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General Conditions - Victorian Period

from A History of English Literature
From Robert Huntington Fletcher
The last completed period of English literature, almost coincident in extent with
the reign of the queen whose name it bears (Victoria, queen 1837-1901), stands
nearly beside The Elizabethan period in the significance and interest of its work.
The Elizabethan literature to be sure, in its imaginative and spiritual enthusiasm,
is the expression of a period more profoundly great than the Victorian; but the
Victorian literature speaks for an age which witnessed incomparably greater
changes than any that had gone before in all the conditions of life--material
comforts, scientific knowledge, and, absolutely speaking, in intellectual and
spiritual enlightenment. Moreover, to twentieth century students the Victorian
literature makes a specially strong appeal because it is in part the literature of
our own time and its ideas and point of view are in large measure ours. We must
begin by glancing briefly at some of the general determining changes and
conditions to which reference has just been made, and we may naturally begin
with the merely material ones. Before the accession of Queen Victoria the
'industrial revolution,' the vast development of manufacturing made possible in
the latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction of coal and the
steam engine, had rendered England the richest nation in the world, and the
movement continued with steadily accelerating momentum throughout the
period. Hand in hand with it went the increase of population from less than
thirteen millions in England in 1825 to nearly three times as many at the end of
the period. The introduction of the steam railway and the steamship, at the
beginning of the period, in place of the lumbering stagecoach and the sailing
vessel, broke up the old stagnant and stationary habits of life and increased the
amount of travel at least a thousand times. The discovery of the electric
telegraph in 1844 brought almost every important part of Europe, and eventually
of the world, nearer to every town dweller than the nearest county had been in
the eighteenth century; and the development of the modern newspaper out of
the few feeble sheets of 1825 (dailies and weeklies in London, only weeklies
elsewhere), carried full accounts of the doings of the whole world, in place of
long-delayed fragmentary rumors, to every door within a few hours. No less
striking was the progress in public health and the increase in human happiness
due to the enormous advance in the sciences of medicine, surgery, and hygiene.
Indeed these sciences in their modern form virtually began with the discovery of
the facts of bacteriology about 1860, and the use of antiseptics fifteen years
later, and not much earlier began the effective opposition to the frightful
epidemics which had formerly been supposed to be dependent only on the will of
Providence. Political and social progress, though less astonishing, was

substantial. In 1830 England, nominally a monarchy, was in reality a plutocracy

of about a hundred thousand men--landed nobles, gentry, and wealthy
merchants--whose privileges dated back to fifteenth century conditions. The first
Reform Bill, of 1832, forced on Parliament by popular pressure, extended the
right of voting to men of the 'middle class,' and the subsequent bills of 1867 and
1885 made it universal for men. Meanwhile the House of Commons slowly
asserted itself against the hereditary House of Lords, and thus England became
perhaps the most truly democratic of the great nations of the world. At the
beginning of the period the social condition of the great body of the population
was extremely bad. Laborers in factories and mines and on farms were largely in
a state of virtual though not nominal slavery, living, many of them, in
unspeakable moral and physical conditions. Little by little improvement came,
partly by the passage of laws, partly by the growth of trades-unions. The
substitution in the middle of the century of free-trade for protection through the
passage of the 'Corn-Laws' afforded much relief by lowering the price of food.
Socialism, taking shape as a definite movement in the middle of the century,
became one to be reckoned with before its close, though the majority of the
more well-to-do classes failed to understand even then the growing necessity for
far-reaching economic and social changes. Humanitarian consciousness,
however, gained greatly during the period. The middle and upper classes awoke
to some extent to their duty to the poor, and sympathetic benevolent effort, both
organized and informal, increased very largely in amount and intelligence.
Popular education, too, which in 1830 had no connection with the State and was
in every respect very incomplete, was developed and finally made compulsory as
regards the rudiments. Still more permanently significant, perhaps, was the
transformation of the former conceptions of the nature and meaning of the world
and life, through the discoveries of science. Geology and astronomy now
gradually compelled all thinking people to realize the unthinkable duration of the
cosmic processes and the comparative littleness of our earth in the vast extent
of the universe. Absolutely revolutionary for almost all lines if thought was the
gradual adoption by almost all thinkers of the theory of Evolution, which, partly
formulated by Lamarck early in the century, received definite statement in 1859
in Charles Darwin's 'Origin ofSpecies.' The great modification in the externals of
religious belief thus brought about was confirmed also by the growth of the
science of historical criticism. This movement of religious change was met in its
early stages by the very interesting reactionary 'Oxford' or 'Tractarian'
Movement, which asserted the supreme authority of the Church and its
traditional doctrines. The most important figure in this movement, who connects
it definitely with literature, was John Henry Newman (1801-90), author of the
hymn 'Lead, Kindly Light,' a man of winning personality and great literary skill.
For fifteen years, as vicar of the Oxford University Church, Newman was a great
spiritual force in the English communion, but the series of 'Tracts for the Times'
to which he largely contributed, ending in 1841 in the famous Tract 90, tell the
story of his gradual progress toward Rome. Thereafter as an avowed Roman
Catholic and head of a monastic establishment Newman showed himself a
formidable controversialist, especially in a literary encounter with the clergymannovelist Charles Kingsley which led to Newman's famous 'Apologia pro Vita Sua'

