1. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 1832-1901

2. The Victorian Period Named for the reign of Queen Victoria, Britain’s longest reigning monarch from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901.

4. The Victorian Period  Period of stability and prosperity for Britain.  British society extremely class conscious.  Literature seen as a bridge between Romanticism and Modernism.  Generally emphasized realistic portrayals of common people, sometimes to promote social change.

5. The Victorian Period  It was a time of unprecedented demographic increase in England. The population rose from 13.897 million in 1831 to 32.528 million in 1901.  19th century Britain saw a huge population increase accompanied by rapid urbanization stimulated by the Industrial Revolution.

6. The Victorian Period  The Victorian era became notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines and as chimney sweeps.

7. The Victorian Period  Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organizations, clergymen, and single women became increasingly concerned about prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil".

8. Literature  Much writing of the period reflected current social, economic, and intellectual problems: industrial revolution and its effects on the economic and social structure; rapid urbanization and the deterioration of rural England; massive poverty; growing class tensions; pressures toward political and social reform; the impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on philosophy and religion; the early feminist movement.

9. The Greatest Age of English Fiction  It was an age of immense and multicolored and often self-critical literary activity.  The derogatory connotations of the term “Victorian”: Narrow-mindedness Respectability Complacency are based on the actual attitudes and values of many members of the rapidly expanding Victorian middle class.

11. Charles Dickens (1812-1873)  The greatest and most perfect Victorian story-teller.  He gave English literature some of its most charming and amusing characters:  Oliver Twist;  David Copperfield;  Nicholas Nickleby;  His characters are really “humors” – exaggerations of one human quality to the point of caricature.  His novels are all animated by a sense of injustice and personal wrong; he is concerned with the problems of crime and poverty.

12. George Eliot (1819-1880)  Pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans.  Her strong personality and fine mind are in how she could draw characters and describe scenes with great skill. She also had pity and humor.  Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and others.  She is important because she is prepared to analyze human conduct, to show the moral consequences of even trivial actions – this makes her very modern - and to show the minds of even humble people can be made noble through suffering.

14. The Brontë Sisters  Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) wrote the masterpiece Jane Eyre that contains passion not to be found in earlier Victorian novelists.  Emily Brontë (1818-1848) had a more remarkable talent than her sister because her poems are vital and original and her novel Wuthering Heights is another story of wild passion.  Anne Brontë (1820-1849) wrote Agnes Grey and had less talent than her sisters and is best remembered because of them.

16. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)  Pseudonym of Charles Dodgson.  He explored the world of fantasy for the benefit of children, but was more at home in that than in Victorian Utilitarian England.  Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have a mad Dickensian flavor with a curious undercurrent of logic.

18. Robert Browning (1812-1889)  One of the most eminent poets.  He approaches in his language and imagery the poetry of our time.  His writing is anti-romantic with railway-trains and cigars, and the language is often colloquial and even slangy.  The poem My Last Duchess is a prime example of the dramatic monologue form.

19. The Victorian Period Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)  He was another prominent poet and essayist.  He weighed down by the problems of his time, and much of his work is sad. His lyric poem Dover Beach reflects this anxiety and his inability to find rest. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)  Gave drama wit in his admirable artificial comedy The Importance of Being Earnest.  It is one of the most amusing plays ever written, a comedy of manners.  Very often in Wilde’s work, the manner in which ideas are expressed seems more important than their matter.

20. Summary of the time  In the first half of the 19C the English became a nation of avid novel-readers.  Poetry was popular but people wanted stories.  Women had already triumphantly demonstrated their ability to compete successfully with their brother novelists, for example, George Eliot (1819-1880).  Contributing to a rapid rise in the popularity of the novels were the growth of a moneyed, leisured and educated middle class reading public, and an increase in the number of circulating libraries.

21. Permission Acknowledgment My sincere appreciation goes to Ms. Ashwaq Basnawi for her generous permission to use her slides for LANE 341 course.