Victorian era

In thehistory of the United Kingdom,theVictorian erawas the period ofQueen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed theGeorgian periodand preceded theEdwardian period,and its later half overlaps with the first part of theBelle Époqueera of Continental Europe.

Queen Victoria in 1859 by Winterhalter

Quotes

• One thing that strikes me when I think ofBoothis the nonsense that is talked today about thepovertyof the Victorian age. Why the Victorian age is so unpopular today very largely arises from the fact that, in spite of all its faults, there was among its great men, who were numerous, a faith ingoodness:there was a moral earnestness and there was a sense of duty and a performance of duty.
  • Stanley Baldwin,speech to theSalvation ArmyWilliam Booth Centenary Celebrations, London (10 April 1929), quoted inThis Torch of Freedom(1935), pp. 106-107

• It is in the connection of the conflict with theYankee...that we can perhaps best understand theSouth's unusual proneness to sentimentality.
  The root of the thing, obviously, was in the simple man... It was part and parcel, in fact, with his unrealism andromanticism,and grew as they grew. It gathered force, too, from theZeitgeist,of course—from the great tide of sentimentality which, rolling up slowly through the years following theFrench Revolution,broke over the Western world in flooding fullness with the accession ofVictoriato thethrone of England.Nowhere, indeed, did this Victorianism, with its false feeling, its excessive nicety, its will to the denial of the ugly, find more sympathetic acceptance than in the South.
  • W. J. Cash,The Mind of the South(1941; 1991), p. 82

• ThecolonisationofAustraliaandNew Zealand,and the acquisition ofSouth Africain the decline ofHolland,created the new and widerBritish Empirestill based upon sea-power and comprising a fifth of the human race, over which Queen Victoria, in the longest reign ofBritish history,presided. In this period moral issues arising fromChristianethics became prominent. Theslave trade,from whichBritainhad so shamelessly profited in the past, was suppressed by theRoyal Navy.Bya terrible internal struggle,at the cost of nearly a million lives,slaverywas extirpated from theUnited States;above all, theUnionwas preserved.
  • Winston Churchill,A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Volume IV: The Great Democracies(1958), p. ix

• During the last half of the19th centurythere was a marked fall in thecrimerate with a substantial decrease in both crimes ofdishonestyandviolence,and in the illegitimacy rate, and the beginnings of a fall in the incidence ofdrug and alcohol abuse.It was a period of striking moral reform in personal behaviour which transformedBritainfrom being a violent, dishonest and addicted society into a peaceable, law-abiding, respectable and essentially moral realm that endured for much of the20th century.
  • Christie Davies,'Moralization and Demoralization: A Moral Explanation for Changes in Crime, Disorder and Social Problems', in Digby Anderson (ed.),The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America(1992), p. 3

• British rates of recorded crime fell as markedly in the latter part of the 19th century as they have risen since. The overall incidence of serious offences recorded by the police in the 1890s was only about 60 per cent of what it had been in the 1850s and, given that the efficiency of the reporting and recording of crime was improving at the time, therealfall in the crime rate was probably far greater than that indicated by officialstatistics.Thus in 1900 Britain was not only a less violent and dishonest country than today, but also less violent and dishonest than it had been in the earlier part of the 19th century.
  • Christie Davies,'Moralization and Demoralization: A Moral Explanation for Changes in Crime, Disorder and Social Problems', in Digby Anderson (ed.),The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America(1992), p. 5

• [A]n earlier generation ofBritonssucceeded in changing the character of their people and producing a diminution in the many forms ofdeviancethat have reappeared and flourished in our own time, because they saw them as constituting not a social but amoralproblem whose solution lay in the reform of personal conduct. One key agency in spreading and transmittingGorer's "strictconscienceandself-control"from being" a feature of a relatively small part of the population "to becoming" general throughout nearly the whole of society "was theSunday schoolwhose enrolments rose as the incidence of deviant behaviour fell in the late19th century.Significantly, the numbers enrolled in and the influence of this institution then fell in the years prior to the reversal of the U-curve of deviance which has produced Britain's present high level of moral problems. There seems to be a clear inverse relationship between the rise and fall of the Sunday school...and the fall and rise of deviant behaviour.
  • Christie Davies,'Moralization and Demoralization: A Moral Explanation for Changes in Crime, Disorder and Social Problems', in Digby Anderson (ed.),The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America(1992), p. 10

• The postulate that there was a link of some kind between the rise of the Sunday school and the original decline of deviance is reinforced by the geographical evidence as well as the aggregate changes over time.Wales,which historically had been one of the more violent and lawless parts of Britain, became in the later 19th century an especially peaceable and law-abiding place, characterised bytemperanceand a strict moral code.
  • Christie Davies,'Moralization and Demoralization: A Moral Explanation for Changes in Crime, Disorder and Social Problems', in Digby Anderson (ed.),The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America(1992), p. 10

