THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE

THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE. It was a complex and contradictory era: it was the age of progress, stability, great social reforms but it was also characterized by poverty, injustice and social unrest. The Victorians promoted a code of values that reflect the world as they wanted it to be, not as it really was, based on personal duty, hard work, respectability and charity. In this periods was very important to work hard for improve the society. The idea of respectability distinguished the middle from lower class. Respectability was a mixture of both morality and hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards. It implied the possession of good manners, the ownership of comfortable house with servants and a carriage, regular attendance at church, and charity activity. Philanthropy was a wide phenomenon: the rich middle class exploited the poor ruthlessly and at the same time managed to help “stay children, fallen woman and drunk men”. The husband represented the authority and the key role of woman regarded the education of children and the housework. Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms, and prudery in its most extreme manifestations led to denunciation of nudity in art, and the rejection of words with sexual connotation from everyday vocabulary. FAITH AND PROGRESS This is the period of novel because they represents the complexity of the period and the profound changes that characterized it. For the first time there was a communion of interests and opinions between writers and their readers. Same code of values: optimism, conformism and philanthropy. The writers depicted society as they saw it; they were aware of evils of their society and denounced them, however they did not criticize the world they lived in, they just aimed at making readers realize social injustice and voiced their fears and doubts.