The context

It covers the reign of Queen Victoria that develops from 1837 to 1901, the longest in British history. The Victorian age takes its name right from Queen Victoria. It means a period of prosperity and stability in domestic policy, because there weren’t interior war in those years.

The Industrial Revolution

It was a period of prosperity thanks to the development of Industrial Revolution. Agriculture, industry, technology and communication were fields affected by the Revolution in full flood.

On the country machines substitutes men’s job that are more productive in less time. Moreover enclosures, the closure of open-fields, contributed to the movement to find others job. So many people went to the industrial cities, settled next to mines to work. Cities where settled next to mines because it was easier to be provided of coal, the most important fuel.  Innovations in technology and new workers gave to industries the possibility to grow up and thanks to the development of railways and canals it could sold its goods in all over the country. 

Imperialism

England became one of the most important powers all over the Word, these countries were British colonies. Imperialism was so important for Industrial Revolution because it gave the possibility to buy row materials where the costs were low, for example in India. In this way England could enter into the system of competition. Furthermore England could send there her goods.

Social classes

In those years there were three different social classes: the first one was aristocracy, the old land owners; the second one was middle class, represented by bankers, manufacturers, merchants and financial; the last one was working class, made up of factory and rural workers.

Society was characterized by clashes between social classes.

The first one was between aristocracy and middle class. Aristocracy lost importance in favour of middle class because middle class had invested his capitals in industries and these gave to it a lot of profits and importance in English economy, so he pretended an important part in the decision of the government. For this reason born the party of Liberals, that preserves middle class’ rights, set against the old party of Tories, made up of aristocracy members.

The second one was between middle class and working class. It was due to the difficult conditions where the working class was forced to work. Middle class exploited those 10 or 12 hours a day to improve their capitals and so did with women and children. In addiction to that there were no rules to guarantee the security of workers and hygiene. To face this hard condition, workers began to organize them into associations to assure rights for workers, especially at the end of the century when them became legal and they became trade unions.

Cultural aspects of Victorian Age

In those years develops the culture of utility and utilitarianism. Everything had to be useful for the progress of society, so culture and art had to teach moral.

It was a clash between heart and mind of artists. Poets used dramatic monologue because using a mask they were able to shift the reader to a word of fiction and they could express their opinion referring to a critical moment.