5V Frankenstein Week 2 Lesson 1 19th century

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Week 2 lesson 1 

The 19th Century

This week

Monday

• The 19th century
• Read novel

Tuesday

• Characterization
• Read novel

The 19th Century

1. Take a guess: How many people lived in London around 1800?

1. 500.000
2. 750.000
3. 1.000.000
4. 1.250.000

2. Take a guess: How many people lived in London a century later, around 1900?

1. 3.6 million
2. 4.9 million
3. 5.4 million
4. 6.7 million

3. Take a guess: Which of the following did not exist yet in the 19th century?

1. Telephones
2. Radios
3. Telegraphs
4. Cameras

4. Take a guess: How many people lived in the entire British Empire (Great Britain + all of the colonies) in 1900?

1. 200 million
2. 300 million
3. 400 million
4. 500 million

5. Take a guess: The first Gothic Novel (ghost story book) was written in what year?

1. 1509
2. 1623
3. 1764
4. 1834

Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto

The 19th Century

- Queen Victoria reigned 1837 - 1901
- Industrial Revolution 1750 - 1840 :
         - Steam engines, machines, etc. 
         - People move to the cities to work in factories
         - 1800: 1 million people live in London
         - 1900: 6.7 million people live in London
         - British Empire: 400 million people worldwide 

British Population

- People live longer
- Farmers vs. Wealthy land owners      
   > Factory Workers vs. Business owners  

- Child labour: crawl into small work spaces in jobs such as mining and chimney sweeping

- New middle class: doctors, teachers, engineers
- New inventions: telegraphs, telephones, cameras

The Victorian Era and the Industrial Revolution

Queen Victoria ruled over England for a large part of the century, from 1837 to 1901. For this reason, the period is often known as the Victorian Era. This was also a time that Britain saw tremendous economic and industrial growth due to the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the steam engine. The Industrial Revolution prompted a large segment of the British population to shift from agricultural to manufacturing careers, as job opportunities moved to the cities. People flocked to urban areas like London and Birmingham for work in factories, especially in the textile industry.

Class Divisions in 19th-Century England

New economic opportunities during this time helped to boost life expectancy and quality of life, but they also reinforced class divides that had existed in Britain for centuries. Previously, England was controlled by the landed gentry, or wealthy land holders who gained their status through family lineages. During Victorian times, the landed gentry became wealthy business owners who still controlled politics and the economy.

One positive social outcome of the Industrial Revolution was the development of skilled labor, which led to the rise of a middle class. The middle class consisted of newly educated experts in industrial technologies, along with other college-educated professionals like doctors, engineers, and lawyers. It also included people who worked as teachers, governesses, clerks, and other white-collar workers who were not paid as much but still saw a distinction between themselves and the lower classes.

The rise of the middle class put pressures on the upper classes for increased representation, which resulted in a series of reform acts giving commoners increased representation in parliament.

Although the middle class was gaining real traction in 19th-century England, a third class of unskilled laborers, known as the underclass, were a blemish on all of Victorian society. The British underclass worked menial jobs when they were available, and there were no labor laws to protect them from abuses. Child labor was prevalent; children were used to crawl into small work spaces in jobs such as mining and chimney sweeping. Many women turned to prostitution, which was considered to be a horrible crime under Victorian values, which called for dignity and restraint, especially when it came to sexuality. Prostitution and child labor showed clear contradictions by the ruling class of claiming propriety on the one hand but showing a total lack of regard for human welfare on the other.

Gothic Novels

- The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764) by Horace Walpole
- Characteristics of Gothic Novels: 
        1. Unrealistic setting
        2. Unexplainable, scary events
        3. Improbable, sensational plots
Gothic fiction tends to place emphasis on both emotion and a pleasurable kind of terror, serving as an extension of the Romantic literary movement that was relatively new at the time that Walpole's novel was published. The most common of these "pleasures" among Gothic readers was the sublime—an indescribable feeling that "takes us beyond ourselves."

- Popular for only a few decades 

Romantic Period

- Romantic Period = 1800 - 1830, interested in: 
             - everything from the past 
             - the non-rational & supernatural
             - scary and unexplainable things

- Before 1800 = Age of Reason (Enlightenment), interested in: 
             - God & rational thinking is most important

6. What was not an effect of the Industrial Revolution

1. Increased Child Labour
2. New Middle Class: engineers, doctors
3. People lived longer
4. More people working on farms

7. What was the title of the first Gothic novel?

1. The Castle of Orlando
2. The Castle of Otranto
3. The Castle of Othello
4. The Castle of Orcano

8. The Gothic Novel was part of the Romantic period, which lasted from?

1. 1800-1830
2. 1820-1850
3. 1830-1860
4. 1850-1880

9. Before the Romantic Period came ...?

1. The Age of Treason
2. The Age of Raisin
3. The Age of Season
4. The Age of Reason

10. Which group was not a part of the new Middle Class?

1. Doctors
2. Soldiers
3. Engineers
4. Laywers

Next

• Read your novel
  
• Work on the assignments in your workbook 

Tomorrow:

• Characterization
• Read novel