The End of an Era

Victoria's England was a nation confident of its imperial role in the world — a role characterized by global power and accomplish­ment. On the verge of the twentieth centuiy, England was the most economically powerful country in the world. The vast empire, on which «the sun never set», was protected by an unchallenged naval supremacy. As political, social, and cultural model, England's in­fluence was inescapable.

The Victorian period had contained the controversy, conflict, and sobering reality that are always present al a time of great social change.

During the nineteenth century, the number of offenses punishable by death was reduced from over two hundred to four. The major voting reform bills in 1832,1867, and 1884 gave the vote to almost all male adults, but not to women, who would have to wait until 1928 to acquire full and equal voting rights. The House of Commons, whose members are elected, gained control of Parliament from the House of Lords, whose members arc not elected. The rise of the Commons reflected the shift of power from the land-owning aristocracy to the middle-class factory owners, bankers, and professionals, who were proud of England's status as «the workshop of the world». However, the condition of most of the working class was still a matter of ex­ploitation and poverty. The country had already begun to suffer from the negative aspects of the factory system — grimy towns and cities with overcrowded slums, and an oppressive sense of domination by institutions and machines. Reforms in education — such as the Edu­cation Act of 1870, which could require children to attend school until the age of thirteen — helped to create an even larger literate public than the audicnce which had received Dickens so enthusiasti­cally, but this increasing audicnce was met by the new writers' revolt against Victorian values.

It was perhaps to be cxpected that the end of the nineteenth century — often referred to by the French term,/гn de siecle («end of the century») — would be a period of disillusionment, a period in Which English dependence on manners, morals, and traditions would inevitably be tested. It may have come as a shock to some, however, that England's confidence in both its oldest beliefs and its most recent achievements was not only challenged, but changed by the scientific claims of Charles Darwin and the economic and political theories of newly-formed Socialist organizations, espe­cially the Fabian Society, whose ideas were to become the basis for the British Labour Party.

There were, of course, other influences on English thought and writing at lliis time, but many changes brought about were the re­sult of interaction with people and ideas from beyond the English Channel — and beyond the secure center of the nineteenth-century English mind. In short, the Victorian sense of unity and integrity, of identity and a shared destiny was, by the 1880's, a waning spirit in the face of new realities.

It would be fair to say, then, that the period known as «Victo­rian» had been drawing to a close Cor at least a decadc before the death, in 1901, of the woman for which it is named.