QUEEN VICTORIA
when she became queen she was only 18yo and obviously she needed some help, she was
assisted by the prime ministers Gladstone liberal party and Israeli from the conservative
party.
during her reign she was able to maintain a strong national stability by balancing the two
opposite parties and also with the bounds with the parliament so we can say the stability is
one of the keywords of this period.
with her wedding with the german prince Albert of saxe-cobourgh-gotha she created also a
social stability by creating also a new figure of family linked also to a new keyboard,
respectability.
this long reign she became a figurehead everything was linked to her, she named an age,
artistic forms, ecc…
1832 Gladstone and liberals, they did one of the most important act that allowed the middle
class to vote
1847 the 10 hours act, first limitation on works hours
pure emendament t act with workhouses were established, they were thought as places of
sufferances by doing this the government would have wanted to discourage the poverty
1867 second réforme ac
3 conflicts :
the crimean war the first conflict to be shown on the papers
guerra boera
growing sense of pride british were very proud of the empire we can that sense also of hate
against the people that were conquered in a poem “white man’s burden”
3d reform act = all male workers can vote
women can divorce and the can also regained their own net worth
utilitarianism = middle class any problems co
literature:
3 periods
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LITERARY CONTEXT
novel became the most popular form of literature
the theatre = oscar wilde he became famous for being a play writer but he wrote also a novel
and a tragedy.
books showed people s interests and there was a growth of readers among the middle class
and among the people als because books became cheaper.
books were published in “episodes” this mainly in order to understand better if the work had
success ecc…(economic reasons too) = serialized novels
it became the main form of entrainment
-we can dived the victorian literature in 3 periods
1) characterised by the study and critics of society, and realism but bounded to fiction
cause obviously they were invented (also thank to the use of the first person or some
genres such as diary), social humanitarian novels or purpose novels, another
very important genre that we could find at that time is the “Bildungsroman”
2) Mid victorian age a great number of novels were written by women, the style of
these works went back to the gothic tradition, “the castle of Otranto” by …. was the
