The Victorian Era
The results of the late 18th-century and
early 19th-century Industrial Revolution, largely based on
the perfection of the steam engine and improved methods of iron-
and steel-production, led to ever larger industrial cities
in central and northern England. After the defeat of Napoleon
at Waterloo in 1815, Europe knew a century of
virtual peace. The growth of the “professional” middle class, the
improved standard-of-living of the working class, and the
spread of basic education to almost everyone meant that reading
now became an almost universal habit.
|
|
Victoria became queen in 1837, on the death of her
uncle, William IV, when she was only 18 and she only died in 1901.
During her reign, Britain expanded its colonies into the British
Empire, and consolidated its influence over huge areas of
the world. The construction of the railway across England
at the start of her reign brought even remote areas within easy
reach of London.
Railways
The first full scale working railway steam locomotive was
built in 1804 by Richard Trevithick, an English engineer born in
Cornwall. This used high pressure steam to drive the engine. On 21
February 1804 the world's first railway journey took place as
Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the
tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, in South Wales. In 1814 George
Stephenson, inspired by the early locomotives of Trevithick
and others, persuaded the manager of the Killingworth colliery
where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. He
built the Blücher, one of the first successful locomotives.
Stephenson played a pivotal role in the development and widespread
adoption of the steam locomotive. His designs considerably
improved on the work of the earlier pioneers. In 1825 he built the
Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, north
east England, which was the first public steam railway in the
world.
The success of the Stockton and Darlington encouraged the rich
investors of the rapidly industrialising North West of England to
embark upon a project to link the rich cotton manufacturing town
of Manchester with the thriving port of Liverpool. The Liverpool
and Manchester Railway was the first modern railway, in
that both the goods and passenger traffic was
operated by scheduled or timetabled locomotive hauled trains. A
widely reported competition was held in 1829, to find the most
suitable steam engine to haul the trains. A number of locomotives
were entered, the winner was Stephenson's Rocket.
The promoters were mainly interested in goods traffic, but after
the line opened on 15 September 1830, they found to their
amazement that passenger traffic was just as remunerative. The
success of the Liverpool and Manchester railway influenced the
development of railways elsewhere in Britain and abroad. The
Liverpool and Manchester line was still a short one (56 km),
linking two towns within an English county. The world's first
trunk line can be said to be the Grand Junction Railway, opening
in 1837, and linking a mid point on the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway with Birmingham, by way of Crewe, Stafford, and
Wolverhampton.
By the 1850s, many steam-powered railways had reached the fringes
of built-up London. But the new lines were not permitted to
demolish enough property to penetrate the City or the West End, so
passengers had to disembark at Paddington, Euston, Kings Cross,
Fenchurch Street, Charing Cross, Waterloo or Victoria and then
make their own way via hackney carriage or on foot into the
centre, thereby massively increasing congestion in the city. A
railway was planned to run under the ground to connect several of
these separate railway terminals, and this became the world's
first "Metro." The Metropolitan Railway and the Metropolitan
District Railway were the first two underground railways to
be built in London. These two companies formed the basis of what
would later become known as the London Underground network
by creating the Circle Line. The underground railway eventually
opened to the public on 10 January 1863. In its first few months
of operation, an average of 26,500 passengers used the line every
day.
Queen Victoria's husband (the Prince Consort) was a German
prince, Albert, with progressive ideas. He encouraged the
organizers of a "Great Exhibition of the Industries of All
Nations" that was held in 1851 in a specially
constructed Crystal Palace, a great hall of iron and
glass, In London. Because of the cheap travel offered by railways,
thousands came to visit it from all over Britain, 100,000 or more
in one day. It was the first world trade fair, and especially it
gave visitors a glimpse of the cultures of the various countries
forming the British Empire. The railway system
around London gave rise to the suburbs from which people
could "commute" to work each day by train. London spread
immensely. One major problem remained -- hygiene. Most
drinking water came from shallow wells that were easily
polluted by the sewage from primitive toilets; as a
result, thousands of people regularly died of typhoid and
cholera, including Prince Albert in 1861. Finally the
connection was recognized; piped water and modern systems of
sewage disposal were established.
Ruskin and Morris
As standards of living improved, people began to be aware of the ugliness
that indutrialization had provoked. They felt that they had been dehumanized.
Even the furniture and textiles produced in factories seemed
lacking in style. The Gothic revival from earlier in the
century paved the way for a new vision of an architecture and an
attitude to work that would be both humane and harmonious. The
past, from being a ‘dark ages’ became a source of inspiration and
even nostalgia. Venice, particularly the remains of medieval,
Gothic Venice, was one of the fundamental sources of inspiration
for John Ruskin (1819-1900), who visited it eleven times. Ruskin
was an art critic and social thinker, also remembered as a poet
and artist. And he was the main inspiration for the founders of
British Socialism and the Labor Party, as well as of most aspects
of the Victorian Gothic Revival in architecture and the almost
worldwide Arts and Crafts Movement that derived from it.
