THE VICTORIAN AGE(INGLESE)

The Victorian Age

Politics:

The Victorian Age is a very long period, full of changes, reforms, new ideals and contraddictions.

It started approximately in the 1837, year of the accession of Queen Victoria.

This young woman (she was only eighteen when she became queen of England) was so beloved by her subjects because she represented the ideal constitutional monarch. Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840. They lived happily for a long time, they had nine children and apparently they were a beautiful family. Prince Albert died from typhoid in 1861: although this bad moment, queen Victoria kept on being a good monarch until the end of her reign, in 1901. This date also represents the end of the Victorian age.

Europe was devastated by a large number of revolutions in different countries(for example France and Italy). Britain, instead, was saved from this revolutionary wave because of his political stability, even though there were a lot of social and economical problems.

This is the period of the second industrial revolution: there were an increase of population and a mechanization of the agriculture. These changes had their particular consequences, especially for humble people.

During the Victorian age, the English Government made a lot of laws. This political action avoided the risk of the revolution.

The Poor Law Amendment Act (1834)established the creation of workhouses.

With the First Reform Act (1832) they gave the vote to the middle class.

This is also the period of the “rotten boroughs”: the government divided the British territory into boroughs  and the population had the possibility to vote (though it wasn’t still the universal vote, that was reached only in 1928, when everybody, men and women, had completely their political rights).

There was an explosion of new discovers and new sciences: the knowledge of the world was improved with the hard work of lots of scientists and researchers.

The governments started to commission a lot of reports on general health, poverty, industrial revolution consequences and education.

Ordinary people started to be more informated about their conditions: they read lots of newspapers, magazines and books.

The 1845 is famous for a political crises and the Irish potato famine: this problem was solved with the help of the Prime Minister, who freed the price of corn.

The transports and the way of communicating had an incredible increase. Life in general became more comfortable. The working class tried to improve his life conditions following the Chartist movement: a democratic political party that fought for people rights.

With the Second Reform Act (1867), all the skilled working men gained the possibility to vote.

This period saw the birth of the first feminists movements like the Suffragettes. These women fought against a misogynist society.

Culture and Society:

The utilitarianism was a philosophical theory: all started with Epicurus, but his ideals were developed in the 18^th century, by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The central theme of utilitarianism was an ethic question: an action is right if it leads to a personal happiness and satisfaction, instead, it’s wrong if it leads to sadness and frustration. According to these new philosophy, cultural or spiritual pleasures were deeper and much more significant than the physical ones.

Puritans were very religious and moralisers: a great part of the english population followed these Victorian values. They wanted a “clean” society, well-founded on the respect of religion and political authorities. They thought that economic and social progress would be built up from hard work. Sense of duty, education, punctuality, diligence, good-behaviour: these were the basic rules for living in a puritan society.

The other ideals were: respectability, charity, chastity, conformity to social standard, philanthropy, the patriarchal family, prudery and the repression of sexuality.

The Puritans thought that women had an important role in the society, but they considered them just as mothers ,housewives, good at educating, growing up children and managing servants, nothing more. That’s why some groups of women started their political movements.

The image of the “fallen woman”, a single female, maybe with a child, without a respectable husband, a respectable house and a respectable family, was very problematic. The fallen women were isolated and punished.

Literature:

During the 18^th century, there was a communion of interests between writers and  their readers.

There was a growing interest in prose, generally developed in what we called a novel, the most popular form of literature.

The middle class became richer and started to read more, especially the novels published in instalments on various cheap magazines and they even started to borrow books from the libraries.

The novelists described society as they saw it, they had a new moral and social responsibility, with a particular attention on social and political changes. The characters of their books were round characters, with a deeper psychological introspection.

The most famous authors of this period were: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Lewis Carrol, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde and Robert L. Stevenson

*Personaggi nominati:

Florence Nightingale was the first nurse in history, she saved a lot of lives during the war.

 She was called “the lady with the lamp” and she was a volunteer. She’s considered as the creator of the nursing profession.