(Apology for My Life), one of the secondary literary masterpieces of the century.
His services to the Catholic Church were recognized in 1879 by his appointment
as a Cardinal. More than one of the influences thus hastily surveyed combine in
creating the moral, social, and intellectual strenuousness which is one of the
main marks of the literature of the period. More conspicuously than ever before
the majority of the great writers, not least the poets and novelists, were impelled
not merely by the emotional or dramatic creative impulse but by the sense of a
message for their age which should broaden the vision and elevate the ideals of
the masses of their fellows. The literature of the period, therefore, lacks the
disinterested and joyous spontaneity of, for example, the Elizabethan period, and
its mood is far more complex than that of the partly socially-minded pseudoclassicists. While all the new influences were manifesting themselves in Victorian
literature they did not, of course, supersede the great general inherited
tendencies. This literature is in the main romantic. On the social side this should
be evident; the Victorian social humanitarianism is merely the developed form of
the eighteenth century romantic democratic impulse. On the esthetic side the
romantic traits are also present, though not so aggressively as in the previous
period; with romantic vigor the Victorian literature often combines exquisite
classical finish; indeed, it is so eclectic and composite that all the definite older
terms take on new and less sharply contrasting meanings when applied to it. So
long a period naturally falls into sub-divisions; during its middle part in particular,
progress and triumphant romanticism, not yet largely attacked by scientific
scepticism, had created a prevailing atmosphere of somewhat passive sentiment
and optimism both in society and in literature which has given to the adjective
'mid-Victorian' a very definite denotation. The adjective and its period are
commonly spoken of with contempt in our own day by those persons who pride
themselves on their complete sophistication and superiority to all intellectual and
emotional weakness. But during the 'mid-Victorian' years, there was also a
comparative healthiness in the lives of the well-to-do classes and in literature
which had never before been equalled and which may finally prove no less
praiseworthy than the rather self-conscious freedom and unrestraint of the early
twentieth century. The most important literature of the whole
period falls under the three heads of essays, poetry, and prose
fiction, which we may best consider in that order.

http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/articles/poverty.html
Population increase

The nineteenth century saw a huge growth in the population of Great

Britain.
The reason for this increase is not altogether clear. Various ideas have
been put forward; larger families; more children surviving infancy;
people living longer; immigration, especially large numbers of

Young carers, c.
1890
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immigrants coming from Ireland fleeing the potato famine and the unemployment situation in
their own country.
By the end of the century there were three times more people living in Great Britain than at
the beginning.
Growth of the cities

Although the population of the country as a whole was rising at an unprecedented rate, that of
the towns and cities was increasing by leaps and bounds. This was due to the effects of the
industrial revolution; people were flocking into the towns and cities in search of employment.
For some it was also the call of the unknown, adventure and a better way of life.
The search for employment

Therefore all these factors population explosion, immigration both foreign and domestic
added up and resulted in a scramble for any job available.
Large numbers of both skilled and unskilled people were looking for work, so wages were
low, barely above subsistence level. If work dried up, or was seasonal, men were laid off, and
because they had hardly enough to live on when they were in work, they had no savings to
fall back on.
Child labour

