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The Victorian Age
1837 to 1901
Cultural Contexts
General features
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it
was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
[1859])
general shifts and changes:
• development of an urban-industrial England
• swift increase in population (from 9 mio. around
1800 to 32.5 mio. by 1901)
• steam navigation, telegraph (1830s and ’40s) 
rapidity of communication; photography,
electrotyping  new forms of representation and
proliferation
• social and political reforms
• shift of authority from religion to science
General features
“In the sixty years [from 1830 to 1890 …], Britain as a whole,
and England more specifically, passed from being a
predominantly rural and mercantile society, ruled by an
aristocratic élite and a powerful Established Church, with a
largely unofficial and only incipiently specialised intellectual
life, to being a predominantly mercantile and industrial
society, increasingly democratic and (within Christian
bounds) religiously plural, whose intellectual life was
fragemnting into the various specialisations we are familiar
with today. The middle classes were the chief agents and
beneficiaries of these unprecedented developments, the
parvenus who transformed a ‘feudal’ society into a ‘modern’
state.”
(Robin Gilmour, The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and
Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890 [London:
Longman, 1993] 3)
heterogeneity
• early Victorian (1830-1850); mid-Victorian
(1850-1870); late Victorian (1870-1890)
• “two nations”:
– rich and poor (cf. Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil)
– North and South (cf. Elizabeth Gaskell, North
and South)
– “an old nation based upon the old nobility,
upon the squires and upon the Established
Church, and a new nation based upon
commerce and industry, and in religion largely
Dissenting” (Gilmour, 4)
Historical Models
• Hellenism
– impact of Romanticism: Greece = liberty and rebellion; progress
towards democracy
– 1850-60s: Greece = culture of health and sanity; humanist values
(Arnold)
– 1860-70s: Greece = rebellious, idealistic, imperial, erotic (cf. Jowett
and Pater)
• Medievalism
– neo-gothic architecture (A.W. Pugin)
– chivalry as an ideal of conduct
– favoured by Anglo-Catholicism and Tories: anti-modern idealisation of
pre-reformational England (socially responsible hierarchical
communities)
– 1850s: incorporation of medievalism into Protestant ideas; integrative
potential, e.g. of Arthurian legends (e.g. Tennyson, Idylls of the King,
1859-1885)
• Civil War
– Cavalier-Roundhead opposition parallels ‘two nations’
– reappreciation of Oliver Cromwell as Protestant hero
Major Victorian Ideas
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Individualism
Liberalism
Utilitarianism
Chartism
Evolution
Malthusianism
Individualism
- influence of Dissenters
- Liberalism  intellectually pluralistic society 
against uniformity
- limits of individual liberty: harm to others
“In proportion to the development of his
individuality, each person becomes more
valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of
being more valuable to others. There is a greater
fullness of life about his own existence, and
when there is more life in the units there is more
in the mass which is composed of them.”
(John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859)
Utilitarianism
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to
determine what we shall do. On the one hand the
standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of
causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.” (opening
sentence of Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, 1789)
“By the principle of utility is meant that principle which
approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever,
according to the tendency which it appears to have to
augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose
interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other
words, to promote or to oppose that happiness.”
