled women sometimes turning to prostitution.
• Underclass children faced grueling labor in coal mines and other jobs, often working 12-18 hours in hazardous conditions.
• Poverty and population expansion led to unstable marriages and illegitimacy and 'bastard' children, prompting the Bastardy Clause in 1834, and forced unwed mothers and their children into workhouses.

Gender Roles

• Industrialization increased the need for paid fosterage, with poor women leaving their children in villages due to city wages.
• Queen Victoria's life emphasized family, motherhood, and respectability, and devotion to her husband Albert.
• Women were considered best suited for the domestic sphere due to perceived physical weakness and moral superiority.
• After marriage, a woman's body, property, and money all belonged to her husband.
• While Upper-class women managed servants and organized dinner parties, Lower class women worked as cooks, maids, or barmaids, often having to pay for childcare.
• Women lacked the right to vote or own property and feminist ideas gradually spread.

Political Conditions

• The English government operated as a Parliament under Queen Victoria, split into the House of Lords (appointed) and the House of Commons (elected).
• The Whigs (Liberals) supported Parliament's growth and voting rights for all men, while the Tories (Conservatives) favored monarchy and voting rights only for wealthy landowners.
• 'Colonialism' involved expanding territories, establishing colonies, and controlling resources and labor.
• The British Empire was labeled a 'high empire' during the Victorian period.
• 'Cultural Imperialism' describes the enforcement of one nation's culture and language upon colonized people.
• 'Orientalising' is a process where Western writers depicted colonized people as feminized and childish.
• In 1858, India fell under Queen Victoria's direct control, leading to infrastructure development until 1947.
• The British directly ruled India, Africa, and the West Indies, and the Empire expanded under self-governance to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Economic Conditions

• The First Industrial Revolution started with textile mechanization, leading to income loss for skilled handloom weavers.
• The Second Industrial Revolution brought steam power and increased clothing production and international trade.
• Britain became a cotton goods provider and industrialization increased urbanization while workers faced exploitation and health risks.
• The 1830s saw rapid railway construction, new trade opportunities and increased commuting that increased mobility from countryside to cities.
• Advances in printing and mass paper production increased literacy, leading to popular periodicals and cheap books (yellow backs) at railway stations.

Religious Conditions

• Writers were influenced by the King James Version of the Bible, and churches were central to communal life.
• The 'Church of England' was dominant, but there was dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church and dissenting churches emerged, with a simpler form of worship.
• Christianity emphasized piousness and missionaries were deployed to spread Christianity.

Science, Technology, and Innovation

• The ‘British Association for the Advancement of Science' started up science as a area of public discussion in the Victorian era.
• Science entered university curriculums and factors like cheaper printed materials and government support accelerated scientific activities.
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin was a landmark book setting ideas about natural selection.
• Henry Fox Talbot's photographic negative production and The Pencil of Nature became the first photography collection for profit.
• Charles Babbage invented calculating machines, and advances were made in medical technology, and Louis Pasteur studied germ theory.
• Literary works portrayed amateur scientists, and scientific progress became a source of national pride.

Travel, Commerce, and the British Empire

• Railway lines initiated a construction boom.
• The Great Western Railway was built
• Improvements in roads, telegraph, and steam engine technology increased trade and connections.
• By the early 1860s, Britain had iron-hulled warships and London's first electric power station was built in 1888.
• Travel and Tourism prospered and imports exceed exports.
• India was controlled by the East India Company, where the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 shortened the travel time to just weeks.
• The British took over rule in India, and Queen Victoria became the 'Empress of India' in 1876.

Influence of the Press

• Mechanization changed news and functions of the press towards newspaper and innovative illustrations and typesetting technology.
• Introduction of wood pulp for paper, telegraph technology, and removal of penny stamp duty in 1855 boosted production and readership.
• Urban centers with railways offered readership markets, where free libraries aided the working class to access books.
• Serialization brought more readers to the literary market, where Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers was popular.
• Magazines such as Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review, Blackwood's, Bentley's Miscellany, had articles on intellectual and political discussion, fiction and poetry.

Overview of Victorian literature

• Victorian literature was a fusion of romantic and realist writing styles.
• Novels portrayed lifelike stories, realism, and moral lessons.
• Scientific discoveries influenced literature, where On the Origin of Species was a highly-regarded book.
• The new genre of fantastic fiction included characters like Sherlock Holmes.
• Writers used literature for human progress, realism, and moral messages where justice, truth, love, brotherhood, etc were a focus.

Key novelists

• Charles Dickens used writing criticised societal structure contributions to social reforms.
• Thomas Hardy wrote realistic novels focusing on tragic characters and the life of the poor during industrialization.
• George Elliot used literature focused on characters set in a social environment.

Victorian Poetry

• The key years of Victorian poetry are from 1832-1887 within the history of England.
• Era showed material affluence, political consciousness, democratic reforms, industrial and mechanical progress, scientific advancement and religious uncertainty.
• Individuality, originality in character and a deep moral note were hall marks of Victorian literature.
• Notable poets of the time include Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Browning

Matthew Arnold

• Was a great poet and critic.
• His poetry is "a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty”.
• Poems are narrative, dramatic, elegiac and lyrical.

