L'era vittoriana in Gran Bretagna, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica L'era vittoriana in Gran Bretagna e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Victorian era (historical period, United Kingdom) Victorian era, in British history, the period between approximately 1820 and 1914, corresponds roughly but not exactly to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901) and is characterized by a class-based society, a growing number of people able to vote, a growing state and economy, and Britain’s status as the most powerful empire in the world. During the Victorian period, Britain was a powerful nation with a rich culture. It had a stable government, a growing state, and an expanding power. It also controlled a large empire, and it was wealthy, in part because of its degree of industrialization and its imperial holdings and in spite of the fact that three-fourths or more of its population was working-class. Late in the period, Britain began to decline as a global political and economic power relative to other major powers, particularly the United States, but this decline was not acutely noticeable until after World War II. The Victorian stereotype and double standard Today “Victorian” connotes a prudish refusal to admit the existence of sex, hypocritically combined with constant discussions of sex, thinly veiled as a series of warnings. There is some truth to both sides of this stereotype. Some few educated Victorians did write a lot about sex, including pornography, medical treatises, and psychological studies. Most others never talked about sex; respectable middle-class women in particular were proud of how little they knew about their own bodies and childbirth. ….. Victorians lived These standards did not mesh with the reality of a society that featured prostitution, venereal disease… Gender and class in Victorian society Victorian society was organized hierarchically. While race, religion, region, and occupation were all meaningful aspects of identity and status, the main organizing principles of Victorian society were gender and class... Victorian gender ideology was premised on the “doctrine of separate spheres.” This stated that men and women were different and meant for different things. Men were physically strong, while women were weak. For men sex was central, and for women reproduction was central. Men were independent, while women were dependent. Men belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the private sphere. Men were meant to participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to run households and raise families. Women were also thought to be naturally more religious and morally finer than men (who were distracted by sexual passions by which women supposedly were untroubled). While most working-class families could not live out the doctrine of separate spheres, because they could not survive on a single male wage, the ideology was influential across all classes. Class was both economic and cultural and income, occupation, education, family structure, sexual behaviour, politics, and leisure activities. Many middle-class observers thought that working-class people imitated middle-class people as much as they could, but they were mistaken; working-class cultures (which varied by locality and other factors) were strong, specific, and premised on their own values….. During the 19th century, members of the middle class were the moral leaders of society (they also achieved some political power). The very small and very wealthy upper class got its income from property, rent, and interest. The upper class had titles, wealth, land, or all three; owned most of the land in Britain; and controlled local, national, and imperial politics. Religion and science in the Victorian era Most Victorian Britons were Christian. The Anglican churches of England, Wales, and Ireland were the state churches (of which the monarch was the nominal head) and dominated the religious landscape (even though the majority of Welsh and Irish people were members of other churches). The Church of Scotland was Presbyterian. There was some religious diversity, as Britain also was home to other non-Anglican Protestants (notably Methodists), Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others (at the end of the period there were even a few atheists). Alongside their faith, Victorians made and appreciated developments in science. The best- known Victorian scientific development is that of the theory of evolution. It is typically credited to Charles Darwin, but versions of it were developed by earlier thinkers as well, and the pseudoscience of eugenics was an ugly outgrowth of Victorian evolutionary theory. Victorians were also fascinated by the emerging discipline of psychology and by the physics of energy. Important political events during this period included the abolition of slavery in the British Empire; the expansions of the franchise; working-class political activism, most notably Chartism; the rise of liberalism as the dominant political ideology, especially of the middle class; and the nationalization of Conservative and Liberal parties (and the emergence of the British Labour Party in 1906). The growth of the state and state intervention were seen in major acts that limited hours for factory workers and miners, in public health acts, and in the provision of elementary education by the state. Political conflicts between Ireland and Britain and the rise of Irish nationalism were also hallmarks of the era, as were women’s rights activism, which resulted in the Married Women’s Property Acts, the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and the growth of education and employment options for women. The Victorian British Empire The Victorian British Empire dominated the globe, though its forms of rule and influence were uneven and diverse. The traffic of people and goods between Britain and its colonies was constant, complex, and multidirectional. Britain shaped the empire, the empire shaped Britain, and colonies shaped one another. British jobs abroad included civil and military service, missionary work, and infrastructure development. People from various imperial locations traveled to, studied in, and settled in Britain. Money, too, flowed both ways—the empire was a source of profit, and emigrants sent money home to Britain—as did goods such as jute, calico cotton cloth, and tea. Dramatic expansion of the empire meant that such goods came to Britain from all over the world. Between 1820 and 1870 the empire grew, shifted its orientation eastward, and increased the number of nonwhite people over whom it exerted control. Much of this expansion involved violence, including the Indian Mutiny (1857–59), the Morant Bay Rebellion (1865) in Jamaica, the Opium Wars (1839–42, 1856–60) in China, and the Taranaki War (1860–61) in New Zealand. India became central to imperial status and wealth. There was significant migration to the settler colonies of Australia and New Zealand and later to Canada and South Africa. From 1870 until 1914 continued aggressive expansion (including Britain’s participation in the so-called Scramble for Africa) was assisted by new technologies, including railways and telegraphy. Britain took control of large parts of Africa (including Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya), which together were home to about 30 percent of the African population. The same period also saw the start of anticolonial movements that demanded