The Victorian Age
When King William 4 died his niece Victoria succeeded him at the age of 18. She reigned for 64 years, and this period was called “Victorian Age”, which refers to a period of time longer than her reign. In fact this period ended some years after Queen Victoria’s death.
Social achievements
The Victorian Age was marked by some social achievements and reforms, such as: 1-the Mines Act, which prohibited the working of women and children in mines; 2-the Ten Hours Act, which limited working hours to ten a days in textile factories; 3-new Factory Acts, which extended the principles of factory regulations to other industries; 4-the Educations Act, which re-organized elementary education; 5-the emancipation of all religious sects, so the Catholics were allowed to enter Oxford and Cambridge and work in government jobs; 6-Parliamentary Reform, through the introduction of the secret ballot; 7-the Public Health Act, which improved health condition; 8-the Chimney-Sweepers Act, which put an end to the employment o children in this job.
The Edwardian Era
When Queen Victoria died in 1901 she was succeeded by the eldest son Edward. He became king under the name of Edward 7, at the age of 59. He had great skill in dealing with his ministers and foreign rulers. He promoted friendly relations with neighbouring countries, travelling in the Continent and also in America, Egypt and India. Relations between England and France improved but the King’s efforts for peace with Germany were not successful, above all when German Emperor William 2 tried to extend German influence over the other European States. In 1904 the Entente Cordiale marked a swift to Anglo-French alignment in foreign affairs. Kink Edward 7 died in 1910 and he was succeeded by his second son George 5.
Under the reign king Edward 7 there was a period of reforms: 1-the numbers of hours of labour of children working at home were restricted; 2-elementary and secondary educations was put under the control of county councils; 3-Emmeline Pankhurst founded the “women’s social and political union”; 4-employment of children by night was banned; 5-motor buses were introduced; 6-the Compensation Act, ensured some compensation for workers in case of accidents; 7-the Mains Eight Hours Day Act, secured a work of eight-hours a day; 8-it was introduced the Old Age Pension Law.
The Victorian Compromise
This term is referred to the particular situation which saw prosperity and progress on one hand, and poverty and injustice on the other. And this opposed ethical conformism to corruption, moralism to money.
Fabian Society
This society was founded in 1884 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, inspired by Marxist doctrine. Some socialists advocated gradual reforms instead of drastic revolutionary measures. The name derived from the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximum, who carried a campaign against Hannibal by avoiding direct engagement. One of the most active member was George Bernard Shaw.
The Victorian Family
The morality of the time found its best expression within the family. The family was based on marriage. Only in 1856 the divorce was admitted, but only in special cases. The father was the centre of the family life, who was an authoritarian figure, while the mother a submissive figure. Victorian families were very large.
Position of Women
Middle class women were to adhere to a street code of behaviour, which expected them to be innocent and pure, living within the family walls. Women’s position was subordinated to man and their main role was only reproduction. This role did not require any ability to think. A married woman had no rights before the law. The husband controlled her children, her property and her person. But in the second part of the century Parliament revised the marriage and divorce laws. The Married Women’s Property Bill, gave married women control over their property. Reforms took place in the field of education, many poor children didn’t go to school while rich ones had a tutor. The middle class sent their children to public or private schools, where teachers were often incompetent and gave corporal punishment.
Currents in Victorian literature
During the Victorian Age, literature was influenced by the ferments and the conflicts of the time. This is a complex and difficult period to define in English literature. It was full of contradictions and revolutionary ideas, which developed different literary movements, such as: 1-Late Romanticism, a continuations of the previous movement, which looked to the Middle Ages as a source of inspiration; 2-Realism, which stated that art has to reproduce outer reality without idealizing it; 3-Naturalis, which advocated total objectivity and scientific approach to literature; 4-Aestheticism, which proposed a doctrine of “art for art’s sake”; 5-Decadentism, which said that art is superior to nature and that the finest beauty is that of dying and decaying things.
Early Victorian Fiction
The early writers, although denouncing, like Dickens, the plights of the lower classes, or like Thackeray, the hypocrisy of the higher ones, advocated and utopian improvement of society, were good was rewarded and evil punished. The flourishing of fiction in the Victorian Age was due to many reasons: 1-urbanization and better means of communication; 2-the invention of new printing machinery, so that it increased the number of readers; 3-the fact that prose fiction became the most appropriate vehicle to support the ideas of the age.
The early Victorian novel was helped by the publication in serial instalments after 1820, in fact before this date novels were published in three volumes at a high price. After 1820 the books were printed in separate instalments at a very low price. Each monthly number consisted of 32 pages. The first number was published before the subsequent ones were written. If the reader was pleased by the story the publication went on. So the story and its characters were linked to the interest of the reader. This method was successful and modify the actual structure of the novel, because: 1-it increased the number of readers among the low classes; 2-it imposed an episodic structure in the plot; 3-it led to an excessive length of certain books; 4- it created the popular appeal of some works; 5-the serial method forced the writer to speed up his rhythm and find stratagems to catch reader’s attention.
The writer had to create suspense and expectation. The sensational novel was a mixture of melodrama, mystery and complicated plot. Its origin can go back to the tales of terror of Gothic Fiction. The writers Collins and Dickens thought that sensationalism would help to focus the reader on the social issues of novels.
Ode To Autumn
This was the last of Keats odes and some readers considered it the finest of fall. Keats addresses Autumn as a time of rich fullness and fruition. The Decay and Decline that will fallow and lead into Winter are only implied the consciousness of the speaker is almost totally observed in the scene he describes; there is a perfect greeting between his spirit or mood and the natural presence he contemplates. Autumn itself is addressed in the poem as a personified or mythical being, but this being emerges from and flows back into the specific aspects of the natural scene with an artistry that itself seems entirely natural. The ode provided Keats with a freer and more expansive range of poetic possibilities for expressing his perceptions about art, nature and human mind. All Keats’s odes are poems of address: the poem speaks directly to a Grecian Urn to a Nightingale or to Autumn. Like Shelley Keats created his own stanza form expending the stanzas length from ten to eleven lines. The first stanza represents the abundance of the Autumn that is symbolized by fruits. In the second stanza there are the four personification of Autumn. In the third stanza there are the sounds of Autumn.
Ode To a Nightingale
Keats wrote this poem in May 1819 while living with his friend Charles Brown in Hampstead in North West London. Brown commented as follow on its composition: “in the Spring of 1819 a Nightingale had build her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continuous joy in her song and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum tree where he set for two o three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived he had some papers in his hands and this he was quietly putting behind the books. On inquiring i found those papers contained his poetic feelings on the song of our nightingale”. Keats imagination, in this poem, like Shelley’s in “to a skylark” focuses on nature’s creatures, whose joyful state of being he both identifies with and yet ultimately he feels separated from the song of the nightingale puts Keats in a kind of imaginative trance, which he desires to sustain forever. But near the end of the poem Keats realizes that his intense experience of beauty cannot be sustained as the nightingale fades away into the distance he is left to wonder whether his experience was real or only a dream.
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