He praised the Gothic style for what he saw as its reverence for nature
and natural forms; the free, unfettered expression of artisans
constructing and decorating buildings; and for the organic
relationship he posited between worker and guild, worker and
community, worker and natural environment, and between worker and
God. Ruskin believed the division of labour to be the main cause
of the unhappiness of the poor. Ruskin argued that the rich had
never been so generous in the past, but the poor's hatred of the
rich was at its greatest point. This was because the poor were now
unsatisfied by monotonous work that used them as a tool, instead
of a person. His main writings are The Stones of Venice
and Unto This Last.
Where Ruskin wrote, William Morris (1834 – 1896) acted. He was a textile
designer, artist, writer, socialist associated with the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts
Movement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and
translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. He
was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain,
founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with the
movement over goals and methods by the end of that decade. He
devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press,
which he founded in 1891, dedicated to transforming the printed
book into a thing of beauty similar to the medieval manuscript.
Both of these extraordinary men, and those around them in the
Pre-Raphaelites, the Guild of St George, the Christian Socialists,
found the source of their vision in a quality of life, of humanity
and beauty, that they recognized in the middle ages and felt was
lacking in their own time. Ruskin wrote in Unto This Last (1860),
“There is no wealth but life, life, including all its powers of
love, of joy, of admiration. That country is richest which
nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings;
that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own
life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both
personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of
others.” Ruskin’s youthful experience of the beauty of the arts of
the midle ages was enough to open his eyes to the ugliness and ecological
dangers of industrialization. One of his most famous essays
is entitled On the Nature of Gothic—The Function of the
Workman in Art. He and Morris found in the medieval, the
Gothic, a direct, Eutopian inspiration for their social, artistic
and human vision in the so different, industrialized 19th century.
Politics
Electoral reform continued, with secret voting
being introduced in 1872, and by 1884 most men over 21 were
entitled to vote. The Whigs had by now changed their name
into the Liberal Party. while the Tories were officially
known as the Conservative Party; both parties developed
into nationwide social organizations with local branches
in every town organizing events among their supporters. The number
of MPs increased to over 650 and slowly the House of Lords lost
its power. The working class was still weak, but the
growth of Co-operative stores (where the shoppers were the
share-holders / owners, receiving dividends from profits) prepared
the way for other advances. The workers in each particular skilled
labour joined the national trade union representing thier
particular job; in 1868 the Trades Union Congress was
inaugurated, and soon began to work for the election of
representatives of the working class as MPs. In the 1870s, wages
were lowered in many factories and this provoked the unions to
turn to strikes as the ultimate means of action. The
British working class did not on the whole try to impose change by
force or revolution; instead, it always looked for democratic ways
of gaining influence in Parliament, to effect social change by
legal methods in a relative consensus.
Across the world, imperialistic Britain was involved in a variety
of conflicts. In China, the two (very shameful) Opium Wars
(1840-1843 and 1856-1860) were intended to break Chinese
resistance to the smuggling of opium from India, itself a measure
intended to punish China for its unequal trading policies and
force it to open its markets. China was totally defeated in both
wars, and was forced to grant the western powers unequal treaties.
By contrast, a war in Afghanistan designed to prevent
Russia from moving its sphere of influence south toward India was
a disaster for Britain. In 1854, fearing that Russia would take
control of Turkey, Britain launched the Crimean War which
was widely covered by the British newspapers. The
corruption of the officers, the sufferings of the soldiers and the
courage of Florence Nightingale and her fellow nurses in
the military hospitals were all covered in great detail for the
first time. In India, the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a
revolt by Indian soldiers in the British army was used by local
rulers as an attempt to force the British out of India; the
British response was extremely violent and the cruelty of the
British prepared the way for the Indian independence movement of
the 20th century.
Meanwhile, with the growth of the population people from Britain
were encouraged to emigrate and start a new life in the Dominions,
in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where the settlers were
soon given self-government, the Queen remaining the titular head
of state. South Africa enjoyed similar status although it had a
far larger native population as well as a very substantial number
of Dutch settlers (Boers).
Apart from England, which was flourishing, the people in the other
parts of the United Kingdom were far less happy. In Wales,
industry grew around the coal-mining area to the south
around Cardiff and Swansea and the workers there expressed their
identity by joining the Baptist and other Non-conformist chapels
rather than the state church, and developing a radical political
stance. The rural population remained backward and retained the
use of the Welsh language. In Scotland the people living
in the Highlands, where there had been much violence in
the 18th century, were forced off their land by new landowners
wishing to raise either sheep or deer (for hunting by the elite).
