Victorian Age (13)

The Victorian Age

The Victorian age is a period of the story in which the England is ruled by Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. This period was complex and contradictory because on the one hand, it was the age of progress, imperial expansions, stability and great social reforms, on the other, it was characterized by poverty, injustice and social unrest. Anyway during this years England was considered the ''workshop of the word'' for the manufactured goods produced by industries and a model for industrialization of other countries.

In fact, in the ''Great exhibition'' (1851) goods coming from all the countries of the empire were exhibited in the Crystal Palace that was the symbol of progress. In 1832, with the Reform Bill, the right to vote was extended to much of male middle class. This right was based on property and for this reason many working and class people were excluded. From 1836 to 1838 a group of working class radicals formed some associations for the extension of the right to vote to all male adults but this movement successful. With some reforms the working hours and child labor were limited. During the Victorian age there was the spread of a new social philosophy, called utilitarianism, developed by Jeremy Bentham who thinks that the reason and the law had to create a system guaranteed to ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest possible number because any problem could be overcome trough reason, and the theory of Darwin about the evolution that considered the men only as developed ape.