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The Victorian Period Essay

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The Victorian Period
In the introduction to “The Victorian Age” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Stephen Greenblatt gives a historic overview of the nineteenth century was known as the Victorian period in the historical development of Great Britain. This era began with the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. The Victorian era is associated with Britain’s great age of industrial expansion and economic progress. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain was mainly a rural society, with its economy based on agricultural production. With the revolution, society gradually transformed into a largely urban one with manufacturing being transferred from farms and villages to giant factories established in urban centers.(2006: …show more content…

Harrison insists in The Early Victorians, England remained stable in the 1830s and 1840s because of "a network of institutions" (1971, p.146). In that network Evangelical religion was one of the most important elements. a Clark shows in "Religious and Intellectual Developments." An Expanding Society, by the 1830s, though "the tide [of Evangelical revival] was ebbing, it had not been ebbed very far" (1967, p.230). "Religious values and allegiances coloured most social issues, either directly or in more subtle ways" (Harrison, p.122). The influence of Darwin’s hypothesis about the origin of species on Victorian intellectual and religion was great and weakened faith on religion. (a Clark 97, 102) Evangelicals as Rosman mentions in Evangelicals and Culture, accepted secular culture, but failed to "reconcile it theologically with their faith" (1984, p. …show more content…

The Oxford English Dictionary, hereby referred to as OED, defines patriarchy as “[a] form of social organization in which the father or oldest male is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the male line; government or rule by a man or men” (OED 2016a). Patriarchal society stated that women had no physical, social, economic or political power. Women in patriarchal society were forbidden from the same privileges that men had. Therefore, women were attributed feminine duties of caring for the home and pursuing the outlets of feminine creativity. Because women were refused the opportunity to work or take part in the domestic sphere, they spent their youth preparing for marriage. Maureen Moran in Victorian Literature and Culture, describes how women relocate their place in society in the political, economic and social aspects. The changes in women's social role occurred as the important members, they had opened up for professions which were not accessible before. They assumed skilled jobs in society as writers, journalists, nurses, and teachers (2006, p.

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