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Of all decades in our history, a wise man would choose the eighteen-fifties to be young in.
--G. M. Young
The illustration above is of the Crystal Palace, the building in Hyde Park, London, which housed the Great Exhbition of 1851. Its full name was the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations and, as such, was the first world's fair. For me, it is emblematic of the single-minded, at times naively optimistic attitudes that are often found in the "High" or mid-Victorian period. Consider, for example, Prince Albert's comments:
So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His reason being created after the image of God, he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs his creation, and, by making these laws his standard of action, to conquer Nature to his use--himself a divine instrument. . . . Gentlemen--The Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions. I confidently hope the first impression which the view of this vast collection will produce upon the spectator will be that of deep thankfulness to the Almighty for the blessings which He has bestowed upon us already here below; and the second, the conviction that they can only be realized in proportion to the help which we are prepared to render to each other--therefore, only by peace, love, and ready assistance, not only between individuals, but between the nations of the earth. (quoted in The Great Exhibition of 1851, London: HMSO, 1981, 9, emphasis mine)
This period began sometime around mid-century, and it is the time that most of us think of when we think of the Victorians. W. L. Burn, in The Age of Equipoise, suggests that it lasted from around 1852 until 1867, roughly one generation (New York: Norton, 1965, 15). It was the time when "Great Britain found herself incomparably the richest nation on earth, the world's foremost banker, shipper, supplier of manufactured goods, and through her navy, keeper of the peace in the mercantile sea lanes" (Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, New York: Norton, 1973, 12).
The headnote in the Norton Anthology--subtitled "Economic Prosperity and Religious Controvery" gives a solid general overview which bears repeating here:
In the decades following the Time of Troubles some Victorian writers, such as Dickens, continued to make critical attacks on the shortcomings of the Victorian social scene. Even more critical and indignant than Dickens was John Ruskin, who abandoned the criticism of art during this period to expose the faults of Victorian industry and commerce, as in his The Stones of Venice (1853), which combines a history of architecture with stern prophecies about the doom of technological culture, or in his attacks on laissez-faire economics in Unto This Last (1862). Generally speaking, however, the "solid substance" of the novels of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)--as Robert Adams has described it--is a more characteristic reflection of the mid-Victorian attitude toward the social and political scene than are Ruskin's lamentations. As Adams said of Trollope in 1983: "His books are solidly put together, as befits the world of fixed values and stable institutions that he describes; aided, perhaps, by a bit of nostalgia, they have regained in our time some of the popularity they had in their own." Overall, this second phase of the Victorian period had many harassing problems, but it was a time of prosperity. On the whole its institutions worked well. Even the badly bungled war against Russia in the Crimea (1854-56) did not seriously affect the growing sense of satisfaction that the challenging difficulties of the 1840s had been solved or would be solved by English wisdom and energy. The monarchy was proving its worth in a modern setting. The queen and her husband, Prince Albert, were themselves models of middle-class domesticity and devotion to duty. The aristocracy was discovering that Free Trade was enriching rather than impoverishing their estates; agriculture flourished together with trade and industry. And through a succession of Factory Acts in Parliament, which restricted child labor and limited hours of employment, the condition of the working classes was also being gradually improved. When we speak of Victorian complacency or stability or optimism, we are usually referring to this mid-Victorian phase--"The Age of Improvement," as the historian Asa Briggs has called it. (1048)
Conflicts in religion and science became increasingly evident during the "High" Victorian period. A familiarity with the following terms will help you to understand some of the problems:
Based upon the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism sought to reform society by rationally testing all institutions for their utility (usefulness). Through this application of reason, they believed that they could attain the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. The "test" worked fairly well when reforming government and organizing public works, but it created problems when applied to religion and discounted the validity of many forms of entertainment.
This began in the 1830's as a movement to strengthen the Church of England. It was essentially a Catholic revival within the Anglican Church that placed an emphasis on the dogma and ceremony of the Church. Ironically, for some, such as John Henry Newman, one of its leading figures, the movement led from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.
The controversy surrounding evolution erupted in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. However, science had been challenging religion since the 1830's. Two notable works were Charles Lyell's The Principles of Geology (1830-33) and Robert Chambers' Vestiges of Creation (1844). These placed in question the accuracy of Biblical accounts of the age of the world.
This refers to the application of scientific principles to the study of the Bible itself. As the Norton Anthology notes, "Instead of treating the Bible as a sacredly infallible document, scientifically minded scholars examined it as a mere text of history and presented evidence" that made many believers uncomfortable (1051).
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© Scott Foll 2000. All rights reserved.