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Historical Background
Queen Victoria dominated England from 1837 to 1901.Thus the writing produced
during this period is usually called Victorian literature. This period is
generally divided into three stages: the Early Victorian Period (1832-1848),
full of troubles; the Mid Victorian period (1841-literature.1870), a time of
economic booming and religious controversy; and the Last Period (1870-1901)
with the decay of Victorian Values.
After experiencing the hardship of the war with Napoleon, England began to
regenerate its industry. Because the countries on European Continent did not
have large-scale industry, the products of light and heavy industries of
England took a great advantage in the international market. In this way, the
industrial capitalist in England solidified their monopoly position both at
home and abroad. After 1830s, the Industrial Revolution in England entered a
new stage. During this period, it was England who first built national
railway system in the world. The upsurge of railway building stimulated the
development of mining and metallurgy industry, which symbolized the
beginning of modern heavy industry. At this time, England mainly exported
means of production rather than consumer goods. After 1840s, England went
into the free trade period. Relying on its powerful navigation force,
Britain largely expanded her colonies around the world, and especially
fastened her pace to Far East, such as the
Opium War with Chin in 1840s. By
1850 England completed its industrial Revolution and became the workshop of
the world.
The influence of Industrial Revolution was great to Britain. In Britain, the
population went on increasing rapidly. Big towns grew bigger and many new
cities came into being. With the industrial Revolution, the agricultural
revolution came out. One hand, new technique from Industrial Revolution were
used to develop agriculture; on the other hand, the agriculture sustained
and encouraged Industrial Revolution, because it provided food for the
growing non-agricultural population and supplying some of the capital for
industrial expansion.
Britain was the first and most powerful industrialized and urban country in
the world and British colonies spread all over the world.
As the factory system established in England, the two conflicting classes-
workers and capitalists were born. Although factories grew faster and
capitalists accumulated more fortune, the workers living and working
conditions were extremely bad. In 1834, the
Poor Law was passed. According
to this Law the poorest workers were given the inhuman workhouse, where the
poor workers had to do heavy work under the terrible and unbearable
condition. Furthermore, the “hungry forties” swept across Britain, which
caused the high price of bread.
The great suffering of the workers led to an upsurge of labor movements and
the organization of the workers into unions. In 1830 works started a radical
movement for the improvement of social conditions, which was known as the
Chartist Movement. In this movement, workers asked for universal suffrage,
adoption of equal electoral districts, abolition of the property
qualification for members of Parliament, payment of M.P.s, secret ballot,
and annual general elections, etc.
During the
Chartist movement enormous Chartist organizations published
newspapers and magazines. Besides articles on political and economic issues,
Chartist writers also wrote poems, stories and prose that portrayed the
world from revolutionary workers’ point of view and aimed to promote their
political struggle. They proclaimed the irreconcilable struggle between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie and expressed their firm belief in the
ultimate victory of the laborers. Ernest Jones (1819-1869) and
William James
Linton (1812-1879) were the two major Chartist poets. Also Thomas Martin
Wheeler (1811-1862) and Thomas Frost were the writers of Chartist prose
fiction. In addition, in the age of Chartism, there were writers who viewed
laborers’ miseries with sympathy and wrote poems to express their democratic
idea. The representatives were
Thomas Hood (1799-1854) with his “Song of the
Shirt”, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) with her poem “The Cry of
the Children”. Although “the Chartist Movement declined after 1848, it was
the first broad, really mass, politically formed, proletarian revolutionary
movement” (Lenin). After the Chartist Movement, the English working-class
began to conduct political movement independently against the bourgeoisie.
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