Victorian Age W5

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

The Victorian Age (1)

• Started around 1830 ended in early 20th century
• Named after Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901)
• Britain: great economic and political power
• "The workshop of the world"
• "The empire on which the sun never set"

Young Victoria

Elderly Victoria

The White Man's Burden - Rudyard Kipling

TAKE up the White Man's burden -

Send forth the best ye breed -

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild -

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden -

In patience to abide

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain,

To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain.

The Victorian Age (2)

• Empire building: Britain's national destiny
• Sense of moral superiority (white man's burden)
• From  1830s: Laws aimed at reform (Reform Bills, Poor Laws, educational laws)
• Yet: period of great social inequality
• rich vs poor ("the two nations")
• men vs women ("Victorian double standard")

02:05

What do you think is the reason Prince Albert wanted such a big and beautiful building to hold the exhibition?

05:36

Explain in your own words: Why was the Great Exhibition so special?

The Victorian Age (3)

• Scientific discovery and progress

• Growing uncertainty and intellectual doubt"
• Religious beliefs vs scientific evidence
• Discovery of fossils
• Theory of evolution 

Do you think rich children also had to work? Can you imagine how their lives differed?

rich children

raised by a nanny & spoiled 

hardly any contact with their parents

not allowed to eat at the same table

educated

needed to marry a person from the same class

Victorian literature - Poetry

• A continuation of the Romantic period
• Themes: nature  / the past / the human spirit

• Important poets:

1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)
2. Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)

Victorian literature - the novel

• The age of the novel
• Growing audience for "true stories"
• Greater wealth (rise of the middle classes)
• Better education (rise in literacy)
• Instalment system (novels published in serial form)

Important authors

• Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations)
• The Brontë Sisters (Charlote, Anne and Emily) 
  Or Currer, Ellis en Acton Bell (Wuthering Heights)
• George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
• Thomas Hardy

1. poet + novelist / main theme: tragic lives of ordinary people
2.  The Mayor of Casterbridge / Tess of the d'Urberville

Important authors - 2

• Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
• Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)
• Sir Arthur Canon Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)
• HG Wells (The Time Machine / The Invisible Man / The War of the Worlds)

Position of women in Victorian Times

*Poor women had to work

*Bad living conditions

* no rights to vote, husband was the boss

Difference between the classes:

*Rich women were supposed to be "the Angel of the House"

*Well-furnished houses & enough food, servants

* no rights to vote, husband decided on everything

Lower classes 

- Bad living conditions lower classes/poor 

- Reform bills to improve situation labourers (child labour)

Max. 48 hours if 9 years old

Bit of education...

Bad health circumstances

Sufragettes: women's & votes

1918 :allowed to vote if 30 years old

1928: 21 years old

Right to vote for women & lower classes

Assignment

Read the text in your booklet on page 33 to 37 and

answer the following questions.

Describe the "curious double standard of morality of the middle classes" in your own words.

Describe the dilemma for the Victorian Husband.

What would you have done if you were a middle class man/woman in the Victorian era?

Consider the video you've just watched and try to think of a question that could appear on the test (1).

Consider the video you've just watched and try to think of a question that could appear on the test (2).

Next week:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The week after:

Jane Eyre by Emily Brontë