Introduction_to_the_Victorian___Age.pptVIP

Introduction to the Victorian Age I. Historical Background 1. Queen Victoria Victoria became Queen at the age of 18 in 1837 when her uncle, King William IV, passed away. She ruled Britain 63 years Young Victoria Queen Victoria Queen Victoria in Old Age 2. A Period of Growth, Development and Reform Urbanization Industrialization Reform Bill England became the workshop of the world. 19th Century England 3. Conflicts Between Capital and Labor The new Poor Law of 1834 brought along with it the workhouse system which made thousands of poor free toilers for nothing but a rat’s den and never-adequate cheap food for a bare sustenance. The Corn Law (1815) made bread too expensive for the poor. The severe depression, widespread unemployment, and the intensified exploitation of man, woman and child labor brought great miseries to the poor people. Life in early Victorian mines and factories was poor, nasty, and brutish. Conditions under which women and children toiled in mines and factories were unimaginably brutal. Even a 5-year-old dragged heavy tubs of coal through low-ceilinged mine passages for 13-16 hours a day. By 1836, the working class movement known as Chartism had risen, and in 1837, the London Workmen’s Association put forward its six-point demand in the People’s Charter, in which they were demanding the right to vote and to be voted, and to have better working and living conditions. Thousands upon thousands of people had signed the charter, but for three times it was rejected by the Parliament. 4. Changes in Ideology Science and technology developed very fast. New inventions and discoveries in geology, astronomy, biology and anthropology drastically changed people’s life. German philosophers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Comte exerted great influences over British ideological field. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) shook the theoretical basis of the conventional religious faith. On the other hand, against the powerful, dogm