Social and Theoretical Approaches to the Victorian Period

Victorian Age (1837- 1901) was a period in which rapid changes took place and prosperity and poverty, doubt and faith, and contentment and dissatisfaction existed together.  Industrial revolution caused many deep changes to raze everything in England down swiftly.  This duality was able to be experienced not only in social life, but in literature. There were also so many conflicts that not a single thought was stabilized. “In 1897 Mark Twain was visiting London during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations honouring the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's coming to the throne. ‘British history is two thousand years old,’ Twain observed, ‘and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead since the Queen was born than it moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together.’ Twain's comment captures the sense of dizzying change that characterized the Victorian period.” 

The triggering event that brought about all these reforms in the society was the Industrial Revolution. “Industrial Revolution shifted power from the landed aristocracy toward an insecure, expanding middle class of businessman and professionals, impoverishing millions of once rural labourers along the way.” (Longman Anthology, 570).  The Industrial Revolution created profound changes in terms of economic and social conditions of England. During the Victorian Period, the working conditions were deteriorating and the notion of machinery was becoming dominant in social life and art. John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle were just two examples of the writers who criticized the condition of England at that time. Ruskin and Carlyle were uncomfortable mostly with the trending idea of machinery and conditions of the workers. While these two writers had their thoughts correspondingly on the social matters of England, Ruskin was indifferent to the tumultuous and chaotic reforms around him before his acquaintance with Carlyle.