Robert Browning

• Carried forward his study of human beings and produced a number of dramatic monologues.
• Used dramatic monologues for the study of character, of particular mental states, and moral crisis in the soul of the characters concerned.
• Robert Browning popularized dramatic monologue in most of his works such as ‘My Last Duchess', 'Porphyria's Lover', 'Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister', ‘Men and Women' and such others.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• Was an important figure married to Robert Browning.
• Poems evoke the chords of sympathy in our hearts and bring tears to our eyes.

Victorian Drama

• The Victorian theatre was mainly characterized by melodrama and included pantomime, musical pieces, burlesque
• The Licensing Acts of 1737 and 1843 put restrictions on theatre.
• Social values were conveyed through pantomime, farce, extravaganza and melodrama.
• Theatrical and literary were yoked together by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
• Plays that contained Irish patriotism were renaissance of Irish Theatre heralded by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and W.B. Yeats.
• Comedies of modern life in the plays of Oscar Wilde depicted the complexities in love.
• George Bernard Shaw was another important Irish late century playwright who tackled social issues in his plays.

Victorian Social Classes/ Class Relations, Conflict and the Condition of England

• Social classes in the Victorian era consisted of the Upper class, Middle class and Lower class.
• People in the Upper class didn't perform manual labour.
• The expansion of the Middle Class was due to the rapid growth of cities and the economy and had skilled jobs to support.
• The government was influenced by the wealthy to invest in luxury rather than laborers.
• Conditions led to diseases and ventilation in the mines.
• Men were not too focused on finding a husband, for emotional relation
• Girls typically married in their early to mid 20's to a groom around 5 years older than them in order to reinforce the “natural” hierarchy between the sexes.
• Women were limited because of the common opinion that they were weak.
• Working and Lower working Class women were distinguished by having less education and more opportunities.
• Feminist ideas spread among the educated middle classes, which resulted in discriminatory laws being repealed.

Cityscapes, Countrysides and Victorian Ruralism

• The Industrial Revolution transformed landscape into urban due to movements of populations away from rural
• Migrating from country to city meant learning how to live in a wholly new environment
• Urban dwellers confronted overcrowding, strange and often dangerous working conditions
• The 19th century saw the rise of the world's first great metropolis, London, and the transformation of several northern British small towns into the first major industrial cities
• Cities were leveled and a producer of new merchants, classes, such as the merchant, were developed

Victorian Empire

• Victorian British Empire dominated areas globally due to rule and influence.
• Jobs included civil and military service, missionary work, and infrastructure development.
• Emigrants would send money home to Britain as profits and this included goods such as jute, and tea.
• Expansion in 1820 and 1870 resulted in violence which increased the non-white population which included the "Indian Mutiny (1857)".
• Continued aggressive expansion starting in 1870 till 1914 and expanded control to large parts of Africa with assistance by the railways and increased technologies.
• At the turn of the 20th century, the Union flag was raised and Britain influenced areas around the world through power and control.

The Great Exhibition

• The ‘first world fair', Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of All Nations displayed thousands of exhibits many of which represented Britain and its colonies.
• It was organized by Prince Albert and Henry Cole.
• The exhibition attracted millions of visitors to London, many travelling by rail. The Great Exhibition can be seen to mark the beginning of modern consumerism,
• The exhibition generated a vast profit.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

• Pre-Raphaelitism means a certain type of painting in imitation of the great Italian painters who flourished before the time of Raphael (1488-1823) and who were said to be simple, sincere, and devoted.
• Rossetti's work is individual distinguished by its rich Italian colouring and qualities.
• D. G. Rossetti is the outstanding spokesman of this Pre-Raphaelite poetry such as or The Blessed Damozel, My Sister's Sleep, The Portrait, Jenny, The Burden of Nineveh.

Social Darwinism

• The origin of Social Darwinism was during the late 19th and early 20th century by Charles Darwin.
• Helped empower and divide power which favoured class stratification.
• Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "Survival of the fittest”.

Benjamin Disraeli

• Was a man of Jewish descent. Benjamin Disraeli started as a writer and his novels like "Coningsby" and "Sybil" were famous.
• After many attempts, he won a seat in the House of Commons in 1837
• Revitalized the Conservative Party and gave it new ideals and a new objective called Tory Democracy
• Disraeli's aggressive foreign policy made him a trusted member of the close circle to Queen Victoria.

New Poor Law 1834

• Resources were provided in these spaces to assist with things such as clothing, blankets to those in need
• Nick named the New Poor Law which established the workhouse organization
• The 'New Poor law' established the workhouse over other programs
• Resulted in distressing to the poor the labor required to receive support at the workhouse

Huxley-Wilberforce Debate/ The 1860 Oxford Evolution Debate

• The debate took place at the Oxford University Museum in Oxford, England.
• The description is misleading since it was animated discussion after the presentation of a paper