 principle of utility
An Age of Reforms
• Chartism
 extension of Franchise (Reform Acts):
– 1832: £10 householders
– 1867: all urban householders
– 1884: all householders
extension of male suffrage from middle class to
working class
Women’s suffrage only in 1918 (over 30) and 1928 (all
adult women)
Voices against women’s suffrage:
• “The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and
trial; - to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable
error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and always
hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as
ruled by her […] need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error
or offence. This is the true nature of home – it is the place of Peace; the
shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division”
(John Ruskin)
• “While desiring the fullest possible development of the powers, energies,
and education of women, we believe that their work for the State, and
their responsibilities towards it, must always differ essentially from those
of men, and that therefore their share in the working of the State
machinery should be different from that assigned to men. […] To men
belong the struggle of debate and legislation in Parliament; the hard and
exhausting labour implied in the administration of the national resources
and powers; the conduct of England’s relations towards the external
world; the working of the army and navy; all the heavy, laborious,
fundamental industries of the State. […] In all these spheres women’s
direct participation is made impossible either by the disabilities of sex, or
by strong formations of custom and habit resting ultimately upon physical
difference, against which it is useless to contend.” (Mrs. Humphry Ward,
“Appeal Against Female Suffrage”, 1889)
An Age of Reforms
• social and moral reforms
• (evangelical pressure groups)
– abolition of slavery
– Acts limiting child labour
– reformation of manners (e.g. Vice Society,
1802; Lord’s Day Observance Society, 1831)
– Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (1824)
– standards for family life
Religion – Reform and Conflicts
• “the Victorian age is in fact above all others an age of
religious revival” (T.H.S. Escott, on the occasion of the
Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897)
• “by the second quarter of the nineteenth century religion
had received so political a shape, or politics so religious
a shape, that it was for many people almost impossible
to separate the two” (George Kitson Clark, The Making
of Victorian England [1962], 162)
• “They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all
the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality.
That is an English inconsistency; we do not wish to hold
it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England
one must rehabilitate oneself after every little
emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably
awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That
is the penance they pay there.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The
Twilight of the Idols [1888]; Götzen-Dämmerung)
Religion – Reform and Conflicts
• religious plurality:
– Church of England / Established Church / State
Church
– Protestant Dissenting Churches / Non-Conformists
/ Free Churches
– Roman Catholics
– Jewish
– Presbyterian Church of Scotland
Evangelicalism
• moral and emotional contributions:
– social reform
– moral values, affectionate piety
– God = “all-seeing judge”
– self-introspection, self-consciousness
– but also: psychological pressure
Oxford Movement
• young Oxford dons envisaging a new
conception of the Church
• ideal of the rural High-Church parish vicar
• question of recovering Church authority
• John Newman:
– religious belief based on the reality of feeling
– ‘voice of conscience’
– Church lives because it grows and undergoes
change
Crises of Faith
“The early Victorian crisis of faith cannot be
separated from a wider cultural conviction
that the world could be improved and
individual human beings with it. Expectation
of reform suddenly made it possible to
challenge Christianity’s pessimistic view of
human nature and the element of fear which
had been one of its chief means of control.”
(Gilmour, 88)
Crises of Faith
‘secular religions’
e.g. Auguste Comte’s ‘Religion of Humanity’
“We – the middle classes, I mean, not merely the very rich –
we have neglected you; instead of justice we have offered
you charity, and instead of sympathy we have offered you
hard and unreal advice; but I think we are changing. If you
would only believe it and trust us, I think that many of us
would spend our lives in your service. You have […] to
forgive us, for we have wronged you; we have sinned
against you grievously – not knowingly always, but still we
have sinned, and let us confess it; but if you will forgive us –
nay, whether you will forgive us or not – we will serve you,
we will devote our lives to your service, and we cannot do
more.” (Arnold Toynbee, in 1833)
Crises of Faith
• historical Bible criticism
• scientific discoveries:
 scientific and materialistic explanations of reality
secularization; atheism; agnosticism
Agnosticism – Charles Darwin
“I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought
to wish Christianity to be true; for if it is so,
the plain language of the text seems to
show that the men who do not believe,
and this would include my Father, Brother
and almost all my best friends, will be
everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.”
(Autobiography)
Agnosticism – Thomas Huxley
“When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask
myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist,
a materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I
found that the more I learned and reflected the less
ready was the answer, until at last I came to the
conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of
these denominations except the last. The one thing in
which most of these good people were agreed was the
one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite
sure that they had attained a certain ‘gnosis’ – had, more
or less successfully, solved the problem of existence;
while I was quite sure that I had not, and had pretty
strong conviction that the problem was insolvable. And
with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself
presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion.”
