Victorian age

the victorian age

Bright and dark sides of queen Victoria's reign

Maria Vittoria Minerba

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

Robert Browning

Introduction

The Victorian Age

The Victorian age is that period of time, between approximately 1820 and 1914, corresponding roughly to Queen Victoria's Reign.It was caracterised by a consistent number of reforms, huge discoveries, technological and scientific progress, but also by poverty, social ineguality and injustice. It is therfore regarded as an age of noticeable Contraddictions.

Bright and dark sides of queen Victoria's reign

During the Victorian age visible contraddictions coexhisted.

Index

CORRUPTION

The negative aspects

INNOVATION

The positive aspects

Poverty, bad conditions

Religion and Death

Alienation

Richness and wealth

Technological progress

Industriali-zation

07. Results

04. Development

01. Justification

08. Conclusion

05. Hypothesis

02. Goals

Poison

Vices

New materials and medicine

Respectability

09. Thanks

03. T. framework

.01

INDUSTIALIZATION

One of the philosophical movements that developed in that period was Positivism. It suggested that society should be studied with a scientific approach, bringing a new faith in reason and science, that was been put aside by Romanticism.

Positivism

Development of cities and mean of transportation

During the 19th century England landscape and everyday life drastically changed, mostly due to the gradual shift from country to town. This led to the building of cities and factories, a giant increase in production and the creation of the first railway system that made travelling a lot easier.

.01

Steam

Railway

The reign of Victoria saw huge growth in transport both by land and sea. The railway revolutioned the industrial economy, transformed the lives of the population, and finally linked the town and the countryside.

The industrial revolution took place mostly because of the development of steam engines, that made the creation of more efficient machines possible.The number of factories that used stea systems rapidly raised and the demand for coal did it as well.

'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

"Hard Times" - Charles Dickens

.01

POLLUTION

Coketown

In the novel "Hard Times" Charles Dickens dscribes the imaginary industrial town named "Coketown" as a monotonous place, full of smoke, pollution and poisonous air.Everything in coketown was severly workful except for a little, bare church.

The urbanisation made the cities overcrowded, busy and grimy, people lived in critical conditions, on the brink of starvation and disease.Factories produced smoke and polluted air and water making them highly toxic.

.01

ALIENATION

Marx

Working Rythms

Factory work was more intense than agricultural one, it was regulated by the rythm of machines. Also the work was more monotonous and the production chain made impossible for the workers to appreciate the final product making them unsatisfied with their activity.

Marx stated that the man is alienated from the object he produces and from the process of production, but also from himself, his community and society.He also understood that the social relationships determine the conciousness of men.

.02

Technological progress

The Great Exhibition

The victorian Era was a time of great inventions and discoveries.To show off the amazing progress of Britain, queen Victoria and prince Albert organised the Great Exhibition. The exhibits included almost every marvel of the Victorian age.

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.02

the great exhibition

gallery

.02

Timeline

1837

1840

1844

Morse code is invented

the first stamp "Pennyblack"

The telegraph is invented

1839

1842

Fotography is born

Ether is used in medicine

.02

Timeline

1849

1858

1861

First piloted glider

Creation of London sewer system

First horse trained tram for passengers

1850

1860

First sewing machine for domestic use

"velocipede" is invented

.02

Timeline

1876

1887

1896

The telephone is invented

Creation of the grammophone

Marconi invents the radio

1878

1895

incandescent light bulb is invented

invention of the cinematograph

.02

Scientists

Some important british scientists of theVictorian Age

charles babbage1791-1871

charles darwin 1809-1882

james clerk maxwell 1831-1879

Physic e matematician, he formulated the four equation of electromagnetism and is responsible for great findings in the termodinamic field and in wave physics.

Matematician and phylosoph he realized an analytic machine by using looms technology, creating the ancestor of modern computers.

Biologist, naturalist and antropologist, author of the treatise "The origin of species" and creator of evolution theory.

"The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons."

Hugh Lamb, Terror by Gaslight: More Victorian Tales of Terror

.02

Irrationality

Literary works

Religion and supernatural

We recognise this taste for the spiritual and supernatural world in the literary production like Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, A Christmas Carol by Dickens and Dracula by Bram Stoker.Victorians revived the romantic passion for dark, abbandoned places and spooky theemes.

The Victorian era is also a periood of deep religious revival. It was a golden age of belief in supernatural forces, ghosts and occult. Every scientific and technological advance encouraged a kind of magical thinking. The advances in science were so rapid that the natural and the supernatural often became blurred in popular thinking.

.02

Death

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was deeply intersted in death and spiritual experiences. In her poems she often described death experiences from different points of view with her innovative style.

Victorians' obsession

Death was almost an obsession for victorian people, it was a familiar part of life in the Victorian age. Infant mortality, in fact, remained high. This intimacy with death had a strong effect on cultural imagination; death was a subject treated extensively and variously by writers across different genres.

.02

Psycology

The Victorians also focused a lot on the human mind, thank to Sigmund Freud's discoveries in the psycoanalysis field.Many authors investigated human behavior and the complexity of one's personality, for example in The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and mr Hyde, by Stevenson or in Jane Eyre by Emily Bronte.

