The Victorian Era

Society and Living Conditions

Public Sphere

• Industrialization brought many working class women into the “paid” economy

• 1832: All property-owning males could vote

• 1847: Karl Marx – Communist Manifesto– inequity of industrial capitalist society– revolution is the necessary response

• 1867: voting rights extended to ALL males

Private Life

• Really only applies to Upper-middle class families

• A man’s home was his “castle” and the woman was “the angel in the house”

• Wives had responsibility for instilling morals, propriety and culture in children

Intellectual Issues

• Intellectual Progress– Laws of nature and human intelligence continued to

thrive throughout the Victorian period.

• Darwin’s Origin of Species • Education was now viewed as the vehicle to

take society out of poverty and need. • Success was measured for the first time not by

the position you were born into--but the position you climbed to.

Domestic Issues

• Cities were filthy--raw sewage was polluting the Thames river.

• Unemployment was high since England was in the midst of economic depression.

• Ten to twelve hour work day was normal.

• Children worked in slave conditions in coal mines and factories.

Domestic Progress

• Streets were named

• Houses were numbered

• Garbage was collected

• Sewage was eventually moved away from people’s homes and treated

• Inventions (light bulb, telephone, anesthesia etc) aided in everyday life

Gender Issues

• Women were expected to marry, produce children

• In 1850, women outnumbered men in England by 500,000

• By 1880, public education was generally available for both boys and girls

The Woman’s Question

• Questions first addressed by Wollstonecraft in the 18th Century, become major issues of public debate.

• Right to vote was only one of main issues discussed.

• Unequal rights for women was defended on both religious and increasingly pseudo-scientific grounds.

Industrial Revolution

• The application of power-driven machinery to manufacturing.

• change was rapid• Destroyed home/small scale industry, crafts,

guilds, and peasant farmer

– Often skilled artisans found themselves degraded to routine process laborers as machines began to mass produce the products formerly made by hand.

Laissez Faire Economics

• French for “Allow to do.”• Policy based of minimum

of governmental interference in the economic affairs.

• An individual, pursuing his/her own desired ends, would achieve the best results for the society.

• Free Trade.• Zero regulation on

business. • Adam Smith was influential

proponent.

Working Conditions

• Large supply of labor– Employers had no

incentive to look out for the employees' safety or health. 

– If one worker was injured he or she was easily replaced.

• Long hours– Factory laborers endured

sixteen hour work days

• Low wages

Child Labor

• Children expected to contribute to the family's income because they had in agricultural economy.– Children as young as five

or six were sent to work in factories and mines.

• Children were placed under the supervision of an overseer rather than a parent. 

Working Class Living Conditions

• In factory towns, workers lived in hastily built tenements. – lack of good brick– no building codes– the lack of machinery for

public sanitation. – factory owners' tendency to

regard laborers as commodities and not as a group of human beings.