What is Victorianism?

Introduction

Even seemingly unshakeable axioms are prone to reassessment by historians, and Victorianism is no exception. Even the very period of Victorianism itself stands challenged: historians no longer refer unquestioningly to the “Victorian Age” as the precise years associated with the monarch but instead concentrate on a shorter period—a “high age”—from about 1830 to 1880. Yet critics shadowed the entire period in question, and the negative connotations were fired dramatically forward soon after the period ended, notably with Lytton Strachey‘s (1880–1932) mocking attack Eminent Victorians (1918). Moralizing, prudish, repressed (and repressive), and old-fashioned (rather than traditional)—each of these notions captures what Victorianism has meant to later generations.

What is Victorianism?

Queen Victoria reigned as monarch of Great Britain from 1837 until her death at the age of eighty-two in 1901. Although the people who lived during her reign had no special name for themselves, historians have termed them “Victorians,” and the period itself the Victorian age. Nineteenth-century Great Britain and the United States shared a common language, some political institutions, and a similar culture, and thus the Victorian period is taken to encompass America as well. 

Early Victorianism

The early Victorian era perceived the emergence of a group of values and beliefs which indicate the central idea of Victorianism. These years show the developments in governance as well as economic and social life along with developments in science and education which comprise the essential features of Victorianism.

CHARLES DICKENS ‘GREAT EXPECTATION’

Dickens’s Life At The Time

• In September of 1860 Gad’s Hill Place becomes Dickens’ permanent residence.
• Dickens and Wilkie Collins travel to North Devon on November of 1860 to gather materials for “A Message from the Sea”.
• Dickens begins a series of readings at St. James’s Hall in March of 1861.
• In October of 1861 Dickens begins another series of readings.

The Ending of Great Expectations

Originally Dickens planned a different ending for Great Expectations.  However, he was persuaded by his friend, Bulwer-Lytton, to change the ending to a happier one.

The original ending had Estella remarrying after the death of her first husband.  She and Pip had a brief meeting in London and then parted forever.  The rewritten ending hints at a reconciliation for Pip and Estella:

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

All the Year Round

Charles Dickens founded the weekly publication All the Year Round.  Its first issue was printed on April 30, 1859.  Dickens served as editor and publisher.  One feature of the publication was its serialization of novels.  The first novel serialized in All the Year Round was A Tale of Two Cities.

In October of 1860 sales of All the Year Round were dropping because the featured novel, A Day’s Ride by Charles Lever, wasn’t very popular.  Dickens was originally going to have Great Expectations published in another format, however to increase sales of All the Year Round he adapted it to the weekly format.  His plan worked and sales for the publication increased.

At the time of Dickens’s death, in 1870, circulation of the publication was 300,000.

Charles Dickens Jr. edited the magazine after his father’s death. The last issue of All the Year Round was published in March of 1895.

Themes of Great Expectations

Pip, like Dickens himself, dreams of becoming a gentleman.  However, during the course of the novel Pip comes to realize that there is more to life than wealth and station.

Pip is raised by his sister and her husband, Joe.  Joe is an honest, hard-working man.  As Pip ascends in society he is embarrassed by Joe and his simple ways.

Another example of this theme is Pip’s relationship with Magwitch.  Initially Pip is horrified to learn that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham, but instead Magwitch the convict.  At the end of the story Pip has different feelings toward Magwitch.  He is very fond of him and is at his side when he dies.

Magwitch himself experiences how highly society values the appearance of gentility.  Here Magwitch describes how differently he and his partner in crime, the supposed gentleman Compeyson, are treated during their trial:

“And when it come to character, warn’t it Compeyson as had been to the school, and warn’t it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn’t it him as had been know’d by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his disadvantage? And warn’t it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know’d up hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups? And when it come to speech-making, warn’t it Compeyson as could speak to ’em wi’ his face dropping every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher – ah! and wi’ verses in his speech, too – and warn’t it me as could only say, ‘Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal’? And when the verdict come, warn’t it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn’t it me as got never a word but Guilty? . . . “

Another theme that runs through Great Expectations, as it does through Our Mutual Friend, is the ease with which wealth can corrupt people.  Pip describes his spending habits:

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

In the end Pip, like Estella, has undergone some serious interior transformations.  Estella states:

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”

Charles Dickens ‘Great Expectation’ as a novel in the Victoria Era

Written during the Victorian Era (1850-1900) Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations has echoes of Victorian Morality all throughout the novel. When looked up in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, morality is defined as “the evaluation of or means of evaluating human conduct as a set of ideas of right and wrong and as a set of customs of a given society, class, or social groups which regulate relationships and prescribes modes of behavior to enhance the groups survival.” Although the Victorian Era occurred over one hundred years ago, the given definition is clearly portrayed through the use of several morally different characters.

Conclusion

The historians have reassessed even the seemingly unshakable maxims and so, Victorianism is not an exception. Even the period of Victorianism stands challenged because the historians do not consider the entire period of the monarch as the era, but a brief one from about 1830 to 1880. Although the entire period of Queen Victoria’s reign, from 1837 to 1901, is termed as the Victorian era, Victorianism starts from 1830 because usually, this was the time that was considered as the end of the Romantic period in Britain.

Great Expectations is Charles Dickens’s thirteenth novel. It is the second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature.

Download paper