Children were expected to help towards the family budget. They often worked long hours in
dangerous jobs and in difficult situations for a very little wage.
For example, there were the climbing boys employed by the chimney sweeps; the little
children who could scramble under machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins; boys and girls
working down the coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and low to take an adult.
Some children worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, and they sold matches,
flowers and other cheap goods.
The housing shortage

Low wages and the scramble for jobs meant that people needed to live
near to where work was available. Time taken walking to and from work
would extend an already long day beyond endurance.
Consequently available housing became scarce and therefore expensive,
resulting in extremely overcrowded conditions.
Slum housing

All these problems were magnified in London where the population grew
at a record rate. Large houses were turned into flats and tenements and
London through
the haze
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the landlords who owned them, were not concerned about the upkeep or the condition of
these dwellings.
In his book The Victorian underworld, Kellow Chesney gives a graphic description of the
conditions in which many were living:
Hideous slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery,
make up a substantial part of the, metropolis In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more
people of all ages may inhabit a single room, (1)
Overcrowding

Many people could not afford the rents that were being charged and so they rented out space
in their room to one or two lodgers who paid between twopence and fourpence a day.
Great wealth and extreme poverty lived side by side because the tenements, slums, rookeries
were only a stones throw from the large elegant houses of the rich.
The name rookeries was given to these dwellings because of the way people lived without
separate living accommodation for each family. The analogy being that whereas other birds
appear to live in separate families, rooks do not. Neither did the very poor in the tenements of
London.
Poor sanitary conditions

Henry Mayhew was an investigative journalist who wrote a series of articles for the Morning
Chronicle about the way the poor of London lived and worked.
In an article published on 24th September 1849 he described a London Street with a tidal
ditch running through it, into which drains and sewers emptied. The ditch contained the only
water the people in the street had to drink, and it was the colour of strong green tea, in fact
it was more like watery mud than muddy water. This is the report he gave:
As we gazed in horror at it, we saw drains and sewers emptying their filthy contents into it;
we saw a whole tier of doorless privies in the open road, common to men and women built
over it; we heard bucket after bucket of filth splash into it (2).
Mayhews articles were later published in a book called London Labour and the London Poor
and in the introduction he wrote:
the condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance, and vice, amidst all the
immense wealth and great knowledge of the first city in the world, is, to say the very least,
a national disgrace to us (3).
Destitution

Many cases of death caused by starvation and destitution were reported. One example of such
a report will suffice. In 1850 an inquest was held on a 38 year old man whose body was
reported as being little more than a skeleton, his wife was described as being the very
personification of want and her child as a skeleton infant(4)
Homeless children

Obviously these conditions affected children as well as adults.

There were children living with their families in these desperate situations but there were also
numerous, homeless, destitute children living on the streets of London.
Many children were turned out of home and left to fend for themselves at an early age and
many more ran away because of ill treatment.
In her book The Victorian town child, Pamela Horn writes:
In 1848 Lord Ashley referred to more than thirty thousand 'naked, filthy, roaming lawless
and deserted children, in and around the metropolis' ' (5).
Children and crime

Many destitute children lived by stealing, and to the respectable Victorians they must have
seemed a very real threat to society. Something had to be done about them to preserve law
and order.
Many people thought that education was the answer and Ragged schools were started to meet
the need. However there were dissenting voices against this. Henry Mayhew argued that:
since crime was not caused by illiteracy, it could not be cured by education the only
certain effects being the emergence of a more skilful and sophisticated race of criminals (6).
Society's attitude towards the poor

It does appear that many people and various agencies were becoming aware of the problem,
but the sheer scale of it must have seemed overwhelming.
One of the difficulties in dealing with it were contemporary attitudes:
the poor were improvident, they wasted any money they had on drink and gambling;
God had put people in their place in life and this must not be interfered with because the life
after death was more important
are some of the comments people might have made.
As far as the later comment is concerned, this is clearly demonstrated in a hymn published in
1848 by Cecil Frances Alexander:

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high and lowly,
And orderd their estate (7)
Social charities

As the century progressed the plight of the poor, and of the destitute homeless children,
impinged on the consciences of more and more people. The Victorian era can also be thought
of as one of intense philanthropy. Many of our modern day charitable institutions, such as
The Children's Society, have their roots at this time.
Barbara Daniels, March 2003