19th Century Britain Vocabulary

19th Century Britain: General Presentation

A. Introductory Notes

• This course provides a general thematic presentation of British culture during a complex and controversial period, spanning from the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) through the 20th century, including Modernism, the interwar period, and Postmodernism.
• The course aims to explain British literary phenomena within the broader context of British culture, considering:
  • Influences from previous periods.
  • Social and historical events of the time.
  • Religious fragmentation.
  • Philosophical doctrines.
  • Aesthetic views and artistic styles.
• Examples from painting, architecture, and photography will be used to enhance understanding of literary events as part of Victorianism.

B. Social and Cultural Context of 19th Century Britain

a. Queen Victoria’s Influence (1837-1901)

• In 1876, she became Empress of India.
• Queen Victoria brought 19th-century ideals to the British monarchy, including:
  • Devoted family life.
  • Earnestness.
  • Public and private respectability.
  • Obedience to the law.
  • Christian morality, emphasizing family responsibility and happiness.

b. Britain, the Leader of the World

• Expansion of the British Empire included Afghanistan, Tibet, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa (after the 1890s).
• From the 1830s to the 1880s, the British were confident in their economic and international political powers.
• The illusion of peace and confidence was disrupted in the 1850s by:
  • The Opium Wars in China and the Afghan Wars in the Middle East (1839-1842).
  • The Indian Mutiny (1857-9).
  • The Crimean War (1853-6), where the British and French supported the Ottoman Turks against Russia.
  • The Boer Wars (1880 and 1899-1902).
• "The sun never sets on the British Empire," reflecting its vast reach.
• The Empire Marketing Board in 1926 promoted trade within the Empire, encouraging British people to buy Empire goods.
• The Indian Mutiny (1857-9) involved the East India Company and controversies such as bullets greased with cow and pig fat, the Cawnpore atrocities, and British atrocities.
• The Crimean War (1853-6) aimed at protecting British access to the Suez Canal and Egypt, and involved English and French forces siding with the Ottoman Empire against Russia. It also highlighted the need for armed forces reform, exemplified by Lord Cardigan and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

c. The Industrial Revolution

• Environmental and technological changes, the success of the middle class.
• Inventions:
  • Telegraph (1837) by F. B. Morse (American) and Sir Charles Wheatstone & Sir William F. Cooke (British).
  • Telephone (1870s).
  • Generalization of steam power (James Watt, 1769) for engines and transport.
  • First railway system (1830, Manchester-Liverpool).
  • Electric lamp (1878-1879) by Joseph Swan (British) and Thomas Edison (American).
  • Sewing machine (1846), vacuum cleaner (1868).
  • Photography (1826 Joseph Nicephore Niepce, Louis Daguerre, 1839 William Talbot).
  • Rotary printing press.
• Laissez-faire economics:
  • Free market.
  • Freedom for capitalistic enterprise.
  • John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848).
• Utilitarian doctrine:
  • Adam Smith: Progress linked to national wealth (The Wealth of Nations, 1776).
  • Jeremy Bentham: Individual contentment through social checks and balances (Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789).
  • John Stuart Mill: Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844).
• Social unrest, including the Chartist movement, with the working class seeking change through charts presented to the government in 1848.
• Reforms, bills, and acts:
  • Reform Act of 1832: Enfranchised all male owners of property worth between 10 to 50 pounds in annual rent.
  • Education Act of 1870: Generalized literacy.
  • Factory Acts (1833-1878): Eliminated child labor and overworking.
  • Public Health Acts (1871-1875): Provided some medical assistance to the poor.
  • Married Women's Acts.
• Religious fragmentation:
  • Catholic Emancipation Act.
  • Oxford Movement: John Keble, John Pusey, John Henry Newman, focused on 39 articles of faith.
  • Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859).
  • 1870 – examinations - colleges.

C. England, the Stage of Cultural Debate

• Serialized novels.
• Scientific and religious debates.
• Mass literacy.
• Modernization of education.
• Wide circulation of newspapers and magazines (e.g., The Edinburgh Review, Westminster Review, The Cornhill Magazine).

D. The Undermining Consequences of Progress

• Urban crowds living in filthy slums, polluted waters, and smog; professional diseases of miners and chimney sweepers; human misery.
• Family seen as an agent of oppression, especially for women.
• Decay of religious belief and obsession with scientific materialism.
• Exploitation of children and women.
• Advantageous laws for the rich at the expense of the poor.
• Unemployment and social pressure on the working class.
• In the novel world, serialized strategies led to a lack of coherent structure, plot, and convincing characters.

E. The Victorian Literary World

• Inherits previous artistic elements and is mirrored by events in the 19th century.
  • I. Focus on town life and social classes in the novel.
  • II. Poetry weaker than the novel.
  • III. False Puritanism.
  • IV. Revival of a deep religious feeling.
  • V. Nostalgia for the pastoral setting seen as a Paradise Lost.
  • VI. Industrial revolution, scientific discoveries, and access to technology.
  • VII. Writers’ ironical attitude to the self-confidence and authority of Victorians.
  • VIII. Neo-classical and Romantic features.

I. Focus on Town Life and Social Classes in the Novel

• Examples: Charles Dickens (Hard Times, Great Expectations), William M. Thackeray (Vanity Fair), Charlotte Bronte (Shirley), Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South).

II. Poetry Weaker Than the Novel

• The Victorian Age is predominantly the age of the novel because the rise of the middle class, the metropolis, and the Industrial Age required extensive space for depiction.
• Thomas Carlyle in "Signs of the Times" called it the "Mechanical Age."
• Anthony Trollope - 1870: “We have become a novel-reading people”.
• Matthew Arnold described his age as “not unprofound, not ungrand, not unmoving— but unpoetical.”

III. False Puritanism

• Examples: Clough's poem The Latest Decalogue, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

IV. Revival of a Deep Religious Feeling

• Examples: the poetry and creed of G. M. Hopkins.

V. Nostalgia for the Pastoral Setting as a Paradise Lost

• Examples: Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Matthew Arnold's In Harmony with Nature, and Hopkins' works on the sacredness of nature.

VI. Industrial Revolution, Scientific Discoveries, and Access to Technology

• Victorian writers were worried and depicted the miserable consequences of a new era or prophetic triumphs of the future.
• Immediate gloomy realities of technology are described by Dickens.
• Science fictional perspectives of a dark technological future are represented by Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and George Herbert Wells (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds).

VII. Ironical Attitude to Victorian Self-Confidence and Authority

• Examples: Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest, Bernard Shaw’s plays.

VIII. Neo-Classical and Romantic Features

• Neo-classical:
  • Stress on reason and duty.
  • Society seen as a perfectible mechanism.
  • The individual is responsible for their part in society.
  • Picaresque structure of the novel (Great Expectations, Jane Eyre).
• Romantic:
  • The past revisited (Medieval and Renaissance themes).
  • Stress on the irrational and on feeling.
  • Presence of outsiders: outcasts, children, handicapped, eccentrics, thieves, criminals, convicts (Dickens).
  • Society seen as corrupted and the source of all evil.
  • Focus upon the individual as a unique being.