THE VICTORIAN AGE

1837-1901

of the 19th century. Queen

Victoria came to the throne in
1837, at a time when the
monarchy as an institution
was not particularly popular.
But as the success of the
nation reached its peak and
then began to decline, the
monarch assumed a greater
and greater symbolic
importance.
Victoria, widowed in 1861,
became Empress of India, and
by her death in 1901 had
come to represent the nation
in a way which only Queen

A history of the Victorian age records a period of economic

expansion and rapid change. If change can be measured by change
to the capital city of a country, then the history of the growth of
London during this century is revealing. When Queen Victoria came
to the throne, the population of London was about 2 million
inhabitants; at her death in 1901, the population had increased to
6.5 million. The growth of London and of other major cities in Great
Britain marked a final stage in the change from a way of life based
on the land to a modern urban economy based on manufacturing,
international trade and financial institutions.

Great Britain was one of the first countries in the world to

industrialise, to establish markets and to reinvest the profits in
further manufacturing developments. Britain became the centre of
the new philosophy of Free Trade, of new technology and of
continuing industrial inventions. The country became the workshop
of the world, and from the 1870s onwards had become the worlds
banker. In a period of little more than 60 years of Queen Victorias
reign, the major invention of steam power was exploited for fast
railways and ships, for printing presses, for industrial looms and for
agricultural machinery. An efficient postal service was developed,
the telephone invented and communications improved. The country
of the United Kingdom, indeed the world as a whole, became a
smaller place. The age was characterised by optimism and a sense
that everything would continue to expand and improve.

Beneath the public optimism and positivism, however, the 19th

century was also a century of paradoxes and uncertainties. The
contrast between social unrest, with related moves towards change,
and the affirmation of values and standards which are still referred to
as Victorian values, is an essential part of the paradox of the age.
The Victorian Compromise implies a kind of double standard
between national success and the exploitation of lower-class workers
at home and of colonies overseas; a compromise between
philanthropy and tolerance (the abolition of slavery in 1833) and
repression (the conditions of the poor).

The Victorian Age is a paradoxical age that was a second English

Renaissance. Like Elizabethan England, Victorian England saw great
expansion of wealth, power, and culture.
In science and technology, the Victorians invented the modern
idea of invention the notion that one can create solutions to
problems, that man can create new means of bettering himself and
his environment.
In religion, the Victorians experienced a great age of doubt, the
first that called into question institutional Christianity on such a large
scale. In literature and the other arts, the Victorians attempted to
combine Romantic emphases upon self, emotion, and imagination
with Neoclassical ones upon the public role of art and a corollary
responsibility of the artist.

In ideology, politics, and

society, the Victorians
created astonishing
innovation and change:
democracy, feminism,
unionization of workers,
socialism, Marxism, and
other modern movements
took form. In fact, this age
of Darwin, Marx, and
Freud appears to be not
only the first that
experienced modern
problems but also the first
that attempted modern

in part because Victoria's reign lasted so long that it comprised

several periods. Above all, it was an age of paradox and power. The
rise of Utilitarianism, socialism, Darwinism, and scientific
Agnosticism, were all in their own ways characteristically Victorian; as
were the empirical prose of Darwin and Huxley; as were the fantasy
of Lewis Carrol and the realism of George Eliot and George Bernard
Shaw.
More than anything else what makes Victorians Victorian is their
sense of social responsibility, a basic attitude that obviously
differentiates them from their immediate predecessors, the
Romantics.

hugely popular and it was the

novelists rather than the poets who
became literary representatives of the
age. The political novels of Benjamin
Disraeli who was later to become
Prime Minister of Great Britain give
us one of the main labels of the
Victorian Age. The Two Nations i.e.
the Rich and the Poor was the
subtitle of his novel Sybil (1845). It
underlines the fact that social concern
and reform were sympathetic subjects
for a novel many years before Disraeli
himself actually implemented some of
the reforms described. The First
Reform Bill of 1832 gave more people
the right to vote, but it still excluded
the working classes by its insistence
on property ownership. It was not until
1918 that universal suffrage was
reached in Britain. Even then, it was
not until 1928 that the vote was given

There is thus a movement throughout the Victorian

period towards democracy, as there was in the rest of
Europe. Mainland Europe suffered revolutions and political
upheavals (1848 came to be called The Year of
Revolutions France, Italy (Sicily), Germany, Hungary,
Switzerland, Poland, etc.)
But the British
government kept a
strong hold on power.
Working-class
movements,
republican groups,
trade unions and
similar dissident
expressions were
contained as far as
possible. In literature,
however, such

The connotations of the adjective Victorian tell us about the

image the Victorians had about themselves: respectability, churchgoing, prudishness, the close-knit, patriarchal family circle, the
businessman of unimpeachable probity. This is how the Victorian
middle classes imposed themselves on the world and on posterity,
and they would be pleased and proud that this image or this false
front, some might say has endured. Victorianism was a creation of
the middle-class, an expression of their new self-confidence.
Fortunately, they found the perfect figure-heads in the worthy,
earnest and energetic couple, Victoria and Albert, who were the
nominal leaders of society.

