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Victorian age: social context
Modern critics still admire mid-Victorian energy and success, while the Victorian outlook regarding questions of relationship between the sexes, the principle of authority, the upbringing of children - briefly, the bases on which the Victorian family was founded - does no longer seem acceptable.The acknowledged model to follow was that of the Royal family where Albert, the Prince Consort [E 1] [F 1], had an outstanding role, while the Queen Victoria [E 1] herself was a model of wife and mother; yet belief in the family was accompanied by widespread prostitution. In many districts of every large town prostitution went hand in hand with crime and seemed to contradict all the accepted values of the time. Middle-class “respectability” actually concealed a large amount of hypocrisy, while the great economic and industrial progress was paid for by the dreadful living conditions of the lower classes.
The last three decades of the century showed changes in outlook and the beginning of a critical attitude towards the accepted mid-century values - an attitude which culminated in the anti-Victorian reaction of the nineties. For example, women began to assert their wish of independence. In fact, a group of activist women campaigned for Women’s Suffrage, to promote educational opportunities for them and laws protecting infant life. However, they obtained the right to vote only in 1928.
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