Victorian Era Quiz

Queen Victoria and the Victorian Age

England before Victoria: the

Regency and Romantic era

• Queen Victoria:

• Lonely childhood

• Early life and accession (1837)

• Mature reign

• Personal character

• Prince Albert

• Family and domesticity

Queen Victoria’s Childhood

Born in 1819; became Queen at age

18.

▪ Initially unlikely to be heir, her

position changed when William IV's

children died.

▪ Raised primarily by her governess,

Louise Lehzen

▪ Was never allowed to play with other

children; mother, the Duchess of

Kent, and her lover, Lord

Kensington, hoped to keep Victoria

under their influence.

Victoria’s Early Reign

Initially struggled to

develop self-confidence

and political acumen

▫ Influence of Lord

Melbourne, a father

figure

▫ Criticism and struggles

over political

appointments to her

staff

Industrial age 

Both V and A were

enthusiastic “early

adopters” of new

industrial tech:

trains, duct heating,

chloroform

anaesthesia.

▪ 1851: Albert created

the Great Exhibition,

showcasing global

trade and the

marvels of industrial

production

Key Themes

Duty and personal self-sacrifice

▪ Middle-class values:

▫ Family affection and private life

▫ Hard work

▫ Individual conscience

▪ Technological progress

▪ Expanding political power

▪ Image-consciousness and concern for reputation

▪ Grief and crisis of confidence

Industrial revolution

Rise of industry in England

o Enclosure and agricultural transformation

Urbanization and class restructuring

o Mass manufacture and material goods

o Values and identity

Periodization of Western History

Why did the Industrial Revolution begin?

Max Weber's thesis:

People were Catholic and lazy.

Now they are Protestant and

industrious!

New energy source: large deposits of coal

▪ An immediate use for the new energy, that also streamlined the energy

production itself (steam engines to pump water out of England’s sub-

water-table coal mines)

▪ Easy water-based transportation across the country

▪ Plus a profitable industrial application for the energy (running cloth

mills)

metalworking and machinery

Trade routes to Near East

 Iron-casting processes

 Invention of blast furnace

 Need more coal!

 Steam engine

 Coal-mining industry

 Stronger metals

 Railways

agricultural science

Overall population boom; greater marginal poverty.

Rural depopulation, mass emigration to cities

The enclosure movement

Begins in Renaissance; escalates dramatically

through the late 1800s with the Acts of

Inclosure (1773), allowing local landowners to

enclose and annex local common lands with

the right legal maneuvering

▪ Forcibly depopulates many rural villages

(homes often burnt to prevent return of old

tenants)

▪ Creates mobile population of recently

dispossessed tenant farmers, now forced to

move to urban areas to take up industrial work

Thomas Malthus

theory that population growth is potentially exponential, according to the Malthusian growth model, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population decline.

Elizabeth

Cleghorn Gaskell

(1810- 1865)

Came from Unitarian family with a strong

value for education, belief in individual

vocation and conscience

• Orphaned at 2, raised by relatives in the

countryside

• Moved to industrial Manchester (=

“Milton”) after marrying a Unitarian

minister: assisted in ministry to

parishioners, including both wealthy mill-

owners and the working poor

• Friends with the Nightingale family;

meeting with Florence Nightingale

influenced her reflections on character,

individual relationships and vocation in

N&S

Major Characters: North & South Ch. 1-4

The Shaws:

Mrs. Shaw: sister to Mrs. Hale

General Shaw: wealthy, deceased:

by implication, earned his fortune

defending the British East India

Company in the early 19th century

Edith Shaw, Margaret’s cousin

The Hales:

• Mrs. Hale: knight’s daughter (Sir

John Beresford), raised in Hampshire

• Mr. Hale: Anglican minister with “a

very small living”

• Margaret Hale

• Dixon, Mrs. Hale’s lady’s-maid

The Lennoxes:

• Cpt. Lennox: junior officer with a Scottish regiment,

deployed to English base in Corfu, Greece

• Mr. Henry Lennox: struggling junior barrister

(lawyer), trying to rise in the profession

Mr. Bell

• Unmarried, university professor

originally from Milton

• Was Mr. Hale’s old tutor at

Oxford

North & South: Settings and Worldviews

London/Harley Street:

Fashionable, up-

and-coming,

wealthy,

materialistic

Helstone Parsonage/Hampshire:

Warm, connected, secure, but

fading/crumbling. Linked to nature, the

outdoors and the past

Milton, Darkshire:

Dark, dirty, brash, abrasive, practical, work-focused,

tight (financially, spatially, emotionally), uptight

Major Characters: North & South Ch. 6-14

The Higginses:
Nicholas Higgins: worker in weaving
factories; moved to Milton from the
country
Bessy Higgins: Mr. Higgins’s 19-year-
old daughter; devoutly Christian. Was a
factory worker through her mid-teens,
but can no longer work due to ill health.
Dying of byssinosis (brown lung)
acquired in cotton-spinning
Mary Higgins: Bessy’s younger sister.
Works as a fustian-cutter in a factory.

The Thorntons:

• John Thornton: Wealthy cotton-mill

owner in Milton. From middle-class

background, but father speculated,

ran into debt and committed suicide.

Has worked his way up from a draper’s

shop assistant to restore the family

fortune.

• Mrs. Thornton: Mr. Thornton’s

steely mother

• Fanny Thornton: John Thornton’s

younger sister

• Jane: Housemaid

Industrialization and Class

Conflict: The “Hungry ‘40s”

Background: Premodern economic

thought, Enlightenment theorizations of

“the market”

• Debates over population, changing class

relationships

• Chartism and “The People’s Charter”

(1838-1860)

• Additional industrial labour legislation