• No one will ever understand Victorian England who does not appreciate that among highly civilized...countries it was one of the most religious that the world has known. Moreover its particular type ofChristianitylaid a peculiarly direct emphasis upon conduct; for, though it recognized both grace and faith as essentials to salvation, it was in practice also very largely a doctrine of salvation by works. This type, which had come to dominatechurchmenandnonconformistsalike, may be called, using the term in a broad sense,evangelicalism... [I]t became afterQueen Victoria's marriage practically the religion of the court, and gripped all ranks and conditions of society. AfterMelbourne's departure it inspired nearly every front-rank public man, savePalmerston,for four decades... [N]othing is more remarkable than the way in which evangelicalism in the broader sense overleaped sectarian barriers and pervaded men of all creeds... EvenDisraeli,by nature as remote from it as Palmerston, paid every deference to it in politics, and conformed to all its externals in Hughenden church.
  • Robert Ensor,England 1870–1914(1936), p. 137

• During the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries the strict conscience and self-control, which had been a feature of a relatively small part of the English population, became general throughout nearly the whole of the society... The forces which led to this transformation in character are difficult to establish; although religious belief is not nowadays typical of the prosperous working class, it is possible that the evangelical missions ofJohn Wesley,of whom it is said that he prevented theFrench Revolutionreaching England, may have played a significant part in their time, particularly in the industrial Northern regions. So too may have done the gradual spread of universal education. On the basis of the evidence available to me, however, I should consider that the most significant factor in the development of a strict conscience and law-abiding habits in the majority of urban English men and women was the invention and development of the institution of the modern English police force.
  • Geoffrey Gorer,Exploring English Character(1955), p. 294

• One of the most impressive demonstrations of the increase in the law-abiding character of the English is the following table of the number of criminal commitments in the half century between 1841 and 1891. During this period serious offences decreased 60 per cent in volume, and 80 per cent relative to the increase of population. As can be seen, the really dramatic break in criminal commitments came in the decade 1851–1861. Police forces were first established all over England by theCounty and Borough Police Act of 1856.
  • Geoffrey Gorer,Exploring English Character(1955), pp. 294-295

• To the degree Victorians succeeded in "bourgeoisifying" the ethos, they also democratized it. That ethos was not, to be sure, an exalted or heroic one. Hard work, sobriety, frugality, foresight—these were modest, mundane virtues, even lowly ones. But they were virtues within the capacity of everyone; they did not assume any special breeding, or status, or talent, or valor, or grace—or even money. They were common virtues within the reach of common people. They were, so to speak, democratic virtues.
  • Gertrude Himmelfarb,'In Defense of the Victorians',The Wilson Quarterly,Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer 1988), pp. 98-99

• They were alsoliberalvirtues. By putting a premium on ordinary virtues attainable by ordinary people, the ethos located responsibility within each individual. It was no longer only the exceptional, the heroic individual who was the master of his fate; every individual could be his own master. So far from promoting social control, the ethos had the effect of promoting self-control. This was at the heart ofVictorian morality:self-control, self-help, self-reliance, self-discipline. A liberal society, the Victorians believed, depended upon a moral citizenry. The stronger the voluntary exercise of morality on the part of each individual—the more internalized that morality—the weaker need be the external, coercive instruments of the state. For the Victorians, morality served as a substitute for law, just as law was a substitute for force.
  • Gertrude Himmelfarb,'In Defense of the Victorians',The Wilson Quarterly,Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer 1988), p. 99

• The gentleman of the nineteenth century had broken, once Victorianism loomed on the horizon, with the wild andliberalisticvagaries of his forefathers. His background was frequentlymiddle classand inEnglandit was the influence of the Low Church which molded his type. He was deadly afraid to be different. On the Continent it wascompulsory military serviceand in England thepublic schoolwhich fostered the herd instinct. To be different wastreasonand indecency. The religious principles of old were replaced by taboos. The return to primitive society had begun.
  • Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn,Liberty or Equality(1952), p. 73

• Victorian historians too often depicted the past as an inevitable progress leading to the glorious present when Britain ruled the world. AndFrenchandGermanandRussianandAmericanhistoriansdid much the same thing for their nations’ stories. Like epic poems, their books were filled with heroes and villains and stirring events. Such histories, says Michael Howard, the eminent British historian, sustain us in difficult times, but they are “nursery history.”
  • Margaret MacMillan,The Uses and Abuses of History(2008), p. 39

• Take another look at the graph showing illegitimacy from the 1500s up to the present, and focus on the period from 1850–1900. It would be hard to find a time or place in whichindustrialisationandurbanisationwere faster, more sweeping, or more wrenching than in Victorian England. And yet during that same period, illegitimacy went down, not up (crime also dropped, amazingly). The Victorian middle class was superbly efficient at propagating its values throughout society, and its success overcame the naturally disruptive forces of modernisation.
  • Charles Murray,Underclass: The Crisis Deepens(1994), pp. 9-10

