Chapter 5 The Victorian Age Bilde inn

Britain in the Victorian Age Industrialisation and urbanisation transforms Britain “The workshop of the world” - new technologies give increased mechanisation Rising middle classes – through business and the professions – erode the power of landowning aristocracy Growing urban working class “The criminal classes”

Victorian society – Jekyll vs. Hyde Respectability and strict morality vs. crime, prostitution and degradation Economic growth and domestic improvements vs. child labour and the workhouse

Britain and the world Britain as leading world power “Pax Britannica” British Empire encompasses ¼ of the globe Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India in 1876

Victorian Literature Novels increasingly popular Melodrama and social criticism (Dickens) Women novelists (Brontës, Gaskell, G. Eliot…) Birth of children’s literature (Kipling, Carroll…)

19 th century America the belief that the US would extend from east to west Homestead Act (1862) offered 162 acres to settler families Native Americans pushed into reservations Manifest Destiny Currier & Ives: Crossing the Rockies 1860

19 th century America Northern and southern states develop different economic structures Southern states still reliant on slavery and oppose abolition Southern states’ withdrawal from the Union causes war American Civil War

19 th century America Reconstruction of the South – minus slavery, but with segregation and political exclusion and suppression of blacks Rapid industrialisation and mass immigration to Northern cities Postbellum US

19 th century American literature “Transcendentalists” mixed English romanticism with American optimism Civil War brought a taste for realism in fiction (Twain…) Emily Dickinson ( ) precursor of modernism with her poems, published posthumously.