Exhibit:

UVU Victorian Literature and Politics for the Present - Gallery

Preview of images

Silent Highwayman
The Awakening Conscience
Black and White photograph of Albert and Victoria. Victoria is covered in lace from head to toe. Albert is wearing formal military dress. A modern photograph of Victoria's wedding dress. Cream satin, with lace adorning the collar and the sleeves. The bodice is fitted and tapers to a point. The skirt is full.
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/advertisement-for-beechams-pills
The Crystal Palace
(Victorian engraving) A group of women working on machinery in a flax spinning mill owned by the industrial pioneer John Marshall in Leeds, Yorkshire.
Portrait of Charles Dickens in the Romantic Period Portrait of Charles Dickens in the Classical Period

The Victorian period was one of great change for Britain. Comprised of the years of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901), it featured the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Britain, and the radical expansion of the British empire. Although these changes improved the quality of life for some Victorians, many more were forced to work under inhumane conditions, live in unsanitary and insalubrious environments, or suffered the violent oppressions of colonial rule. While we may think of the Victorian period as a distant, different era, this class argues that Victorians faced some of the same issues we deal with today, including systemic racism, opioid addiction, ecological disasters, and public health crises, to name but a few. 

“Victorian Literature and Politics for the Present” revisits texts both familiar and new - canonical and not - through the lens of current events. Addressing a range of genres, this course examines historical and philosophical trends that shaped the era’s literature and were shaped by it. Specifically, it will explore how the Victorians addressed, and sometimes avoided, issues of racial oppression, class conflict, public welfare, and imperial plunder. Moreover, it will consider what parallels and throughlines we can draw between the Victorian era and the twenty-first century and contemplate the value of continuing to study Victorian authors and texts today. 

As a class we will be using the resources of the Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education (COVE) to create a collaborative Digital Humanities project in Victorian studies in which we explore the intersecting dynamics of race, gender, class, and empire of the Victorian Era. To complete this project, you will need to add one timeline element, one map element, and one gallery image related to these issues to our collective COVE resources. Your contribution should provide a brief overview of a significant and interesting cultural or political event, structure or location, or artwork or illustrative image, as well as a brief reflection that connects that event to our course themes and texts. Each contribution should be approximately 300-500 words. Consider interlinking the three elements, exploring a particular topic in greater depth. 

Images in this Exhibit

The Silent Highwayman
Silent Highwayman

This image, from Punch magazine in July 1858 is in reference to the horrible smells that came from the river Thames. Due to poor sewage, the massive population growth, and industrial waste, the Thames had become a cesspool whose stink was so bad that in 1858 Parliament was shut down. At that point, the authorities knew that they needed to act and a decades long project of creating underground sewers ensued. 

The "Great Stink" was it was called would have been a terrifying event for Londoners of the time. There was a widespread belief, dating back to the medieval period,...
The Awakening Conscience
The Awakening Conscience

William Holman Hunt is one of the "greatest single influence[s] in what is now coming to be known as the artistic Renaissance of the Victorian age," as he played a huge role in developing the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England. Or in other words, Hunt helped establish a new artistic movement to challenge the ideas and motivations of the Renaissance. When he was young, he participated as a student at the prestigious Royal Academy of Art in London where he perfected the skill of oil painting. He was taught alongside other famous artists including J.M.W Turner and William Blake. In 1848, he...
The Hireling Shepherd

William Holt Hunt was a founder and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – a group of Victorian artists, poets, and critics. Their focus on vibrant colors and extreme detail is what set them apart from other artists during their time. Around 1851, at the time John Everett Millais painted Ophelia (another painting which portrays death in a colorful aspect), Hunt was working on The Hireling Shepherd. Both chose to paint these images outside. Hunt chose a meadow to do so. Hunt worked for half the day for five months in order to complete this painting. 

The...
Queen Victoria's Wedding Dress
Black and White photograph of Albert and Victoria. Victoria is covered in lace from head to toe. Albert is wearing formal military dress. A modern photograph of Victoria's wedding dress. Cream satin, with lace adorning the collar and the sleeves. The bodice is fitted and tapers to a point. The skirt is full.

