Victorian Age

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Title of Subject : The Victorian Age in Literature

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INTRODUCTION

The Victorian Age is roughly delimited by the reign of Queen Victoria who ascended the throne of Great Britain on 1937 , and died in 1901 . For the sake of convenience the Victorian age of literature is bracketed by the period 1830 to 1901 . Both in terms of literature and culture the Victorian period is highly distinctive . For such a characteristic period to correspond to the reign of a monarch , and considering the inordinate

length of it , suggests somehow that the character of the monarch has left its imprint therein . But this is very far from being the case . In theory Britain was a constitutional monarchy , which meant that the queen was supreme ruler , and was aided by an executive arm , which was a Parliament that is democratically elected . This was , however , only on . In practice the bourgeoisie were entrenched in the Parliament and ruled the land as an oligarchy

The entrenchment of the middle classes in England was a process begun with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 , in which the nobles wrenched significant powers from the crown , then in the form of the unpopular King John . Both the nobles and the crown , however , met a new challenge in the form of the merchant and middle classes after the Protestant Reformation , which was the basis of the English Civil War fought in the seventeenth century . The result of this war was a monarchy thoroughly emasculated and in the hands of the bourgeoisie , who began to appoint their kings from abroad , beginning with William of Orange , from Holland , who ascended the British throne as William III in the Glorious Revolution ' of 1688 . In 1714 George Louis , Elector of Hanover , was invited to sit on the British throne , which began the long lineage of the House of Hanover , of which Queen Victoria was descended In this wise the queen was barely English , and had hardly any inclination to become one , evidenced by the links continued to be held with the continent . She became merely a sentimentalized figurehead , as Britain forged ahead , during her reign , to become the economic and imperial power of world . She was ultimately conferred the title of Empress of India , at the time when India was the Jewel in the Crown of a world empire . But she identified little with the aspirations of the age that she labeled . The emancipation of woman was a central tenet of Victorianism , which she opposed vehemently . She called it mad , wicked folly , and thought that these ladies ought to get a good whipping (qtd . in Strachey 409

The advance of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution forms the backdrop to the Victorian age . The prelude to this was the rise of science and rationalism at the expense of faith . The Enlightenment is the name given to this movement in the initial phase , especially in relation to the conscious intellectual movement in this direction inspired by...