Assignment No.

:
(1)

Class:
BS-ENG-IV

Subject:
History of English Literature
Topic:
“Features of Victorian Era (1837 – 1901)”

Submitted to:
“Madam Shazia Nasreen”

Submitted by:

Student Name Roll No.

Asad Mahmood 05
Qasim Bashir 26
Qaiser Shabir 25
Touseef Ahmad 35

Characteristics of Victorian Period (1837 – 1901) in English

Literature:
 The literature of the Victorian age (1837 – 1901, named for the reign of Queen
Victoria) entered in a new period after the romantic revival. During this period, Britain
became the wealthiest nation in the world, due to the rapid and widespread expansion of the
British Empire. In addition, the Victorians made the first real attempts to fix the massive
social problems caused by the industrial and democratic revolutions of the Romantic period.

The term “Victorian” is still used as a synonym for “prude” today, a term that reflects
the extreme repression of the age (even chair legs had to be covered, because they were
thought to be too suggestive). But this is a pretty limited view of the Victorians. A huge
segment of society was engaged in the discussion and debate of new ideas and theories,
almost everyone was a voracious reader, and intellectual seriousness and liveliness formed
the basis for the larger process of growth, change, and adjustment through the era. The
Victorian Age was a time of HUGE social and political development, and it can be more
easily managed when broken down into three phases: early, middle, and late.

The Literature
The literature of this era expressed the fusion of pure romance to gross realism. Though, the
Victorian Age produced great poets, the age is also remarkable for the excellence of its
prose. The discoveries of science have particular effects upon the literature of the age. If you
study all the great writers of this period, you will mark four general characteristics:

 General Characteristics:
1. Literature of this age tends to come closer to daily life which reflects its practical
problems and interests. It becomes a powerful instrument for human progress.
Socially & economically, Industrialism was on the rise and various reform movements
like emancipation, child labor, women’s rights, and evolution.

2. Moral Purpose:
The Victorian literature seems to deviate from "art for art's sake" and asserts its
moral purpose. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin - all were the teachers of
England with the faith in their moral message to instruct the world.

3. Idealism:
It is often considered as an age of doubt and pessimism. The influence of science is
felt here. The whole age seems to be caught in the conception of man in relation to
the universe with the idea of evolution.

4. Though, the age is characterized as practical and materialistic, most of the writers
exalt a purely ideal life. It is an idealistic age where the great ideals like truth, justice,
love, brotherhood are emphasized by poets, essayists and novelists of the age.

 The Style of the Victorian Novel

Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work,
perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrongdoers
are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson
at heart. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation
became more complex as the century progressed.

Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-
1901) and corresponds to the Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers
of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century.

The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The
works by pre-Victorian writers such as Jane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both
closely-observed social satire and adventure stories. Popular works opened a market for the
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 novel amongst a reading public. The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British
literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russia. Books,
and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created legacy
works with continuing appeal.

Significant Victorian novelists and poets include: Matthew Arnold, the Brontë sisters
(Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë), Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Joseph Conrad, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Benjamin
Disraeli, George Eliot, George Meredith, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Richard
Jefferies, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram
Stoker, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Philip Meadows Taylor, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William
Thackeray, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and H. G. Wells (although many people consider his
writing to be more of the Edwardian age).

 Specific and Major Features of Victorian Era:

 Morality:
 This shows that slowly the people were losing the free meaning of literature and that is why during
this time novel as well as prose was the popular forms.
 We read the fun and sentiment of Dickens, the social miniatures of Thackeray, or the psychological
studies of George Eliot.
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 We find in almost every case a definite purpose to sweep away error and to reveal the underlying
truth of human life. Immorality of mortality starts during this time.

 The Age of Prose and Novels:

 The Victorian age was essentially the age of prose and novel W. J Long in his book of
English literature says:

“The novels were looking like the bright stars in the sky of England during the
Victorian era”
 The great novelists ( like Charles Dickens, Thomas hardy , William Thackeray , George
Eliot and Anne Bronte ) Filled the sky of the Victorian era with their novels some
important novels of this era :
Charles Dickens:- Oliver Twists, Hard Times
Thomas Hardy:- The Return of the native
George Eliot :- Middle march , Romalo

 These novels are just an ice-berg in the ocean of the Victorian novels.

The Revolt:
 During this time the human revolution theory was proved by Darwin.

 So, now God was not one of the tool to create fear among the people.

 So, there was a kind of conflict between religion and science.

Intellectual Developments:
 ‘On the Origin of Species’ (1859) of Darwin shook to its foundations scientific thought.

 The first photographs were taken in the 1830s.

