The Victorian Compromise
Content
THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE
(the particular situation, which saw prosperity and progress on the one hand, and poverty, ugliness
and injustice on the other)
The meaning of word “Victorian” refers in general to all what the puritan values
considered important: included all the set of moral and sexual values.
The Victorian age is contradictory and full of paradoxes. It was a period of progress
and prosperity and at the same time of great social evils (poverty, prostitution,
exploitation of children), but the Victorian made a compromise between these two
aspects, they hide themselves behind optimism and hypocrisy and they don't want to
see problems, they have only an idealized vision of their society and age.
The Victorians were great moraliser, probably because they faced numerous problems
that they felt obliged to defend certain values which offered solution or escape. The
Victorians promoted a code of values based on personal duty, hard work,
respectability and charity.
In this period was very important to work hard for improve the society. The idea of
respectability distinguished the middle from lower class.
Respectability was a mixture of both morality and hipocrisy, severety and conformity
to social standards. It implied the possesion of good manners, the possession of
comfortable house with servants and a carriage, regular attendance at church, and
charity activity. Philanthropy was a wide phenomenon: the rich middle class
expolited the poor and at the same time managed to help “stay children, fallen woman
and drunk men”. Family was still considered patriarchal. Man was considered as a
leader and he was responsable for food and all the family, while woman was still in
condition of subjection, in the sense that she had the duty to take care of children and
the house in general. This was because “bourgeois idea” was based on the
convinction that the role of leader of man had been imposed to him by divine
providence.
Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms, and prudery in its
most extreme manifestations led to denunciation of nudity in art, and the rejection of
words with sexual connotation from everyday vocabulary.
Young women weren’t free to live publically their sexuality not even in the domestic
walls because there was an intense fear for the opinion of the society. When a girl
was considered a “fallen woman”, a prostitute, automatically she lost the respect of
the other and of her family. She will not find a husband and she was considered as an
outcast. The ideal woman was a pure, chaste and sexless figure that must repress
every instinct.
Moreover, the age was also characterized by a kind of patriotism and this was
influenced by the ideas of racial superiority so the British considered themselves as a
superior race, that's why they tried to develop colonisation because they considered
colonising people as a duty. (Jingoism).
(the particular situation, which saw prosperity and progress on the one hand, and poverty, ugliness
and injustice on the other)
The meaning of word “Victorian” refers in general to all what the puritan values
considered important: included all the set of moral and sexual values.
The Victorian age is contradictory and full of paradoxes. It was a period of progress
and prosperity and at the same time of great social evils (poverty, prostitution,
exploitation of children), but the Victorian made a compromise between these two
aspects, they hide themselves behind optimism and hypocrisy and they don't want to
see problems, they have only an idealized vision of their society and age.
The Victorians were great moraliser, probably because they faced numerous problems
that they felt obliged to defend certain values which offered solution or escape. The
Victorians promoted a code of values based on personal duty, hard work,
respectability and charity.
In this period was very important to work hard for improve the society. The idea of
respectability distinguished the middle from lower class.
Respectability was a mixture of both morality and hipocrisy, severety and conformity
to social standards. It implied the possesion of good manners, the possession of
comfortable house with servants and a carriage, regular attendance at church, and
charity activity. Philanthropy was a wide phenomenon: the rich middle class
expolited the poor and at the same time managed to help “stay children, fallen woman
and drunk men”. Family was still considered patriarchal. Man was considered as a
leader and he was responsable for food and all the family, while woman was still in
condition of subjection, in the sense that she had the duty to take care of children and
the house in general. This was because “bourgeois idea” was based on the
convinction that the role of leader of man had been imposed to him by divine
providence.
Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms, and prudery in its
most extreme manifestations led to denunciation of nudity in art, and the rejection of
words with sexual connotation from everyday vocabulary.
Young women weren’t free to live publically their sexuality not even in the domestic
walls because there was an intense fear for the opinion of the society. When a girl
was considered a “fallen woman”, a prostitute, automatically she lost the respect of
the other and of her family. She will not find a husband and she was considered as an
outcast. The ideal woman was a pure, chaste and sexless figure that must repress
every instinct.
Moreover, the age was also characterized by a kind of patriotism and this was
influenced by the ideas of racial superiority so the British considered themselves as a
superior race, that's why they tried to develop colonisation because they considered
colonising people as a duty. (Jingoism).
