Social Life in Victorian Britain

Queen Victoria's achievement was that she redeemed the monarchy and raised it to a new pinnacle of popularity. Victoria was thrifty, hardworking, religious and devoted to her family – she was a paragon of those qualities held dear by Victorians. The queen's imperiousness well fitted an age in which Britain was supremely confident and successful.

Victoria was 18 when she came to the throne in 1837, and was guided by the British Minister, Lord Melbourne.

In 1841 Victoria married her cousin, Prince Albert. After 1861, when he died, she mourned him so deeply that she retreated from public life until the 1870s. In 1877 Victoria was made Empress of India. In the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1897 Victoria was virtually defied.

Victoria held strong views on political questions, but early in her reign she had to accept Sir Robert Peel as Prime Minister, even though she disliked him. Eventually she came to respect him, but she was never reconciled to Gladstone, the queen had to have him 4 times as her Prime Minister.

Victoria had a conservative view of society, she cared for the dignity of the crown and hierarchy in society. Victoria followed foreign affairs closely. She gave support to the British armies in the Crimean and Boer wars.

Victorian Britain saw a revival in religion. In 1833 a group of churchmen at Oxford released the 1^st of their "Tracts for the Times" which emphasized the eternal authority of the church. A number of Tractarians joined the Roman Catholic Church. Conversely evangelicals within the Church of England emphasized the authority of the Bible and the need to preach to the people. There was often hostility between the Tractarians, of High church men, and the evangelicals, or Low Church men, in the Established church, but the enthusiasm both groups generated helped to stem the decline in the Church's strength which had begun with the Industrial Revolution. By 1851 there were 318.000 Protestant Sunday School teachers in Britain.

The publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of the Species" was the culmination of a series of writings which swept aside the fundamental biblical view of Creation and history substituting for its evolution and natural selection.

T.H.Huxley, Darwin's greatest disciple claimed for Darwin a place in science comparable with Newton's but many scientists believed that Darwin had destroyed the moral bases of scientific studies.

The 2 English universities, Oxford and Cambridge, gradually revived in the 19^th century. In 1825 University College, which was open to members of all religions and nonbelievers was founded in London. Public schools were transformed. Moral as well as intellectual training was to become an aim of the public school.

The vast wealth produced by the Industrial revolution enabled people of all classes to improve their social position. One of the most popular books of the 19^th century was Samuel Smiles's "Self-help" (1859), which claimed that success was the product of 4 virtues - thrift, character, self-help and duty. Novels by Dickens are filled with characters aspiring to better themselves. The colonies and America were an outlet for people who wished to chance their luck. Britain's wealth increased in the 19 century, and though its distribution was highly uneven, the increase in prosperity among the working class was sufficient to give its members a growing feeling of betterment and security.

The new interest in religion was paralleled in architecture by the movement known as the Gothic Revival. Two of the greatest exponents of the Gothic revival were Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. After the Houses of parliament burnt down in 1834 Barry won the competition to rebuild the Palace of Westminster.

Victorian interiors were rich. The Arts and Crafts movement at the end of the century attempted to reintroduce simple, functional furniture and furnishings. A leading member of the movement was William Morris, who envisaged a simpler society. Intelligentsia was divided from the rest of society.

The divorce from urban Britain was most marked in the Romantic poets of the early 19^th century, who shunned the cities and lived in remote country areas: William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, Byron, John Keats and Percy Shelley.

The novelists Emily and Charlotte Bronte lived a life on seclusion. In their isolation they produced two of the finest novels in the English language: "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre".

When novelists did turn their attention to the cities they were scathing. Mrs. Gaskell's novel "North and South" illustrates the profound split in 19' - century England between the rural south and the industrial north.

Charles Dickens in "Hard Times" comes as close as he ever does to condemning Victorian society.

In the landscape painting of the period John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner were the prominent figures.