The worst was in Ireland, where the Protestants
(descendants either of English settlers from centuries back or of
Scottish settlers introduced in the 18th century) felt a need for
English protection against the native Irish Catholics. As part of
the United Kingdom, the Irish elected MPs to Westminster and since
1829 the freedom-seeking nationalists elected Catholics when
possible. But many were extremely poor, having been deprived of
their land in the 18th century when Catholics were not recognized
as landowners. The staple diet of the poor was potatoes but in
1845, 1846, and 1847 a disease destroyed the potato harvest,
leaving millions with nothing to eat. There was enough corn in
Ireland, but the poor had no money and the ruling elite did
nothing to help relieve the famine. The authorities in England
also remained inactive. In those 3 years 1.5 million people died
of starvation and at least a million emigrated either to the
mainland or to the United States (many dying on the long journey).
In the following decades Ireland continued to lose population,
some 5 million settling in the United States in that period.
Before the Famine there had been 8 million people, even today
there are less 5 million.
Along with industrialization went the development of modern
science. The single most significant name must be that of Charles
Darwin, whose 1859 work On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection introduced the notions of
evolution of life's diversity and of natural selection by
the "survival of the fittest." His other most noted title, The
Descent of Man (1871) dealt with the development of human
culture among other topics. The work of geologists had already
established the immense age of the earth and thus of the universe;
Darwin's theory of evolution was quickly accepted by the general
public. Accepting natural selection as the main mechanism of
evolution took longer and the debate over the role of chance in
evolution remains open. (See the very complete account in Wikipedia)
Between 1875 and 1914 the condition of the poor in most of Britain
greatly improved as prices fell by 40 per cent and real wages
doubled. Life at home was made more comfortable. Most homes now
had gas both for heating and lighting. As a result of falling
prices and increased wages, poor families could eat better food,
including meat, fresh milk (brought from the countryside by train)
and vegetables. This greatly improved the old diet of white bread
and beer.
In 1870 and 1891 two Education Acts were passed. As a result of
these, all children had to go to school up to the age of thirteen,
where they were taught reading, writing and arithmetic. The later
19th century saw the foundation of new ("red-brick") universities
with a focus on science and technology. With growing prosperity,
spectator sports (soccer, rugby and cricket) became popular among
the working class. The literature of the 19th century grows out of
the poetry and novels of the Romantic period but is marked by a
growing seriousness of moral purpose. The culture of the
Victorian period is too cast a topic to be covered here. By the
end of the century, England was already being challenged by the
new industrial might of Prussia-led Germany.
Victorian
novels
(Those writers bolded remain
popular today)
William Makepeace Thakery (1811-1863): 1847 Vanity Fair;
1852 Henry Esmond; 1848 Pendennis
Charles Dickens (1812-1870): 1835 Sketches by
Boz; 1836 Pickwick Papers; 1837 Oliver Twist; 1838 Nicholas
Nickleby; 1840 Barnaby Rudge, The Old Curiosity Shop; 1843 Martin
Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol; 1844 The Chimes; 1845 The Cricket
on the Hearth; 1846 The Battle of Life; 1847 The Haunted Man,
Dombey and Son; 1849 David Copperfield; 1852 Bleak House; 1854
Hard Times; 1857 Little Dorrit; 1859 A Tale of Two Cities; 1861
The Uncommercial Traveller; 1860 Great Expectations; 1864 Our
Mutual Friend; 1870 The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished).
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)-wrote 60 novels- 1855 The
Warden; 1857 Barchester Towers; 1861 Framley Parsonage; 1864
The Small House at Allington; 1867 The Last Chronicles of Barset;
1869 Phineas Phinn....
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) 1847 Jane Eyre; 1849
Shirley; 1853 Villette
Emily Bronte (1818-1848) Wuthering Heights.
Mary Ann Evans - George Eliot (1819-1881): 1857 Mr
Gilfill’s Love Story; 1859 Adam Bede; 1860 The Mill on the
Floss; 1861 Silas Marner; 1863 Romola; 1866 Felix Holt; 1871
Middlemarch; 1876 Daniel Deronda.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881); 1844 Coningsby; 1845 Sybil;
1847 Tancred.
Mrs. Gaskell (1810-1865): 1853 Cranford; 1855 North and
South; 1863 Sylvia’s Lovers; 1865 Cousin Phillis.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland; Alice Through the Looking Glass; The Hunting of the
Snark.