without losing his family audience, and to

most of them the family audience
gathered together to read the novel
aloud like a jollier sort of church service
was the basis of their readership and
hence their livelihood.
It is because these limits were so
strictly set that we find many subjects
such as sexual immorality, sexual
deviance,
prostitution,
etc,
either
avoided entirely, or treated with an
unavoidable falseness of tone.
On the other hand, the reading-aloud
habit, combined with the monthly or
weekly publication method that many
writers used, made for an immediacy, a
closeness between novelist and reader,
that animates and invigorates all aspects
of Victorian fiction, especially its social
conscience and its humour. The joyful
vigour of this relationship makes the
inhibitions that it imposed on writers like

At the beginning of the 19th

century in Britain, religious
faith and the sciences were
generally seen to be in
beautiful accordance. The
study of God's Word, in the
Bible, and His Works, in
nature, were assumed to be
twin facets of the same
truth. One version of this
belief had been manifested
in William Paley's Natural
Theology (1802), which
repeated the argument that
natural objects show
evidences of design, thus
showing the existence of a
designing God.

theology of nature, continued to be the

mainstream position for most men of
science right up to the 1860s, at least.
But it did come under threat. Some
forms of the sciences, especially those
emanating from France, seemed to
suggest a restricted (or even nonexistent) role for God in the universe,
and thus to undermine the Anglican
politico-religious establishment. The
threats were not only from France,
however. British men of science,
particularly
geologists,
were
also
making discoveries which threatened
the literal meaning of Genesis. The
effect of these discoveries on faith has,
however, been often exaggerated.
Clerical geologists were quite able to
find ways to reinterpret Genesis in the
light of their discoveries, with no harm
done to their faith. The reaction to
Darwin's Origin of the Species (1859)
should also be seen in this light: while
some people played up its radicalism,
others were quite able to fit it into their

not opposed to faith per se, they objected to the

involvement of clergymen in the sciences, and argued
that science should be carried out by specialist experts
clergymen should focus on being experts in their own,
separate, fields of theology and pastoral care. The
rhetoric of this group of professionalisers, and their
growing prominence within the sciences meant that by
the 1870s and 1880s, 'the sciences' and 'religion' were
increasingly seen as utterly separate and distinct.

established and controlled by

working men in 1836 to achieve
parliamentary democracy as a
step
towards
social
and
economic reform. Chartism was
Utopian and naive in the belief
that constitutional reform would
automatically provide socioeconomic betterment. Perhaps
Chartism was a matter of
feeling. It was an emotional
reaction against a changing
economy and society, which
was unjust and bewildering to
the working man a cry for help.
It expressed the resentment of
conditions
and
movements
which had promised so much,
but which had failed the

 suspicious conservatives saw it as a disguise for pillage

sophisticated conservatives saw it as a socialist restructuring of
society
classical conservatives saw it as an attack on property, and thus on
civilized society,
so it had to be resisted in the best interests of
all
working men hoped for prosperity, political rights and libertarian
reforms - a range of aspirations from old-style radical to new-style
socialism
above all, Chartism was seen as a protest against hunger and
physical suffering. Bad
government was thought to be its cause
and universal suffrage, as embodied
in the Charter, to be its
remedy

hunger,
despair,
desperation and failure. It
ultimately failed because
it
tore
itself
apart.
Chartism had no money
because it was born of
poverty.
Self-destruction
was almost in-built. The
"Charter" was the only
bond of unity to several
distinct movements. This
disparity was a factor
against
its
immediate
success,
although
the
movement was significant
in
terms
of
the
development of working
class movements (it can
be considered the first

The growth of the British

Empire was due in large
part to the ongoing
competition for resources
and markets which existed
over a period of centuries
between England and her
Continental rivals, Spain,
France, and Holland. During
the reign of Elizabeth I,
England set up trading
companies in Turkey,
Russia, and the East Indies,
explored the coast of North
America, and established
colonies there.

century, the primary purpose of Imperialist policies was to facilitate the

acquisition of as much foreign territory as possible, both as a source of raw
materials and in order to provide real or potential markets for British
manufactures. The mercantilists advocated in theory, and sought in practice,
trade monopolies which would insure that Britain's exports would exceed its
imports. A profitable balance of trade, it was believed, would provide the
wealth necessary to maintain and expand the empire. After ultimately
successful wars with the Dutch, the French, and the Spanish in the 17th
century, Britain managed to acquire most of the eastern coast of North
America, the St. Lawrence basin in Canada, territories in the Caribbean,
stations in Africa for the acquisition of slaves, and important interests in
India. The loss in the late 18th century of the American colonies was not
offset by the discovery of Australia, which served, after 1788, as a penal
colony (convicts like Magwitch, in Dickens's Great Expectations, were
transported there).

