Balancing the Individual and Society

When Queen Victoria inherited the crown, a wave of optimism rippled throughout Britain in hope for a new age of progress. While the Romantics reacted with skepticism and wary vigilance toward the boom of technology and science, the Victorians embraced the Industrial Revolution with the goal of using technology to improve the quality of life. Britain reached unprecedented worldwide influence and power as the British Empire continued to accumulate territories across the globe. As social reforms laws were enacted to protect the rights of women, children, the lower class, and other disadvantaged groups, Britain sought to serve as a model of propriety and virtue for the rest of the world. Despite great strides in reform at home, Britain continued to face political, social, and moral conflict as the most unprivileged social classes suffered under poverty and injustice.

Just as the events and social ethos of the Victorian Age were complex and diverse, the literaturary themes producted by British writers in the Victorian period were just as varied. In this module, you explored contrasting nonfiction writings that considered the pros and cons of manual versus machine labor. You always read excerpts from a slave narrative that sought to enlighten the British people about the reality of slave life in Britain's colonies. Charlotte Brontë also tried to enlighten British readers with her novel Jane Eyre, which portrayed the problems of middle class women who have limited options due to the gender bias of British society. The genre of poetry also saw showcased women's writing, such as the love poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Gerard Manley Hopkins embraced religion in his poetry, while the poetry of Lord Tennyson mourneed the morality being threatened by new science and the materialistic values of the Victorian period. Poets A. E. Housman and Robert Browning pondered universal themes such as death and love. Toward the end of the Victorian period, Oscar Wilde produced his celebrated play The Importance of Being Earnest, a satire that commented on the social norms of his day. You also compared this Victorian play to an American one called Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Although Wilde's play is a comedy and Miller's is a tragedy, both plays demonstrate how dramatic elements are used to entertain and offer thought-provoking insight.