THE VICTORIAN AGE
The Victorian Age took its name from Queen Victoria. It was an age of progress, stability and great social reforms but at the
same time it was characterised by poverty, injustice and social unrest.
The Victorian Age took its name from Queen Victoria. It was an age of progress, stability and great social reforms but at the
same time it was characterised by poverty, injustice and social unrest.
VICTORIAN VALUES:
The Victorians were great moralisers. They promoted a strict code of values . Among which respectability was fondamental
and distinguished the middle from the lower class. It was a mixture of morality, hypocrisy and conformity to social standards. It
involved:
•The possession of good manners
•The ownership of a comfortable house with servants and a carriage
•Regular attendance at church
Other values were:
•Charity and philanthropy toward every kind of poverty
•Personal duty
•Hard work
•Chastity (sexuality was deeply repressed in its public and private forms)
Bourgeois ideals also dominated Victorian family and they thought that:
•The family was a patriarchal unit
•The man represented the authority
•The women had the key role regarded the education of children and the managing of the house
Despite these great values the Victorian Age was characterized by a deep hypocrisy: the Victorians in fact felt guilty for the life
they led and tried to espiate their sins through good actions, trying to appear in the better way.
The Victorians were great moralisers. They promoted a strict code of values . Among which respectability was fondamental
and distinguished the middle from the lower class. It was a mixture of morality, hypocrisy and conformity to social standards. It
involved:
•The possession of good manners
•The ownership of a comfortable house with servants and a carriage
•Regular attendance at church
Other values were:
•Charity and philanthropy toward every kind of poverty
•Personal duty
•Hard work
•Chastity (sexuality was deeply repressed in its public and private forms)
Bourgeois ideals also dominated Victorian family and they thought that:
•The family was a patriarchal unit
•The man represented the authority
•The women had the key role regarded the education of children and the managing of the house
Despite these great values the Victorian Age was characterized by a deep hypocrisy: the Victorians in fact felt guilty for the life
they led and tried to espiate their sins through good actions, trying to appear in the better way.
PATRIOTISM
Civil pride and national fervour were frequent among the British. Patriotism was deeply influenced by ideas of racial superiority.
The British had the convinction that the races of the world were different physically and intellectually, that some were destined
to be led by others, in particular white men were better that the black ones and they had a sort of civilizing mission. This concept
of “the white man’s burden” was exalted by writers like Kipling.
This code of values based on some religious and philosophical movements:
EVANGELICALISM
The religious movement known as Evangelism, ispired by John Wesley the founder of Methodism, had an important influence on Victorian code of values. The Evangelicals indeed believed in:
•Obedience to a strict code of morality
•Dedication to humanitarian causes and social reforms
UTILITARIANISM
Utilitarianism, based on Bentham’s principles, contributed to the Victorian conviction that any problem could be overcome through reason. The key-words of this philosophy were: usefulness, happiness and avoidance of pain.
EMPIRICISM
Utilitarian indifference to human and cultural values was attacked by many intellectuals including Charles Dickens and John Stuart Mill, a major figure of Empiricism. He thought that legislation could help men develop their natural talents and personalities, and since, in his opinion, progress came from mental energy and therefore he paid great importance to education and art he promoted a series of reforms about popular education, trade union organisation, emancipation of women, the development of cooperatives.
DARWINISM
Charles Darwin, in his famous work “On the Origin of Species”, argued that man is the result of a process of evolution and that in the fight for life only the strongest species survived. Darwin’s theory discarded the version of creation given by the Bible. People lost their references and felt they belonged to an unstable and unknown universe.
Civil pride and national fervour were frequent among the British. Patriotism was deeply influenced by ideas of racial superiority.
The British had the convinction that the races of the world were different physically and intellectually, that some were destined
to be led by others, in particular white men were better that the black ones and they had a sort of civilizing mission. This concept
of “the white man’s burden” was exalted by writers like Kipling.
This code of values based on some religious and philosophical movements:
EVANGELICALISM
The religious movement known as Evangelism, ispired by John Wesley the founder of Methodism, had an important influence on Victorian code of values. The Evangelicals indeed believed in:
•Obedience to a strict code of morality
•Dedication to humanitarian causes and social reforms
UTILITARIANISM
Utilitarianism, based on Bentham’s principles, contributed to the Victorian conviction that any problem could be overcome through reason. The key-words of this philosophy were: usefulness, happiness and avoidance of pain.
EMPIRICISM
Utilitarian indifference to human and cultural values was attacked by many intellectuals including Charles Dickens and John Stuart Mill, a major figure of Empiricism. He thought that legislation could help men develop their natural talents and personalities, and since, in his opinion, progress came from mental energy and therefore he paid great importance to education and art he promoted a series of reforms about popular education, trade union organisation, emancipation of women, the development of cooperatives.
DARWINISM
Charles Darwin, in his famous work “On the Origin of Species”, argued that man is the result of a process of evolution and that in the fight for life only the strongest species survived. Darwin’s theory discarded the version of creation given by the Bible. People lost their references and felt they belonged to an unstable and unknown universe.