The Victorian Age or the Age of Tennyson was a period of productivity and scientific temperament. It was an age of expansion of colonialism and as well as many discoveries in the field of anthropology , geography , industrial growth and new inventions. It saw a huge progress in urbanisation and economic development was escalating at a higher progress. The society was changing rapidly from primitive machines to new inventions like Steam Engines and other factories were opened to increase trade and commerce. many of the raw materials were being imported from the colonial lands including India to London for its manufacturing and hence the age rapidly progress in terms of economy.
The Victorian era was a class conscious society. Due to the rapid growth of industrialization, the workers and labourers emerged from the rural areas to urban areas in search of a job. These workers were given unequal privileges and opportunities for their hard labour and these aspects of realities were depicted in the novels of Charles Dickens. As the factories started to grew, child labour was common as small children were hired to work inside the factories due to their small physical size and were easily manageable for certain tasks which the adults are unable to.
The most important impact of the industrialization was the growth of materialistic mindset and utilitarianism. These elements gripped in the society and Dickens Hard Times clearly represented the theme of materialism and utilitarianism in the novel. It seems that people were attached to capitalism and money instead of happiness. The novel shows the clashes between facts and fancy where Thomas Gradgrind was a representation of materialistic mindset who believe in the idea of facts and mathematical world but Sissy Jupe believes in the idea of emotions and fancy or an ethereal world of colours. These depictions shows that the clash between facts and fancy was evident in the age and Matthew Arnold in his “Dover Beach” highlights the lack of humanity where there are “no joy, nor help for pain” implying the weight of engulfment of utilitarianism over emotional sympathy.
However, the status of woman in the society was an established order of conventional norms. They adapted a new idea of “Angel in the house” where woman were supposed to confine themselves to household chores and maintain a strict values of moral code and chastity. Woman were deprived of their status and they were forced to marry someone from their own level of status. In terms of their professional status, they were given a profession of a teacher or a tutor as compared to the status of a man. One can observe the unequal privileges in the status of a woman.
The Victorian era witnessed the search and quest for knowledge. It was not only the journey to the East and discover lands but the developments of understanding the working of the universe and planets. There was a spirit of inquiry and this was a common essence in many of the Victorian poems. Charles Lyell “Principles of Geology” led to the primitive discovery of natural catastrophe and disaster that happens on earth. He tried to inquire the calamity of Noah’s flood in the Bible to be of natural disaster like earthquake which contradicted the Bible and hence it resulted in the early signs of conflict between science and religion.
The Victorian era was heavily affected by Charles Darwin’s Theory which led to the Victorian compromise. He published his book called “On the origin of Species” which caused religious instability in the society. This book tried to highlight the evolution of mankind and stated that there were no intervention of God in creating the mankind. It was the process of evolution that made mankind evolved and it contradicted with the religious doctrine and Bible. Hence, the transitional poets like Matthew Arnold mourns the loss of faith by people due to Darwinian theory.
Lastly, the era witnessed a struggle for unequal rights and demand.The Reform Bills Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 was passed to the parliament to give equal voting rights to the lower strata of society. Many civil workers were not involved in the participation of democratic rights and voting rights. These Reforms were passed to give equal representations and rights in the social status and to give a recognition of the downtrodden in the society.
