L'Età Vittoriana: sfondo storico, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica L'Età Vittoriana: sfondo storico e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE VICTORIAN AGE HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS The Victorian Age goes from 1832 to 1901 even though Victoria took the throne in 1837. Before Victoria, the king was her uncle William III, he didn’t have children so Victoria succeeded him. She was 18 years old when she became queen and The Victorian age ended with her death in 1901. So why does the Victorian Age start earlier? This period is characterized by changes and reforms, and this started in 1832. 1832 is a key date because the first of many reforms happened, the Reform Bill was introduced (while William was on the throne), the Reform Bill gave the right to vote to all male citizens who had a property worth 10 pounds or more, just rich men could vote. While 10 pounds may seem like nothing now, it was a huge amount of money back then. There are two more reforms: one in 1867 and the last in 1884, both were Victoria was queen, 1867: All male citizens who lived in towns could vote 1884: The right to vote is extended to all men. Another important reform was passed in 1833: The Factory Act. The Factory Act reduced the number of working hours to 48 a week for children and 69 a week for people under 18. The Factory Act didn’t improve the situation for adult workers. In 1847 the Ten Hours Amendment Act reduced the hours to 10 a day for adult workers. This is a period of important reforms. The Prime Minister Robert Peel repealed the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws had been imposed during the Napoleonic wars, and they kept the price of corn high, to protect the English Corn from the one produced abroad. In the 1840s there was the Potato Famine in Ireland, so Ireland couldn’t produce potatoes and people died of starvation. To avoid this, the price of corn was reduced so people could at least buy bread. This period is also called the Hungry Forties. The situation of poor people was bad because it was hard to find a job. So the Church decided to find a solution. This is the period when the first workhouses were built by the church. Workhouses were workplaces where people could sleep and eat, so they found jobs and accommodations. They were overcrowded because people started to take advantage of them and they were pretending to be poor to go there, so the conditions worsened. They had very little food, and people and families were divided. Victoria was a constitutional monarch because she was helped by the parliament. Magna Carta in 1215 was the first document to establish parliament. That’s how she was able to avoid the turmoil which characterized Europe in 1848. Victoria was not an absolute monarch so there was peace while in Europe people rebelled to Absolute Monarch. People started having the right to vote in the Victorian Age and in 1838 a movement called CHARTISM was funded, it was a working class movement. It was very important because they wrote a document called The People’s Charter which contained 6 points: 1.  ANNUAL GENERAL ELECTIONS 2. EQUAL ELECTORAL DISTRICTS 3. SECRET BALLOT 4. UNIVERSAL MALE SUFFRAGE 5. PAYMENT OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT 6. THE RIGHT FOR A MAN WITHOUT PROPERTIES TO BE AN MP The People’s Charter was rejected at first because times were not ready for this sort of revolution, but then slowly all these points have been accepted… all but one.   What did they mean? 1.      Every year there should be general elections; 2.      In Victoria’s times (and still today) England was divided into 2 districts: agriculture district and industrial district. The first one had more representation in Parliament than the second one, even though the industrial district was inhabited by more people. So people asked for equality among all the districts. All the districts had to have the same number of representatives. 3.      Ballot means vote, so SECRET BALLOT mean that people had to vote but no one had to know what they voted for; 4.      Every man should have the right to vote; 5.      The MP had to be paid for their job; 6.      At first only rich people could be MP, but now any man could do it. Of course, the rule that hasn't been accepted is the first one because the elections happen every five years. Another important reform was in 1870, a law which makes primary school compulsory and it is called the Education Act. Victoria married her cousin Albert of Saxe Coburg Gotha and they had 9 children. They were the perfect representation of a Victorian family – it had to have lots of children. Albert was not king but he was Prince Consort and he did lots of things for Britain. In 1851 he organized The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park (London) because when Victoria was on throne Britain became the great empire of the world and it was inhabited by 4 million people, it was huge; Britain also had lots of colonies in India, Africa and Australia. So this display collected lots of goods coming from all the British colonies. It was visited by 6 million people so it had an enormous success, people were attracted by the exhibition. In particular British people were proud of being colonizers and there was a particular attitude which characterized that period, it is called JINGOISM which is the exaltation of colonization and aggression and it comes from a song which contains swear words by Jingo. Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book) said that it was a white’s man burden. As people believed that people of color were inferior they needed to be colonized and educated, so British people who were very proud of themselves succeeded in doing it. The Great Exhibition was very popular, that’s why museums were open when Victoria was on the throne. In particular, the Natural History Museum was open, also the Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum. While Britain in this period was great, things started to change outside of the country. Ireland wanted to have its own independence, its own Parliament and its Home Rule, they didn’t want to be represented by the British Parliament. These rebels were led by Charles Parnell and they succeeded at the beginning of the XX century. Another movement, which was wanted by the working class because they wanted more representation in the Parliament, was the Fabian - from a Roman politician Quintus Fabius Maximus the Cunctator who never wanted to solve political questions through wars, in fact he was in favour of dialogue and progressive reforms. It’s important to remember because it was the basis of the Labour party, even though it became popular after Victoria’s death (1901), in 1906.