Ash.P3.T3

Victorian Era Synthesis

The Victorian Era, as indicated by the title of the era, was greatly influenced by ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne in 1837. Under her reign, the British Empire reached unprecedented heights, entering a period of peace and prosperity known as the Pax Brittanica. Though it is a new era, not much had changed from the previous periods. Much like the Enlightenment and Romantic Era, the Victorian Era had a powerful middle class whose growth was fueled by the booming trade and dominance of the British Empire. As a result of more money, people could afford to pay for more works and kinds of art. Music, drama, and opera were all well attended, but literature truly flourished during this period. Authors like Charles Dickens and Arthur Doyle became widely popular, largely because people had both the leisure and the money to enjoy their books. Much like the last era, Dickens’s literary works were enormously popular during his lifetime, and many of them dealt with either problems of British society or the debaucheries of the preceding French. A piece of the work is his famed novel Hard Times, which was concentrated on the struggling lower classes of England, which exploited the flaws of society through literature. This mockery helped contribute to both the social advancements made during this era, and the Victorian mentality that developed. And though social advancements were made, many workers and children were still slaving away in sweat shops due the upper class rise in living standards. So basically Queen Victoria made everything seem great and wonderful, but really this era was a reflection of the previous two eras, with sprinkles on top to hide all the underlying social issues that continued to devastate the lower class.