Scarica Victorian Era: An Age of Economic Expansion, Social Reform, and Cultural Change in Britain e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! This period of British history takes its name from Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, this age was one of economic expansion, social reform and cultural change for Britain, that emerged as the centre of European and world economy. By 1890 its colonies extended over more than a quarter of the earth. The process of expansion did not come without complications, so that the age presented many contradictions, indeed Tories and Whigs alternated in leading reforms and their mutual political challenges contributed to the growth of the country. London, in this period, became the greatest city and port in the world, and not to mention centre of commerce and culture, in the world; the population of London expanded from 2 million to 6 million; the materialisation of this economic success is represented by the ‘Crystal Palace’, erected to symbolize the success of science and Victorian industry at 1851 Great Exhibition. New discoveries but also colonial goods were shown, from false teeth to farm machinery to telescopes and also animals. The Great Exhibition happened to coincide with the building of another great innovation of the Industrial Revolution, indeed by 1850 railway lines connected England’s major cities, the railway opened in 1830 and it connected Liverpool to Manchester, and it is remembered as the first public railway line in the world. It is an important event because, beside transforming England’s landscape, it supported the growth of commerce and reduced the distance between cities. But then a period of rising population, rural unemployment, and migration to the towns, emerged, together with the horrendous conditions in which many people lived and worked, indeed they lived in slums, But again a time of prosperity, stability and optimisms emerged from 1848 to 1870,this period is known as golden years; but this was only the wealthy classes’ point of view From a political point of view The two main political parties during the era remained the Whigs/Liberals and the Conservatives. For both parties, however, low taxation and minimal state interference were the motto.. We have also to mention many important reform as: the Reform bill from 1832, proposed by the Whigs and the Prime Minster Lord Grey thanks to which the middle class began to vote, The Reform Bill of 1867 thanks to which the working class began to vote after many riots, The factory act of 1856, This Act redefined the workday , it was changed to correspond with the maximum number of hours that women and children could work. The divorce and matrimonial causes act from 1857 The Act reformed the law on divorce establishing a model of marriage based on contract rather than sacrament, The Married Women's Property Act from 1870 to 1892 that altered English law regarding the property rights of married women, which besides other matters allowed married women to own and control property in their own right. The long 1854 poem The Angel in the House by Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) exemplified the idealized Victorian woman who is angelically pure and devoted to her family and home. The poem was not a pure invention but reflected the emerging legal economic social, cultural, religious and moral values of the Victorian middle-class. Legally women had limited rights to their bodies, the family property, or their children. women were seen, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype required them to provide their husbands with a clean home, to put food on the table and to raise their children. The two sexes inhabited what Victorians thought of as ‘separate spheres’, only coming together at breakfast and again at dinner.The ideology of Separate Spheres rested on a definition of the ‘natural’ characteristics of women and men. Women were considered physically weaker yet morally superior to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere. Women’s sexuality was a taboo, One public opinion of women's sexual desires was that they were not very troubled by sexual urges, women were expected to have sex with only one man, her husband, and they were perceived as unclean as the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864,make us realise this perception, Women suspected of being unclean were subjected to an involuntary genital examination. Refusal was punishable by imprisonment; diagnosis with an illness was punishable by involuntary confinement to hospital until perceived as cured. After two extensions of the law in 1866 and 1869 the acts were finally repealed in 1896. In the last decades of the period, Britain’s supremacy was threatened by the economic expansion of the United States and Canada and economic depression showed how vulnerable a system based on free trade was, Britain was also involved in a series of conflicts to protect its colonies. . In this period the contradictions of the whole century exploded, causing a decline in self- assurance and from the last decade of the century, it became usual among the intellectuals to refuse everything defined as ‘Victorian’. There is a general loss of values in these decades, and a general sense of crisis and disillusion. The scientific discoveries shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851 stopped although they had already generated a deep instability in people’s mind. So Victorian people suffered from anxiety and a sense of being displaced. In 1868 Liberal William Gladstone defeats Conservative Benjamin Disraeli to become prime minister, a position he held for four terms. His legacy includes reform for Ireland, establishing an elementary education program and instituting secret ballot voting. The unsolved problems relating to Irish Home Rule played a great part in politics in the later Victorian era, particularly in view of Gladstone's