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.03

Wealth

Life of rich people

There was a big difference between rich and poor in Victorian times. Thanks to the economy boost that followed industrialization, rich people could afford some treats like holidays, fashionable clothes, and even telephones when they were invented.

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.03

Charles Dickens

Dickens is surely the writer that dealt with exploited childhood, poor life conditions of the working class in his novels.His aim also was to make wealthier and ruling classes aware of the life that poor people led.

The working class

Life of poor people

On the other hand poor people, even children, had to work hard in factories, mines or workhouses. Their paycheck was often too low and many families lived on the brink of starvation.Even after the many reforms put in place, life and working conditions were still terrible and dangerous.

.04

Materials

New Materials

As noticeable in the Crystal Palace structure, glass and iron were the new, lagely used materials that the victorian age discovered. They were employed in the building of markets, museums, exhibition halls, railroad stations and greenhouses. Also coal became very requested due to the aboundance of steam-engined machines.

.04

Medicine

Medical discoveries

Medicine took some steps further as well. The stethoscope was invented. Among the drugs isolated was morphine. The nineteenth century was also a period of identification and classification of diseases. Claude Bernard discovered the connection between diabetes and glucose in the blood.

.04

Substances abuse

Opium in literature

Arthur Conan Doyle often refers to opium in Sherlock Holmes as the protagonist himself make use of it. The strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde has clear references to drugs abuse and even Charlotte Bronte was influcenced by her brother's substance abuse.

Opium and alchol

The imperialism of victorian Britain brought people in contact with new substances. In particular, Opium was largely available. The dependene on this drug both in China and Britain led to the Opium Wars.Alchol was very popular as well, especially among women, and beer was often used instead of water (which was highly polluted and dangerous to drink).

.04

Poison

Arsenic

In the 19th Century, poison was a common part of everyday life. Arsenic was used in all sorts of products, primarily in the inks and dyes of wallpapers and clothing. It went into food, and it was used in beauty products. It was found in the fabric of baby carriages, plant fertilizers, medicines.

.04

The witch fever

Victims

Affected this illness were factory workers in textile and wallpapers factories. The green color derived by arsenic was very fashionable. It was also common that women fainted because of the overexposure (they had arsenic in their dresses, food, houses and on their skin).

Around the 1860s, the cases of arsenic poisoning started getting to the newspapers, but no one paid much attention to that, until more and more cases started appearing. It was still a common believe that it wasn't the arsenic that got people ill, many called the effects from arsenic exposure "Witch fever" to highlight the fact that it was not linked to this valuable material.

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.04

Colors in victorian Britain

Victorian paints and pigments were generally poisonous because they were derived by arsenic or lead.

Scheele's green

Yellow Chrome

As said, this yellow-green pigment was a cupric hydrogen arsenite, which was very toxic, used into not just paintings, but dresses, candles, wallpaper, and children’s toys. It was so common for it's brilliant and vivid shade.

Another beautiful, yet toxic, color largely used was Yellow Chrome, loved by artists and common people for it's strong, brilliant shade.

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.04

Other pigments

"Shadows from the Walls of Death:" is an 1874 book by Robert C. Kedzie. It warns about arsenic-pigmented wallpapers, giving samples of said wallpapers. The book is highly toxic and only 4 copies suvived.

A book of poison

Mummy brown

Another strange color born in the Victorian Age is surely mummy brown. The morbous passion for death and ancient egypt developed in this new color. The pigment, a favored shade of the Pre-Raphaelites, was made with Egyptian mummies, that were ground up and mixed with white pitch and myrrh. The color didn't last long due to the lack of "ingrediets".

.05

The Victorian Compromise

An age of contaddictions

The Victorian age was a time of great contraddictions, known as the "Victorian compromise".Enphasis was put on the concept of respectability, linked with self-restraint, good manners, self-help and virtues like the social status, appearance and taking care of the family. This values were also promoted by the queen and the royal family.

.05

Respectability

Respectability was a mixture of strict morality and hypocrisy. Respectable people openly ignored the unpleasant aspect of society, using charity and philantropy to clear their conscience while hiding the dark aspects under outward respectability.

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Vices

The dark side of society

Under the facade of respectability, morality and prudery victorians led a viceous life. Drugs (like opium), alcohol (like absinthe), prostitutes are just examples. Following the aestethic ideal of life as a work of art, many people from the higher classes indulged to vices.

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"And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation."

"Dorian Gray" - Oscar Wilde

.05

WILDE

The picture of Dorian Gray

This novel is a great example of the common life of vices of Victorians. Dorian isn't affect by the signs of vice and experiences, they appear on his portrait instead. By looking at it, at the end of the story, Dorian becomes aware of his spiritual corruption and trying to destroy the painting he kills himself.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is a great example of intellectuals who lived searching for beauty and gave in to vices. He was a rebel and an aristocrat that felt superior and demanded absolute freedom, rejecting morality that limitated the search of beauty.

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Thanks for the attention

Maria Vittoria Minerba