the so-called "swing to the East"

(the acquisition of trading and
strategic bases along the trade
routes between India and the Far
East). In 1773 the British
government was obliged to take
over for the financially troubled
East India Company, which had
been in India since 1600, and by
the end of the century Britain's
control over India extended into
neighbouring Afghanistan and
Burma. With the end, in 1815, of
the Napoleonic Wars, the last of
the great imperial wars which
had dominated the 18th century,
Britain found itself in an
extraordinarily powerful position,

It acquired Dutch South Africa, for example, but found its

interests threatened in India by the southern and eastern
expansion of the Russians. (The protection of India from the
Russians, both by land and by sea, would be a major concern of
Victorian foreign policy). At this time, however, the empires of
Britain's traditional rivals had been lost or severely diminished in
size, and its imperial position was unchallenged. In addition, it
had become the leading industrial nation of Europe, and more
and more of the world came under the domination of British
commercial, financial, and naval power.

This state of affairs, however, was complex and far from stable. The old
mercantile Empire was weakened during the late 18th and early 19th
centuries by a number of factors: by the abolition in 1807 of slavery in
Britain itself; by the freeing in 1833 of slaves held elsewhere in the
Empire; by the adoption of Free Trade, which minimized the influence of
the old monopolistic trading corporations; and by various colonial
movements for greater political and commercial independence. The
Victorians, then, inherited both the remnants of the old mercantile
empire and the more recently acquired commercial network in the
East, neither of which they were sure they wanted, since Adam Smith
maintained that "under the present system of management Great
Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes
over her colonies."

(promoted by strategic considerations and aided or

justified by philanthropic motivations), reaching its peak
when Victoria, at Disraeli's instigation, had herself
crowned Empress of India in 1876. Advocates of
Disraeli's imperialist foreign policies justified them by
invoking a paternalistic and racist theory (founded in
part upon popular but erroneous generalizations derived
from Darwin's theory of evolution) which saw Imperialism
as a manifestation of what Kipling would refer to as "the
white man's burden." The implication, of course, was
that the Empire existed not for the benefit economic
or strategic or otherwise of Britain itself, but in order
that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government,
could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized
(and Christianized). The truth of this doctrine was
accepted naively by some, and hypocritically by others,
but it served in any case to legitimize Britain's
acquisition of portions of central Africa and her

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE

1775
Watt's first efficient steam engine
1779
First steam powered mills.
1787
Cartwright builds a power loom.
1792
William Murdock lights his home with coal gas.
1796
Edward Jenner develops smallpox vaccination process using
cowpox vaccine.
1799
Humphry Davy discovers nitrous oxide (laughing gas), first
effective anesthetic.
1807
Robert Fulton's "Clermont" first successful steamboat.
1815
Luddite riots: laborers attack factories and break up the machines
they fear will replace them.
1830
ManchesterLiverpool railway begins first regular commercial rail
service.
1831
Von Liebig discovers chloroform; Faraday discovers electromagnetic current, making possible generators and electric
engines.
1834
Fox Talbot produces photographs.
1835
Colt revolver

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE

1837
1837
1843
1846
1846
1846
1846
1849
1850
1859
1867
1867
1873
1876

Morse develops the telegraph and Morse Code.

Great Western first ocean-going steamship.
Typewriter invented.
Pneumatic tire patented
First telegraph cable laid under the Channel.
Ether used in a major operation.
Elias Howe invents sewing machine.
Monier develops reinforced concrete.
Petrol (gasoline) refining first used.
Etienne Lenoir demonstrates the first successful gasoline
engine.
Lister demonstrates the use of carbolic antiseptic.
Alfred Nobel produces dynamite, the first high explosive
which can be safely handled.
James Clerk Maxwell states the laws of electro-magnetic
radiation.
Bell invents the telephone.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE

1877
1882
1883
1883
1884
1885
1888
1889
1892
1895
1895
1896
1897
1899
1900
1900
1903
1905
1908

Edison invents the phonograph

Koch isolates tuberculosis bacillus.
First skyscraper (ten stories) in Chicago.
The Brooklyn Bridge opens. This large suspension bridge, built by the
Roeblings (father and son), is a triumph of engineering.
Maxim invents the machine gun, making possible mass slaughter and
beginning the mechanization of warfare.
Benz develops first automobile to run on internal- combustion engine.
Hertz produces radio waves.
Eiffel Tower.
Rudolf Diesel invents his namesake.
Lumire brothers develop Cinematograph.
Roentgen discovers X-rays.
Becquerel discovers radioactivity in uranium.
Joseph Thomson discovers particles smaller than atoms.
Aspirin invented.
First Zeppelin built.
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
Wright brothers make first powered flight.
Einstein, Special Theory of Relativity
Henry Ford mass-produces the Model T.