OSCAR WILDE LIVED WITHIN THE VICTORIAN AGE PERIOD,SO THAT I WILL OFFER
A BRIEF RESEARCH ABOUT THIS CONTEXT IN WHICH HE TOOK PART,IN ORDER TO MAKE
YOU UNDERSTAND HIS WORK AS WELL AS POSSIBLE.
Victorian History
The Victorian era, from the coronation
of Queen Victoria in 1837 until her death in 1901, was an era of several
unsettling social developments such as the growth of English democracy,
the education of the masses, the progress of industrial enterprise and
the consequent rise of a materialistic philosophy, and the plight of the
newly industrialized worker. In addition, the unsettling of religious belief
by new advances in science, particularly the theory of evolution and the
historical study of the Bible, drew other writers away from the immemorial
subjects of literature into considerations of problems of faith and truth.
When William IV was succeeded by his 18-year-old niece Victoria in 1837,
she and her husband Albert came to symbolize a close-knit family life,
a sense of public duty, integrity, and respectability. This period saw
a trend toward free trade continued, aided by the 1849 repeal of the Navigation
Acts, and a system of administrative regulation was gradually established.
Women and children were barred from underground work in mines and limited
to 10-hour working days in factories. Regulations were also imposed on
urban sanitation facilities and passenger-carrying railroads, and commissions
were set up to oversee prisons, insane asylums, merchant shipping, and
private charities. Attempts to subsidize elementary education, however,
were hampered by conflict over the church's role in running schools.
From the late 1840s until the late
1860s, Britons were less concerned with domestic conflict than with an
economic boom occasionally affected by wars and threats of war on the Continent
and overseas. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London symbolized Britain's
industrial supremacy. The 10,600-km (6600-mi) railroad network of 1850
more than doubled during the mid-Victorian years, and the telegraph provided
instant communication. Inexpensive steel was made possible by Henry Bessemer's
process and a boom in steamship building began in the 1860s. In 1857 and
1858, the Sepoy Mutiny was suppressed, and Britain abolished the East India
Company, making British India a crown colony. Hong Kong and Singapore served
as centers of British trade and influence in China and the South Pacific
and the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 led to a British protectorate
over Egypt in 1882. The policies of Joseph Chamberlain contributed to the
outbreak of the Boer War in 1899. Britain suffered initial reverses in
that war but then captured Johannesburg and Pretoria in 1900. Only after
protracted guerrilla warfare, however, was the conflict brought to an end
in 1902. By then Queen Victoria was dead.
Tornar a l´´index.