Victorian Era Synthesis, Wyl. T.3.P5

            The tone of the Victorian Era directed by Queen Victoria brought forth a slightly more conservative approach to humanities, a reaction to the Romantic Era’s limitless fascination of nature and the supernatural. Although the Gothic Art saw resurgence during this era, many other forms of humanities, for example literature, took a drastic turn that often depicted the harshness arising from the working class.  Charles Dickens’s Hard Times grimly portrayed the life of poverty of the Industrial Era. Instead of the novels linking nature and mankind man, novels were either raw and reflective of the Victorian Era’s highly conservative society or satirical like Oliver Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde’s stories highly satirized the high society of the Victorian era using “bunburying” to switch identities time to time. This was a divergence from the Romantic era where the boundaries between man and nature were limitless. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a classic depiction of man defying nature and the monster seeming almost man like.  Another change that stirred much controversy was the release of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The very idea that there was evolution of the human species and the God might not have simply created humankind highly distressed the religious society of the era. This was also a mild reaction to Romantics Era fascination for imagination and free flow rather than definite laws and restriction. The Victorian Era was highly influenced by the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution which brought forth cultural changes especially in the humanities from the previous Romantic Era.

Karen, Emily, Paulina, Angela