A two-faced reality�

1. The British Empire

During the reign of Queen Victoria, Great Britain

ruled over a wide and powerful empire.

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British Empire throughout the World,

19th century, Private Collection

An area of 4 million people more than

400 million squares miles.

A two-faced reality

1. The British Empire

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Egypt

1882

Boer war 1886

Australia and New Zeland

1902

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Hong-Kong

1841

1877

Empress of India

1884

Sudan

1899

Burma

1887 Golden Jubilee

1897 Diamond Jubilee

Blue countries already belonged to the UK

Orange new conquered lands

A two-faced reality

1. The British Empire

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After the 1857 Indian Mutiny

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• India came under direct rule

by Britain;

• Queen Victoria was crowned

Empress of India in 1877.

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A two-faced reality

1. The British Empire

The British also occupied

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• Australia and New Zealand;
• parts of China – including Hong Kong in 1841;
• Burma in 1886;
• Egypt in 1882;
• Sudan in 1884;
• South Africa in 1902, after the Boer War.

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A two-faced reality

1. The British Empire

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The Victorians believed that

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• the ‘races’ of the world

were divided by physical

and intellectual differences;

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• some were destined to be

led by others;

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• it was an obligation imposed by God on the British

to impose their superior way of life, their institutions,

law and politics on native peoples.

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A two-faced reality

2. Rudyard Kipling: The White Man’s Burden

• A poem written in 1899 to give advice to

the United States on the occasion of the

annexation of the Philippines

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• It contains the author’s famous phrase, ‘the white man’s burden’

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• The bard of the English Empire and came to symbolise the belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.

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A two-faced reality

2. Rudyard Kipling : The White Man’s Burden

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‘Take up the White Man's burden

Send forth the best ye breed

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captive’s need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild –

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.’

Speaking to an American, who recently colonised Philippines

Darwin’s theory

Responsibility of coloniser: burden

A two-faced reality

3. Charles Darwin and evolution

1859. Charles Darwin published

On the Origin of Species.

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Charles Darwin

• Stress on the godless element of chance involved in evolutionary

variation.

• His theory of natural selection discarded the version of creation given by the Bible, it seemed to show that the strongest survived and the weakest deserved to be defeated.

A two-faced reality

3. Charles Darwin and evolution

1871: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

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Theory of evolution

• all living creatures have taken their forms through a slow process of change and adaptation in a struggle for survival;
• favourable physical conditions determine the survival of a species;
• unfavourable ones determine its extinction;
• man evolved, like any other animal, from less highly organised forms, namely from a monkey.

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A two-faced reality

4. The Victorians and crime

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There were occasional panics linked to particular appalling offences

The Victorians believed crime could be beaten

• Prison acts (1865 and 1877).
• Creation of new police forces.

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Impact on small theft on the streets

Street robbery, called ‘garrotting’

The murders of Jack the Ripper (1888)

A two-faced reality

4. The Victorians and crime

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The case of Jack The Ripper was the most famous case

of sexual violence.

publicising of such behaviour bad reputation to the family

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Domestic violence rarely came before the courts: tolerated because committed in the private sphere.

A two-faced reality

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4. The Victorians and crime

Parliament responded to the problem with legislation which provided flogging as well as imprisonment for offenders.

A two-faced reality

4. The Victorians and crime

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The press created sensations out of minor incidents.

Violence, especially violence with a sexual connotation, sold newspapers.

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A two-faced reality

4. The Victorians and crime

The criminals

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• At the beginning of the century

criminal offenders individuals in the lower

reaches of the working class.

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• By the middle of the century

‘criminal classes’ social groups stuck at the

bottom of society.

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• Towards the end of the century

the criminal an individual suffering from some

form of behavioural abnormality that had been either inherited or encouraged by dissolute parents.

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A two-faced reality

5. Aestheticism �

Developed in France with

Théophile Gautier (1811–72)

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It reflected:

• the sense of frustration and uncertainty

of the artist;

• his reaction against the materialism and

the restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie;

• his need to re-define the role of art;
• the French artists withdrew from the political

and social scene;

• ‘escaped’ into aesthetic isolation.

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Théophile Gautier

A two-faced reality

5. Aestheticism �

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The bohemian’s protest against the monotony

and vulgarity of bourgeois life led to an unconventional existence, the pursue of sensations and excesses, and the cult of art and beauty.

A two-faced reality

5. Aestheticism

Walter Pater (1839–94),

the theorist of the Aesthetic Movement in England,

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• rejected religious faith;
• said that art was the only means to stop time;
• thought life should be lived ‘as a work of art feeling all kinds of sensations’.

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Aubrey Beardsley, front cover For ‘The YeIIow Book’, January 1895. ‘The YelIow Book’ was a eading Britìsh journal of the 1890s which was associated with Aestheticism and Decadence. The magazine contaìned a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and

reproductions ofpaintings.

A two-faced reality

5. Aestheticism

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Eternal

Art for art’s sake

No reference to life, morality

The task of the artist → to feel sensations, to be attentive to the ‘attractive’, the ‘gracious’.

Art

A two-faced reality

5. Aestheticism

A number of features can be distinguished in the works of Aesthetic artists:

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• evocative use of the language of the senses;
• excessive attention to the self;
• hedonistic attitude;
• perversity in subject matter;
• disenchantment with contemporary society;
• absence of any didactic aim.

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A two-faced reality

6. The dandy

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• Belonged to the upper classes

→ opposite to the bohemian.

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• Elegance as a reason of life and

‘life as a work of art’.

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• Interested in beauty and literary

works → opposite to the didacticism

of the Victorian writers of the first

half of the age.

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A two-faced reality