Simone
英国维多利亚女王统治的时期，在位时间是1837-1901，但“维多利亚时代”却一直延续到1914年第一次世界大战爆发。
在维多利亚时代，英国工业发展迅速，科学、文化、艺术空前繁荣。由于这一时期英国迅速地向外扩张，建立了庞大的殖民地，因此，被称为“日不落帝国”。
1.Victorian Historical Background—three periods
1.1832-1848, the first reform bill—the industrial capitalists gain their power in Parliament. --This bill extended the right to vote to the industrial capitalists and the lower middle class, but not the workers.–
2.The Whig Party, which represented the interests of the industrial capitalists and businessmen, came into power.•
3.The Chartist movement—in 1845,– the capitalists not take responsibility for the poverty of the working class– workers launched large scale demonstrations.•
4.The Heyday of the Victorian Age.the country enjoyed two decades of peace and prosperity—by 1848, England produced one half of the world’s pig iron;
5.by the early 70s, England had become the workshop of the world and the world’s banker.—it was a period of complacency, stability and optimism..
6.By 1890, England continued to grow in strength. the British Empire had comprised more than a quarter of all the territory on the surface of the earth—the empire on which the sun never sets.—a period of serenity and security.
7.The fierce competition of newly risen rivals, Germany, The Us, Japan and Russia. Economic crisis continued to hit the country.•
.2. The Victorian Novelists •The poetry of the Romantic age had given ways to novels. Novel became a dominant genre during the Victorian Age.
•1. The growth of urban population resulted in a new reading public. The Education Act which came into effect in 1870, made a certain measure of education compulsory.. With the development of the technology of printing and paper making, the price of books dropped; many libraries were set up—so books were available to readers who could not afford.
2. Writing had become a profession, the writers cannot only make a living by writing, but they can also become very wealthy like Charles Dickens.
3 With the ascendancy of the industrial capitalists, the majority of whom lived an idle life on interests, there was a large idle class who needed recreation and entertainment and novels met their desires.
3.The common features of Victorian novels •
1. The plot is unfolded against a social background which is broader than the previous novels.
2. The Victorian novels reflect the complexity of human relations in a capitalist society and reveal the writers’ attitudes towards the society.
The cause-effect sequence is much more striking and makes the Victorian novels better constructed than in previous novels
3. Most of the Victorian novels were first published in serial form (by installment) before they became a book. That may cause the novels loosely structured. But the Victorian writers knew how to meet the challenge to hold the interests of the readers in every issue and had to provide them with delight and entertainment.•
4The Victorian novels were tainted by the spirit of Puritanism. The Victorian capitalists were notorious for their hypocrisy. they preached that the key to success was that they were sober,earnest,hardworking, and that they abstained from worldly pleasures.
5. The Victorian novels were characterized by their moral purpose. Many writers wrote novels with a purpose to edify readers and to bring about reforms. Some Chinese scholars labeled them with “critical realistic novelists”.
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