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) The Dead Secret, 1860 The Woman
in White; 1868 The Moonstone;
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) 1871 Desperate Remedies;
1872 Under the Greenwood Tree; 1873 A pair of Blue Eyes; 1874 Far
from the Madding Crowd; 1878 The Return of the Native; 1880 The
Trumpet Major; 1886 The Mayor of Casterbridge; 1891 Tess of the
D’Urbervilles; 1896 Jude the Obscure; 1897 The Well-Beloved;
George Meredith (1829-1909) 1859 The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel; 1861 Evan Harrington; The Adventures of Harry Richmond;
1865 Rhoda Fleing; 1867 Vittoria; 1879 The Egoist; 1885 Diana of
the Crossways; 1891 One of our Conquerors; 1895 Lord Ormont and
his Aminta; The Amazing Marriage.
Henry James (1843-1916) born in New York. 1875 A
Passionate Pilgrim; 1876 Roderick Hudson; 1881 Washington Square,
The Portrait of a Lady; 1877 The American; 1878 The Europeans;
1879 Daisy Miller; 1886 The Bostonians; The Princess Casamassima:
1897 The Spoils of Poynton; 1898 What Maisie Knew; 1898 The Turn
of the Screw; 1902 The Wings of the Dove; 1903 The Ambassadors;
1904 The Golden Bowl;.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)
After becoming a Catholic at Oxford in
1866, under the influence of John Henry Newman, Hopkins
decided to become a Jesuit in 1868. He had already written some
poems but felt that writing poetry was not suitable for someone
intending to become a priest. In 1876 he returned to
poetry-writing and many of his best poems were written in 1877
while he was preparing to be ordained a priest. He found life in
the poor areas of Liverpool in 1880 a great challenge. In 1884 he
was sent to Dublin as professor of Greek and Latin at
University College. He fell into deep depression, and wrote some
very dark sonnets. This passed and he was able to write some more
positive poems before dying suddenly of typhoid. In his lifetime
he published almost nothing. His friend, the poet Robert
Bridges, preserved his papers and it was only in 1918
that he finally published a collection of Hopkins’ poems. He had
not been sure that the English public could accept such “oddity”!
God's Grandeur
THE world is charged with the grandeur of
God.
It will flame out, like
shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness,
like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his
rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have
trod;
And all is seared with trade;
bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and
shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being
shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest
freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black
West went
Oh, morning, at the brown
brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast
and with ah! bright wings.
The Windhover: To
Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion,
king-
dom of daylight's dauphin,
dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level
underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of
a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on
swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps
smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My
heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of; the
mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air,
pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that
breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my
chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód
makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and
gash gold-vermillion.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Hardy was born in Dorchester, in the county of
Dorset, and that region, which he called “Wessex” dominates his
fiction. He first published a series of novels that were
increasingly attacked by critics for their pessimism.
1871 Desperate Remedies; 1872
Under the Greenwood Tree; 1873 A pair of Blue Eyes; 1874 Far
from the Madding Crowd; 1878 The Return of the Native; 1880 The
Trumpet Major; 1886 The Mayor of Casterbridge; 1891 Tess of the
D’Urbervilles; 1896 Jude the Obscure; 1897 The Well-Beloved;
After Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude
the Obscure (1895) he stopped writing fiction and for the
rest of his life published only poetry. The death of his wife in
1912 provoked some very powerful poetry, as he struggled to come
to terms with the end of their very difficult relationship. In his
lifetime, his poetry was not widely admired but the plain style
and rhythmic subtlety he cultivated have been very important
models for the British poets of the generations following T. S
Eliot.
The Darkling Thrush
1 I leant upon a coppice gate
2 When Frost was
spectre-gray,
3 And Winter's dregs made desolate
4 The weakening
eye of day.
5 The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
6 Like strings of
broken lyres,
7 And all mankind that haunted nigh
8 Had sought their
household fires.
9 The land's sharp features seemed to be
10 The Century's corpse
outleant,
11 His crypt the cloudy canopy,
12 The wind his death-lament.
13 The ancient pulse of germ and birth
14 Was shrunken hard and dry,
15 And every spirit upon earth
16 Seemed fervourless as I.
17 At once a voice arose among
18 The bleak twigs overhead
19 In a full-hearted evensong
20 Of joy illimited;
21 An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
22 In blast-beruffled plume,
23 Had chosen thus to fling his soul
24 Upon the growing gloom.
25 So little cause for carolings
26 Of such ecstatic sound
27 Was written on terrestrial things
28 Afar or nigh around,
29 That I could think there trembled through
30 His happy good-night air
31 Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
32 And I was unaware.