The Victorian Era’s Effect on Literature
In the nineteenth century, England became the first society to undergo the effects of industrialization. It induced much social and economic restructuring for the better and for the worse of the people. Victorian writers reactions to the change differed greatly, but they expressed their thoughts through the best way they knew how, writing. Poetry was still a common literary form in the Victorian era as in the previous eras, but the dramatic monologue and the novel were making their mark on literature. Dramatic monologues allowed poet’s to clearly separate themselves from the speaker in the poem with great use of rhetoric and protest on the social changes in the Victorian Era. The Novel was popular because it gave women a chance to describe the domestic life, but were still looked up as weak by men. Each literary form was an expressive, imaginative awareness of experiences through verse or rhythmic language. When “middle-class” Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the focus of Victorian works targeted progression, moral obligation as well as and domesticity, the values that followed Queen Victoria during her reign (1886).
England’s middle-class was rapidly increasing during the Victorian era. The early Victorian period was considered to be a “Time of Trouble” because the country was “economically distress[ed]” and in need of new laws and government (1888). A Reform Bill was passed in 1832 that extended to males who owned property to vote, but excluded the working class. The bill represented a new age in which “middle-class economic interests gained increasing power” (1888). Despite the four year span of prosperity from industrialization, 1832-1836, the economy crashed and the output of unemployment, poverty, and rebellion flourished. Men, women, and children as young as five years old worked in poor conditions of coal mines for up to sixteen hours a day....