• Now the Victorian Age, or the nineteenth century as a whole, was a great moral reformer... It proclaimed that men, even courtiers and noblemen, ought not to bedrunkenor dissolute or evencorrupt,thatpoliticswere really concerned with thewelfareof the people, that the rich had duties towards the poor. The transition fromGeorge IVand his unpleasing brothers to the youngQueenand thePrince Consortwas typical of a much wider change. WhenLord Palmerstonwas caught chasing a maid of honour into her bedroom, the excuse made for him was: "Your Majesty should remember that he is a very old gentleman and accustomed to the manners of the late Court".
  • Gilbert Murray,'The Civilization of the Nineteenth Century: Its Greatness and the Flaw which led to its Collapse',The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future(1929), p. 43

• There was a re-birth of public spirit. Gentlemen ceased to take bribes.Justicebecame incorruptible... It has been observed that up to about 1820 the laws passed byParliamenthad almost all been for the protection of the privileged few against the many; after that time they are predominantly for the protection of the nation as a whole against abuse and privilege. Instead of the ferocious defence ofproperty,a spirit of sympathy and help to the oppressed begins to inspirelegislation.The old revolutionary doctrine of the infinite perfectibility of mankind, which had set on fire the enthusiasm ofGodwin,ShelleyandCondorcet,passed in a milder and more reasonable form into the general imagination of the age.
  • Gilbert Murray,'The Civilization of the Nineteenth Century: Its Greatness and the Flaw which led to its Collapse',The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future(1929), p. 44

• Whether or no man might be made perfect, he certainly might be made better and happier than he is; and the conscious pursuit of that object became an accepted source of inspiration to politics and literature. With it went the conception that the necessary condition of the pursuit wasfreedom:set man free, let him have room to move and external conditions which do not starve or cramp him, andhuman natureof itself will strive to rise higher. This spirit shows itself in almost all the best English fiction of the period, fromromanticslike theBrontës,andrealists,likeGeorge Eliot,to satirists, likeDickensandThackeray.It had been utterly lacking inFieldingandSmollett,and even inJane Austen.It shows itself in the immense increase of charitable institutions, of religious missions, of societies for the education of the people. There is no question of hypocrisy. To suppose there is, is the mere petulance of jealously.Shelley's orGladstone's love of moral improvement was just as genuine asFalstaff's love of sack. But an age of moral earnestness seems in our own day to have been succeeded by an age of relaxation; and one can see in, for instance, such a book asMr. Strachey'sEminent Victoriansthat the moral earnestness of Gladstone orDr. Arnoldis felt by the author to be a hateful quality and not easily to be forgiven.
  • Gilbert Murray,'The Civilization of the Nineteenth Century: Its Greatness and the Flaw which led to its Collapse',The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future(1929), pp. 45-46

• [T]he Victorian Age... cared more for life than for thought; consequently it produced abundant and fine life, while its thought was comparatively unambitious and aimed mainly at serving the practical purposes of life. It cared intensely formoralsand little formetaphysics;a good deal for religion and scarcely at all fortheology... It had an immensefaith,a faith ingoodness,in duty, in the future of mankind.
  • Gilbert Murray,'The Civilization of the Nineteenth Century: Its Greatness and the Flaw which led to its Collapse',The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future(1929), p. 51

• Between 1780 and 1850 theEnglishceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical.
  • Harold Perkin,The Origins of Modern English Society(1969), p. 280

• Meanwhile, it may with little fear of contradiction be asserted that there never was, in any nation of which we have a history, a time in which life and property were so secure as they are at present in England. The sense of security is almost everywhere diffused, in town and country alike, and it is in marked contrast to the sense of insecurity which prevailed even at the beginning of the present century. There are, of course, in most great cities some quarters of evil repute, in which assault and robbery are now and again committed. There is, perhaps, to be found a lingering and flickering tradition of the old sanctuaries and similar resorts. But any man of average stature and strength may wander about on foot and alone, at any hour of the day or the night, through the greatest of all cities and its suburbs, along the high roads, and through unfrequented country lanes, and never have so much as the thought of danger thrust upon him, unless he goes out of his way to court it.
  • Luke Owen Pike,A History of Crime in England, Illustrating the Changes of the Laws in the Progress of Civilisation, Written from the Public Records and Other Contemporary Evidence(1876), pp. 480-481

• Audrey Russell:Do you think that there may be a reversal and that certain very strict standards may suddenly follow the present age?
  Mary Stocks:Well it could happen. You see, it did in the first half of thenineteenth century,didn't it? When there was a reaction against the sort of extremelibertarianismof the late eighteenth century.
  • Frankly Speaking,BBC Home Service(July 1964)

• When I speak of Victorian values, I mean respect for the individual, thrift, initiative, a sense of personal responsibility, respect for others and their property, and all the other values that characterised the best of the Victorian era.
  • Margaret Thatcher,letter to John Evans (5 May 1983)

• I had great regard for the Victorians for many reasons – not least theircivic spiritto which the increase in voluntary and charitable societies and the great buildings and endowments of our cities pay eloquent tribute. I never felt uneasy about praising ‘Victorian values’ or – the phrase I originally used – ‘Victorian virtues’, not least because they were by no means just Victorian. But the Victorians also had away of talking which summed up what we were now rediscovering – they distinguished between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving poor’.
  • Margaret Thatcher,The Downing Street Years(1993), p. 627