Victorian era 1837-1901 Victorian Era - PowerPoint Presentation

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Victorian era

1837-1901

Victorian Era

period of Queen Victoria's

reign

June 1837 until her death January 1901It was a long period of peace, prosperity, "refined sensibilities" and national self-confidence for the United Kingdom

There she is!

An overall glance at the time period

It was a time of

prosperity, as the national income per person grew by

halfincreasing industrialization as well as to the worldwide network of trade There was peace abroad (apart from the short Crimean war, 1854–56), and social peace at home.

Companies provided their employees with welfare services ranging from housing, schools and churches, to libraries, baths, and gymnasia

Population growth

The population of England and Wales

grew significantly

Cause: birth rates increased from earlier marriages also life expectancy rates increased with medical science advancementsAbout 15 million people emigrated from the UK to the United States, Canada and several other countries.

Morality/Appearances

Victorianism refers to the study of late-Victorian attitudes and culture, with a focus on the highly moralistic, straitlaced language and

behavior

of Victorian morality. Personal morality was revered in the middle and upper classes on the outside

In reality, people were quite the opposite of moral when it came to their own personal livesEssentially, the pressure to operate in a certain way forced the need for an outlet

Privacy

The concept of "privacy" became a hallmark of the middle class life.

The English home closed up and darkened The interior space was often heavily curtained off and wary of intrusion, and was opened only by invitation for viewing on occasions such as parties or teas. The unknowability

of each individual and the mysteries that surrounded this society were the themes which preoccupied many Victorian novelists

Victorian style gates became a popular way for people to maintain privacy and security

Leisure

Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to

decline

the nine-hour workday became increasingly the normFurthermore, a system of routine annual vacations came into play

Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fareswidespread banking holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays.

Ramsgate

beach in 1899

Fun Fact:

the

1874 Factory Act limited the workweek to 56.5 hours, encouraging the movement toward an eventual eight-hour workday.

Important Advancements

Improvement in rail systems

Creation of a sewage system

Better lighting systems in houses and on streetsMedical Advancements:Different types of anestheticsGloves for medial procedures & they finally realized the importance of washing hands and instruments after a surgery

Fun fact: Although nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, had been proposed as an anesthetic as far back as 1799, it wasn't until 1846 when an American dentist named William Morton started using ether on his patients that anesthetics became common in the medical profession.

Journalism

There were four major factors that radically transformed newspapers in 19th century Britain.

government ended

very high taxes new machines, especially the rotary press, allowed the printing of tens of thousands of copies a day at a low costthe newspapers reached out to new readers in multiple ways, including features, illustrations, and advertisements that enlarged the

audience the franchise was expanded from one or two percent of the men to a majority, and newspapers became the primary means of political education

A wounded British officer reading The

Times's

report of the end of the Crimean War

Child Labor

employment

of young children in factories and mines and as chimney

sweepsIn 1840 only about 20 percent of the children in London had any schoolingChildren as young as 4 were put to work

Working class life in Victorian

Wetherby, West Yorkshire

Victorian Literature

The Novel

While poetry ruled in the Romantic Era, the novel ruled in the Victorian Era

Dickens worked diligently and prolifically to produce the entertaining writing that the public wanted, but also to offer commentary on social problems and the plight of the poor and oppressed.

With a similar style but a slightly more

detached and bitter satirical

view of his characters, he also tended to depict a more middle class society than Dickens did

Two major novelists

Charles Dickens

William Thackeray

You might recognize:

The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities

You might recognize:

Vanity Fair

The Bronte Sisters

Anne

,

Charlotte and Emily Brontë produced notable works of the periodMany of these were not immediately appreciated by Victorian critics.

Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily's only work, examines class, myth and gender through a woman’s point of viewJane Eyre (1847), by

Charlotte The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), by Anne, is mainly considered to be the first sustained feminist

novel

Other genres

Poetry: Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning & others

Other Novelists: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy

Drama: Shakespeare productions & we will come back to this!Children’s booksScience: Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species – evolutionOxford English Dictionary

Nature: Henry David Thoreau Fantasy titles: Dracula, Sherlock Holmes

Charles Darwin

Oscar Wilde

Oscar

Fingal

O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900)an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and

poetbecame one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams (memorable line), his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray

, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

The Importance of Being Earnest

protagonists maintain fictitious

persona

to escape burdensome social obligations.the play's major themes center on the insignificance with which society treats institutions as serious as marriage

and the satirical mannerisms of the Victorian periodBy Oscar Wilde

Mrs

George

Canninge

as Miss Prism and Evelyn Millard as Cecily

Cardew

in the first production