THE VICTORIAN AGE Flashcards
The “Condition of England Question”
a phrase coined by the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle to describe the shocking contrast between the wealth of the country and the impoverishment of the lower classes
Corn Laws
established high tariffs on imports in order to protect British landowners and farmers from foreign competition
1815
Irish Potato famine date ? damage ?
1845
it killed 800 000 people
(it shows the danger of protectionism)
link religion / science at the beginning of 19th century
it was widely acknowledged that scientists, by studying God’s work in nature, HELPED TO UNDERSTAND THE BEAUTIFUL COMPLEXITY OF HIS WORK IN THE BIBLE
Science and religion DEALT WITH THE SAME TRUTH (albeit from a different perspective), and they simply could not be at variance from each other.
Faith in Victorian society
faith was deeply-entrenched in the psyche of the British people and remained a focal point of everyday life
Darwin’s major work and the problem with religion
ON the Origin of Species 1859 : it dismisses the possibilities of a providential higher power
Darwin accounts for the variation of a species by the death of the unfit members of that species, therefor implicitly excluding the design of God
An exemple of Victorian moral attitudes
Samuel Smiles book : Self Help 1859
He expounded the gospel of work
“energy accomplishes more than genius”
Victorian virtues
earnestness
hard work
respect
Dickens and moral
he exposed the poverty and crime that were rampant in some London slums and made a point of humanizing characters that were generally regarded as inherently immoral like prostitute and beggars
Quotation Oscar Wilde
The picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
