Victorian Literature and Politics for the Present - Gallery

This picture is of a woman wearing a crown, surrounded by two children, one of whom is holding a cross. It embodies the Victorian ideal of a woman, perhaps representing Queen Victoria with her crown, who was the epitome of domesticity and religiosity. The title is suggestive of the Holy Family of Jesus Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary, and his foster father Joseph. They are meant to be seen as a superior example for Christian families to follow. Julia Cameron often focused on photographing young women and children, depicting their innocence and soft emotion. The little ones are shown…

Frederick Walker gives us a beautiful photograph representation of the relationship that Jane Eyre and Rochester experience in Charlotte Bronte’s novel. They were madly in love and were able to conquer the trouble that was caused by Rochester’s marriage to Bertha. This whole situation got me wondering how divorces worked in the Victorian Era as I wondered why Rochester did not legally divorce Bertha but still keep her safe. Divorce in the Victorian Era was a very different process than it is now and not many people were able to participate. For the longest time in Great Britain, a marriage…

Image of Karl Marx (author of The Communist Manifesto) taken in 1875.

Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (now known as Germany) on the 5th of May on the year 1818. His father was a lawyer. His mother was from Holland. He was baptised Evangelical, though he question religion not just as a whole but its role in society. He went to school in Trier and went to college in Bonn in Germany. Fun fact: the school he went to in Trier was thought to be harbouring "liberal teachers" and therefore was under police suveillance. At univeristy Marx became a group of people that called themselves "…

The Pre-Raphealites (PRB) were a group of artists that used their forward-thinking to create art that would go against the academic art of the London Royal Academy of Art.  The group was formed in 1848.  These artists included: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner, and William Michael Rossetti.  The painting pictured is a painting titled Ophelia by John Everett Millais that was inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet.  These emerging artists wanted to paint…

In 1875, the Dewsbury Weaver's Union for women, assisted by Emma Paterson and the Women's Protective and Provident League, began a strike after their wages had been unfairly reduced. Because the organizers were smart and organized, the strike only lasted 6 weeks before the employer granted the demands of the striking employees.

This image depicts Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. On June 30, 1860 the two engaged in a debate at the Oxford University Museum library. Bishop Wilberforce vehemently opposed the idea of evolution that Huxley passionately defended. This debate is a larger reprensentation of what is called the "Victorian Crisis of Faith." It was the struggle between science and religion that many people were dealing with at that time. If Darwin was correct, it threw into question everything that people had read in the Bible. Along with evolution, the use of geology also…

Annie Besant is known as an accomplished fighter for women's rights. She played a big role in helping the women of England become emancipated. She wrote many papers critcizing the oppression of women and the underpayed female workers. She was also very vocal about sexual rights for women. She fought for women to be allowed to change their fashion by adding shorter skirts and pants. She behaved like a "New Woman" by leaving her husband and starting to preach about atheism and feminism and she advocated for a change women's behaviour and attitude towards men during the Victorian Era. She…

Lady Lilith, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is interesting because it's a unique portrayal of womanhood in comparison to Rossetti's other works. Many of Rossetti's female subjects in his paintings are representative of the "Angel of the House" archetype of womanhood, for example in his painting Blessed Damozel, which shows a woman in heaven looking down at her lover longingly. In fact, this portrayal of women is fairly common for paintings of this time, in that they are seen as beautiful objects often focusing their attention on men or family rather…

Annie Cannon was a brilliant astronomer and created a system of classifying stars that we still use to this day. 

Cannon was born in Deleware winter of 1863. Cannon was taught the constellations by her mother and it inspired her to be an astronomer. Cannon persued as much schooling as was accessible which was made diffcult due to the fact that she was partially deaf (it is unknown why but guessed to be from scarlet fever). She never married or had children. She is most noteworthy for creating a system of classifying stars (basically different colours mean they're different…

Reading Gaol was one of a few prisons where Oscar Wilde was incarcerated after he was convicted of gross indecency (or his homosexuality) with his lover Lord Alfred Douglas. It was here that he wrote much of De Profundis, a long and religiously-charged letter meant for him as much as it was for Douglas. Because of the harsh conditions of his imprisonment, Wilde later wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a tale which advocated for prison reform. This was the last prison Oscar Wilde where was interred: three years after he was released he died, as his health had been…

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…

In 1819 protesters gathered to demand reform of the parliamentary representation. There were around 60,000 people that had come together to voice thier concerns and response to 11% of males having a vote. Cavalry was called in to disperse the gathering and with sabres drawn 15 people were killed and 600 were injured. While this event drew attention to voting inequality it would still be another 100 years before women were allowed to vote. During the Victorian Era Charlotte Bronte would write Jane Eyre. Mary Seacole would write The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands.…

The Koh-i-Noor diamond has an intense history, but mostly I can't help but wonder if it inspired the Moonstone. The diamond was put on display at the Great Exhibition in 1851, and the Moonstone was published in 1868.

Works cited: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand…
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Koh-i-noor

This lovely painting of St. Anne's Sqaure in Manchester masks the filth and horror the majority of people living in Manchester dealt with on a daily basis. "If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air -- and such air! -- he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither." Manchester in the Victorian Era was slimy, smelly, and nearly uninhabitable- despite how many people lived there. Manchester's filth is a perfect reflection of the impact the Industrial Revolution had on the lower,…

Scotland Yard is the headquarters for the London police used in the mid 18th century. One of entrances to the London police was on Great Scotland Yard. It was on the site of a had housed Scottish royalty this is how Scotland Yard got its name. The London police force act was created by Robert Peel in 1829. This is why the officers were known as bobbies and peelers. The staffs' job was to protect individuals, patrol, recruitment and personal management. The people actually did not like the bobbies because they thought of them as spies. It took a while before the bobbies won the public over…

Parody and satire have long been a common genre for political commentary. While today we have a myriad of meduims to make our political views known such as web blogs, web vlongs, social media, written posts to an absurd amount of published news organizations, both large and small, call ins to raio, call ins to video and everything in between. In the past, very few individuls had access to the masses, the most widespread form of information came from the printed word and as print evolved/devolved, however you see it, the visual image became printable. Thus, the cartoon was born. One of the…