 The very first electric train was invented by a German in 1879.

 The New Education:

 The Victorians came up with the idea that all children should go to school, and they checked to
make sure the schools were up to scratch too.

 They were the first people to ask whether it was right to allow children to work. They introduced
laws saying what you could and could not expect children to do.

 The Industrial Revolution

 The Industrial Revolution rapidly gained pace during Victoria's reign because of the power of
steam. Victorian engineers developed bigger, faster and more powerful machines that could
run whole factories. This led to a massive increase in the number of factories.

 By 1870, over 1,00,000 steam engines were at work throughout Britain.

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Search for Balance:
This Period the writers tried to balance the Romantic as well as the Classical influence this is
well observed in the works of J.S Mill. During this time the new religious Movement called the
Oxford Movement was started. This movement shows a search for balance.

 An age of social and political reforms

The situation before the Victorian Age

 The British aristocracy suspected any social reform, because of the effects of the French
Revolution

 To prevent disorders, public meetings of workers were made illegal

 1811-12: workers attacked factories and destroyed machines = Luddite Riots
 1819: British army called in to disperse a meeting of workers calling for parliamentary
reform. 11 people killed and hundreds injured = Peterloo Massacre

 1824: The first Trade Unions were founded

 1830: Robert Owen’s Socialist reform at New Lanark

 1832: The First Reform Act granted the vote to almost all male members of middle-class.

 1833: The Factory Act regulated child labour in factories.

 1833: Abolition of slavery and slave trade in all British colonies

 1834: Poor Law Amendment established a system of workhouses for poor people.

 1867: The Second Reform Act gave the vote to skilled working men.

 1871: Trade Union Act legalised trades unions.

 1884: The Third Reform Act granted the right to vote to all male householders.

 Changes

 Industrialization:
 Shift from life based on ownership of land to a modern urban economy based on
trade and manufacturing.
 London population “exploded” from 2 million in 1837 to 6 ½ million in 1901.
 Host of social and economic problems.
 Also an enormous increase in wealth.
Child Labour:
It was one of the greatest evils of Victorian England. Children were forced to work in mines, mills
and factories They offered their services as errand boys or apprentices to trades. Down in coal
mines they pushed coal trucks or were employed in jobs that required crawling along on all four.
Their limbs and skeletons were damaged forever.

Children worked on Saturdays and on Sundays they cleaned their tools or the machines.
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Orphans from workhouses were put up by the factory owner and slept in shifts:

“When a group of children were in bed, the others were obliged to work.”

They often worked by night as well till 1831.

 The Workhouse System

In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where
those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment. Life in a
workhouse was intended to be harsh, to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply. Free
medical care and education for children were provided Members of families were separated, as
women lived with one another, the same applied to men and children.

 Positive aspect of this Era:

Industrial revolution:

Factory system emerged; for the first time in Britain’s history there were more people who lived in
cities than in the countryside.

Technological advances:
Introduction of steam hammer sand locomotives; building of a network of railways.

Economic progress:
Britain became the greatest economic power in the world; in 1901 the USA became the leader, but
Britain remained the first in manufacturing.

 Negative Aspects of this Era:

Pollution began in towns due to factory activity.

Lack of hygienic conditions:

Houses were overcrowded, most people lived in miserable conditions; poor houses shared water
supplies.

Epidemics, like cholera, thyphoid, caused a high mortality in towns. They came to a peak in the
Great Stink of 1858.

• This expression was used to describe the terrible smell in London, coming from the Thames.
•  The “Miasmas”, exhalations from decaying matter, poisoned the air.

 Compromise:
The Victorians were great moralisers, they supported: personal duty, hard work, decorum,
respectability, chastity. ‘Victorian’, synonym for prude, stood for extreme repression; even
furniture legs had to be concealed under heavy cloth not to be “suggestive”.

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New ideas were discussed & debated by a large part of society. The middle-class was obsessed
with gentility, espectability, decorum.
Respectability  distinguished the middle from the lower class.

Conclusion:
My conclusion from the above topic is that, Victorian Age is the age of great literary,
industrial, economic, political and social revolutions. Education and transportation system is
also improved in this Era. The Victorian literature seems to deviate from "art for art's sake"
and asserts its moral purpose. It is often considered as an age of doubt and pessimism. The
influence of science is felt here. Though, the age is characterized as practical and
materialistic, most of the writers exalt a purely ideal life. It is an idealistic age where the great
ideals like truth, justice, love, brotherhood are emphasized by poets, essayists and novelists
of the age.

References:
wikipedia.com
academia.com
slideshare.net
scribd.com

The End