1880 - 1910 Context

Question 1

Feminism

Answer 1

• Women are not able to vote or own property throughout 1880-1910
• In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Sylvia and Christabel founded the suffragettes.
• Women began advocating for their rights
• By 1901, 25% of all factory workers were women and poor women still worked in factories. As women began to earn their own money, their agency slowly increased which was not championed by men. There was backlash for the growing feminism.
• Huge social stigma surrounded unmarried women and those who had babies outside of wedlock, regardless of whose fault it was.

Question 2

Religion

Answer 2

• The Anglican Church was still the mother church of the fin-de-siecle period, but the pertinence of science reduced some of its influence over general faithful teachings, like evolution.
• Dissenters, Catholics, and Jews were no longer barred from important societal positions like the civil service or politics.
• Some members of the upper-classes were able to get away with outwardly professing atheism, or even converting to other religions such as Islam. Nevertheless, the working classes largely stuck to Christianity.
• The fin-de-siecle period saw a second Darwinian renaissance, with rapidly developing technology like the zeppelin or the automobile.

Question 3

Social Class and Marxism

Answer 3

• Marx’s idea of ‘class consciousness’, i.e. that the working class would realise the plight of their situation, was poignant as Late Victorian/Edwardian workers had no form of union representation or proper workers’ rights. They would commonly work 12+ hours a day for low wages.
• Meanwhile, the fin-de-siecle aristocracy grew richer. Most of the authors of this period will be from a well-off background owing to their ability to access education.
• By the 1900s, a ‘cult of youth’ began to protest these conditions, and more Liberal politicians were elected to Parliament to protect the ‘have-nots’.

Question 4

Post Colonialism

Answer 4

• Queen Victoria was known as ‘Empress of India’, as was her
  son, Edward VII.
• 1888 saw the year of the ‘Scramble For Africa’. Following a European conference, western nations pictured left ‘scrambled’ to seize territory in Africa and to spread European ideals whilst also killing the natives in a series of wars - such as the 2 Boer Wars.

Question 5

Queer Theory and Psychoanalysis

Answer 5

• Women who went ‘insane’ were diagnosed with ‘hysteria’, without any consideration given as to why this may be.
• Female homosexuality was never illegal in the UK, but male homosexuality was, and there was great stigma surrounding it.
• Green carnations were a symbol used by gay men, including one of the most famous authors of this period, Oscar Wilde. Queer writers will often centre their stories around sexuality