Before Queen Victoria’s wedding, it was rare to wear white to a wedding. Women usually wore a colorful dress that could be reused. White was only worn by the very wealthy because they could afford to have their clothing cleaned. When Queen Victoria married Albert, she chose to be married in white and specifically requested that no-one else wear white to the wedding. She stated that she wanted to be married to Albert as man and wife, not as a head of state. This decision immediately made the white wedding dress a symbol of innocence, romance, and purity. This underscored that women of the...
Drawings by Ernest Jones

Perhaps one of the most recurring themes and topics that is ever present in our texts and in the Victorian era in general is the topic of labor. The Industrial Revolution was important but it had its darker sides and consequences. One of these darker sides were the conditions of the people and children forced to work. 

Ernest Jones was a strong leader, poet, and writer who was very concerned about the conditions of the working class. Jones illustrated these two depictions of ‘The English Town’ and ‘The Grecian City’ around 1843-1853. The contrast emphasizes the horrific conditions...
Beecham's Pills
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/advertisement-for-beechams-pills

 Thomas Beecham first invented Beecham's Pills in 1842. These over-the-counter pills claimed to help those with bilious and nervous disorders which today means indigestion and constipation. These pills contained ginger, soap, and aloe and were a mild laxative. They were actually successful, and the pills were praised by many. The ingredients had been researched beforehand to help those with the symptoms of constipation and indigestion. Ginger was used to help upset stomachs, aloe was used as an antioxidant to ease constipation, and soap was used as the laxative part of the pill. During...
The Burning of the Houses of Parliament

J.M.W Turner’s watercolor painting The Burning of the Houses of Parliament depicts the 1834 fire which destroyed a large portion of the Palace of Westminster – along with the Houses of Lords and Commons. On the 16th of October, along the Thames riverbank, Londoners were enraptured by the blaze which consumed Westminster. One such onlooker happened to be renowned Victorian painter, J.M.W Turner who claimed to have quickly executed the painting on the spot. Scholars still debate whether The Burning of the Houses of Parliament was made from preliminary sketches or en...
Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace

“The Directors are bold enough to look forward to the Crystal Palace of 1854 becoming an illustrated encyclopedia of this great and varied universe, where every art and every science may find a place, and where every visitor may find something to interest, and be taught through the medium of the eye to receive impressions kindling a desire for knowledge and awakening instincts of the beautiful.” (The Sydenham Crystal Palace Expositor)

The Crystal Palace is a structure that was opened up and resurrected in Sydenham in 1851.  This was one of the many grand structures that was...
Bessy's Reality
(Victorian engraving) A group of women working on machinery in a flax spinning mill owned by the industrial pioneer John Marshall in Leeds, Yorkshire.

   I was intrigued by Bessy in North and South, and her representation of the detrimental effects of the industrial revolution on the working class. This photo is one of a flax mill, similar to a cotton mill where Bessy would have worked in. As we can see it is extremely crowded both with workers and equipment, which leads to the infamous heath complications within factories. The main illness contracted in cotton anf flax mills was byssinosis, the blockage of the lungs caused by the cotton and flax particles within the air of these poorly ventilated and crowded spaces.

     Bessy is...
Christ in the House of His Parents ('The Carpenter's Shop')

John Everett Millais was one of the founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, a group of artist across all mediums that sought to create works that were true to nature, full of color, and had immense detail. All of which can be seen in Christ in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’)

The piece depicts Jesus Christ as a young boy in his father’s carpenter shop. While work goes on around him, he receives a kiss from his mother. True to form, Millais is using a great deal of detail in this piece. Many of the details found also work as Christian symbols. The...
Portrait of Charles Dickens - Analysis of Art During the Victorian Period
Portrait of Charles Dickens in the Romantic Period Portrait of Charles Dickens in the Classical Period

The Victorian Era spanned almost an entire century and was uniquely marked from previous periods by the invention of the steam-powered printing press in 1811 and the invention of the photograph in 1839  which news media used to circulate information on art, cartoons, and other forms of visual media to the general public without the need to travel great distances to museums and other cultural locations for cultural edification. The Victorian Era started with what artincontext labelled as the Romantic Period which signified a “break from the severity” of previous forms of Classicism found in...
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene

‘Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene’ is a watercolor on paper painting that was painted by Simeon Solomon in 1864. The painting depicts two women seated on a bench in a garden and locked in an embrace. Sappho was a poet that was born on Lesbos, which is a Greek island in the northeastern part of the Aegean Sea. She was born in the year 612 BCE and was a poet that wrote nine books of poetry. Her poetry mainly dealt with themes of love, and the frustrations and joys that come from it. A good portion of her poems are lost, but one poem that still survives of hers is ‘Ode to Aphrodite...