Concetti Chiave
- The Victorian middle class society emphasized family dominance by the father, good manners, social improvement, and respectability.
- Education differed by class and gender, with boys receiving formal education and girls often educated at home, reflecting societal roles.
- The Education Act of 1870 significantly increased literacy, ultimately allowing women greater access to education and professional opportunities.
- The rise in literacy led to a growing demand for books, making novels a central form of entertainment for all family members, including servants.
- The Victorian Age saw an increase in periodicals, offering entertainment and moral guidance, with fiction often serialized in these publications.
Mainstream culture
The family was ruled by the father and became the focus of Victorian middle class society and the value of the period: good manners, social and economic improvement, a sense of duty and respectability towards society.
Education
The upper and middle classes sent male children to expansive schools and to college to become the future ruling class.
Upper and middle-class girls were guarded by their parents till marriage and were educated at home by a governess.
The spread of literacy had a strong impact on the cultural development of the age and culminated in the Education Act (1870) which provided primary education all over the country.
By the end of the century women’s position changed: there were school and colleges for women and they had new right to enter professions.
Books and the reading public
The spread of education caused a request of books. Some families had their own libraries and every member of the family read novels, included the servants. So novels became a favourite form of entertainment for the middle class.
Periodicals
The literacy caused the spread of newspapers, magazines and reviews. They were a form of entertainment and moral teaching for political, social, literary and philosophical.
Fictions were published as shot stories or serialised novels.
General trends
Victorian Age can be divided into two periods:
1. Up to the 1870s: faith in progress and an optimistic outlook on life;
2. Last decades of the century: Some intellectuals still think that it's not possible to understand the very values of the Victorian Age because of the many differences it had.
Domande da interrogazione
- Qual era il ruolo della famiglia nella società vittoriana?
- Come cambiò l'istruzione per le donne nel corso del XIX secolo?
- Quale impatto ebbe la diffusione dell'alfabetizzazione sulla cultura dell'epoca vittoriana?
La famiglia era governata dal padre e rappresentava il fulcro della società della classe media vittoriana, enfatizzando valori come le buone maniere, il miglioramento sociale ed economico, il senso del dovere e il rispetto verso la società.
Alla fine del secolo, la posizione delle donne cambiò con l'apertura di scuole e college per loro, permettendo l'accesso a nuove professioni, segnando un'evoluzione rispetto all'educazione domestica iniziale.
La diffusione dell'alfabetizzazione portò a una maggiore richiesta di libri e periodici, trasformando i romanzi in una forma di intrattenimento popolare per la classe media e promuovendo la diffusione di giornali e riviste come mezzi di intrattenimento e insegnamento morale.
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