The Early and the Mid-Victorian Period.

T h e  E a r l y  V i c t o r i a n  P e r i o d  ( 1 8 3 0 – 4 8 )

A  T i m e  o f  T r o u b l e s  ( 1 8 3 0 s – 4 0 s ) :

< economic and social difficulties attendant on industrialisation > ‘The Time of Troubles’

(+) the 1^st steam-powered public railway line in the world, the 1^st underground railway system

(─) close to rev. = economic theory of laissez-faire > terrible conditions in the new industrial and coal-mining areas, employment of women and children under brutal conditions: Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” (1843)

- the 1^st Reform Bill (1832) = franchise for all M owning property ₤10 or more in annual rent, i.e. middle class

- People’s Charter (1838 – 48) = a large organisation of workers, advocated the extension of franchise and oth. legislative reforms

- abolition of the Corn Laws (1946) = i.e. high tariffs on imported grains > free trade system

R e a c t i o n s  i n  L i t e r a t u r e :

> Thomas Carlyle’s contrib. to the “Condition of England Question” in Past and Present

> Benjamin Disraeli’s (1804 – 81, a novelist to become a PM) Sybil (1845), subtitled The Two Nations = the En. of the rich x the En. of the poor

> Elizabeth Gaskell

T h e  M i d - V i c t o r i a n  P e r i o d  ( 1 8 4 8 – 7 0 )

P r o s p e r i t y :

- the Factory Acts (1802 – 78) = regulated the conditions of labour in mines and factories > child labour restricted, working hours limited > conditions of the working classes improved

- the 2^nd Reform Bill (1867, under Disraeli) = franchise for the working class + abolition of the rotten boroughs and redistribution of parliamentary repres.

(+) economic prosperity > an enormous expansion of infl. throughout the globe > the growth of Empire

(+) the Great Exhibition (Hyde Park, 1851) = symbolised the triumphant feats of Victorian technology

(─) but: serious conflicts and anxieties beneath the placidly prosperous surface of the period

R e l i g i o u s  C o n t r o v e r s y :

- division of the Church of En.:

(a) Low Church = for a strictly moral Christian life; responsible for the emancipation of all slaves in the Br. Empire (1833)

(b) Broad Church = open to modern advances

(c) High Church = for holding to its orig. traditions x against liberal tendencies

+ High Church Movement = The Oxford Movement (early 1830s):

< orig. in Oxford in the early 1830s as a Cath. revival within the Church of En.

- reacted against state interference in relig. matters

- for a revitalisation of the spirit of the great 16^th – 17^th c. divines, incl. J. Donne and Edward Herbert

> John Henry Newman (1801 – 90), the dominant figure among the orig. leaders: a thinker, preacher, essayist, prose writer, and poet of The Second Spring = the revival of the Roman Cath. Church (to which he converted) after 3 c. of persecution

> new hymn writers and poets, incl. John Keble (1792 – 1866)

> new attention to liturgy and liturgical celebration > transl. of Lat. and Greek hymns, incl. John Mason Neale (1818 – 66)

> new relig. Poets, incl. Christina Rossetti (1830 – 94)

- later generation: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 89), & oth.

U t i l i t a r i a n i s m :

< derived from the thought of Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) and his disciple James Mill (1773 – 1836, father of John Stuart M.)

- human beings seek to maximise pleasure and minimise pain > a morally correct action = the one providing the greatest pleasure to the greatest number

x but: failed to recognise people’s spiritual needs: criticized by C. Dickens’s Hard Times

S c i e n c e :

- biology: C. Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) diminished the assumption of the humanity’s special role in the world

- geology and astronomy with its new discoveries reduced the status of human species in time and space: A. Tennyson’s Maud, the stars as ‘innumerable’ tyrants of ‘iron skies’

- Higher Criticism: orig. in Ger. as a scientific attitude applied twd a study of the Bible, challenged the role of relig. in society

R e a c t i o n s  i n  L i t e r a t u r e :

> C. Dickens’s attacks on the shortcomings of the Victorian society x Anthony Trollope’s more characteristic reflection of the mid-Victorian attitude twd the social and political scene

> R. Kipling’s ‘the White Man’s burden’, i.e. the moral responsibility for the expansion of empire x Queen Victoria’s mission ‘to protect the poor natives and advance civilisation’

P r e - R a p h a e l i t e  B r o t h e r h o o d :

= a group of young anti-establishment painters

- against the establ. academic style of painting in favour of the superior directness of expression, simplicity, and pure colours of the pre-Renaissance artists before Raphael (1483 – 1520, a painter and architect of the Florentine school in the Ita. High Renaissance)

- founded by D. G. Rossetti (1848)

- incl. the painters D. G. Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, F. G. Stephens (1828 – 1907), and James Collinson (1825 – 81), and the sculptor Thomas Woolner

- cultural heroes: Christ; G. Chaucer, W. Shakespeare, J. Keats, & oth.

- The Germ (4 issues in 1850) = their short-lived journal, an experimental amalgam of poetry, prose, and essay

P r e - R a p h a e l i t e  P a i n t i n g

F o r d  M a d o x  B r o w n ( 1 8 2 1 – 9 3 )

The First Translation of the Bible into English (1847 – 48): pictures Chaucer standing by

The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry (1845 – 51, 1853): pictures Chaucer in the central position

Also painted: the sleeping King Lear attended by Cordelia

J o h n  E v e r e t t  M i l l a i s ( 1 8 2 9 – 9 6 )

Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1850): a scene from W. Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Isabella (1848 – 49): a scene of tender love x brotherly jealousy

W i l l i a m  H o l m a n  H u n t ( 1 8 2 7 – 1 9 1 0 )

The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro (1848): a scene from J. Keats’s “Eve of St Agnes”

P r e - R a p h a e l i t e  P o e t r y :

T h o m a s  W o o l n e r ( 1 8 2 5 – 9 2 )

My Beautiful Lady (1864): a poetic sequence