(Essays on Some Controverted Questions)
Agnosticism – Thomas Huxley
“Sartor Resartus led me to know that a deep
sense of religion was compatible with the
entire absence of theology. Secondly,
science and her methods gave me a
resting place independent of authority and
tradition. Thirdly, love opened up to me a
view of the sanctity of human nature and
impressed me with a deep sense of
responsibility.”
(Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley)
Science
• 1831: British Association for the Advancement of Science
(BAAS)
• popular sciences: geology, phrenology
• three major theories:
– evolution (Darwin, Spencer, Lamarck)
– atomic theory (Dalton)
– First Law of Thermodynamics
 notion of stability
• challenges to stability:
– degeneration
– Second Law of Thermodynamics (Rudolf Clausius and William
Thomson, Lord Kelvin): continual diffusion and waste of energy
– later: quantum physics
Evolution
“It is most interesting to observe into how small a
field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus
ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has
one final comprehensive law, Gravitation. The
organic, the other great department of mundane
things, rests in like manner on one law, and that
is, - Development.” (Robert Chambers, Vestiges
of the Natural History of Creation, 1844)
• mutability of species
• length of evolutionary process
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829):
transformation
Evolution
“It is clear […] from the whole scope of the natural
laws, that the individual, as far as the present
sphere of being is concerned, is to the Author of
Nature a consideration of inferior moment.
Everywhere we see the arrangements for the
species perfect; the individual is left, as it were,
to take his chance amidst the mêlée of the
various laws affecting him. If he be found
inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at
least no partiality against him. The system has
the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has
the like chance of drawing the prize.” (Robert
Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation, 1844)
Effects of Evolutionary Thought
 challenge to the dignity and uniqueness
of the individual
man is not the end of the evolutionary line
feeling of disinheritance
e.g. A.E. Housman (18982):
“[M]an stands today in the position of one
who has been reared from his cradle as
the child of a noble race and the heir to
great possessions, and who finds at his
coming of age that he has been deceived
alike as to his origin and his expectations.”
Charles Darwin – Malthusian influence
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Thomas Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population (1798):
“In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the
foregoing considerations always in mind – never to forget
that every single organic being around us may be said to
be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each
lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy
destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old,
during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten
any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the
number of the species will almost instantaneously increase
to any amount. The face of Nature may be compared to a
yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed
close together and driven inwards by incessant blows,
sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with
greater force.”
(Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859)
Charles Darwin – Natural Selection
“[…] can we doubt (remembering that many more
individuals are born than can possibly survive)
that individuals having any advantage, however
slight, over others, would have the best chance of
surviving and or procreating their kind? On the
other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in
the least degree injurious would be rigidly
destroyed. This preservation of favourable
variations and the rejection of injurious variations,
I call Natural Selection.”
(Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859)
Can Evolution produce intricate organisms?
“We must suppose each new state of the instrument
to be multiplied by the million; and each to be
preserved till a better be produced, and then the
old ones to be destroyed. In living bodies,
variation will cause the slight alterations,
generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and
natural selection will pick out with unerring skill
each improvement. Let this process go on for
millions and millions of years; and during each
year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and
may we not believe that a living optical instrument
might thus be formed as superior to one of glrass
as the works of the Creator are to those of man?”
(Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859)
Herbert Spencer – “Survival of the Fittest”
“Note, further, that their carnivorous enemies not only remove
from herbivorous herds individuals past their prime, but also
weed out the sickly, the malformed, and the least fleet or
powerful. […] Meanwhile, the well-being of existing humanity,
and the unfolding of it into this ultimate perfection, are both
secured by that same beneficient, through severe discipline,
to which the animate creation at large is subject: a discipline
which is pitiless in the working out of good: a felicity-pursuing
law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and
temporary suffering. The poverty of the incapable, the
distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of
the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the
strong […] are the decrees of a large, far-seeing
benevolence.” (Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851)
From Evolution to Naturalism
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evolution puts man back into nature
no distinction man – animal
determining power of the environment over the individual
Naturalism
e.g. Thomas Hardy: Nature = bleak site of evolutionary
struggle and place of neverending creativity
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into
one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
(concluding sentences of The Origin of Species)