How do victorians live

Mothers were determined to keep working in the city as wages were higher, but chose to keep their children in villages and towns with total strangers where conditions were safer. Unfortunately, this form of abandonment led to worsened treatment of children, and prolonged child labor.

Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was not just one of the first great English novelists. By using his writings as a means to defend the vulnerable people of the Victorian Era and criticize the societal structure of the time, he was also a huge contributor to several important social reforms. The social conscious he developed in his adult years led to some of the most influential pieces of literature the Victorian Era had seen, such as Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and many more.

Although he was not the first to use his skills in writing to address the issues in English society, he was by far the most successful. Dickens was able to bring to light a serious issue that England itself could not see, and with the spread and increased fame of his works people everywhere were beginning to see that something had to be done Diniejko.

Thomas Hardy. His use of powerful emotions and pessimistic views was highly criticized because no one had ever read something like it before. Hardy was also considered a social critic of sorts, identifying the low standards of living that the poor endured in the industrial cities.

The mix of realism and social criticism in one style of writing was the reason why Thomas Hardy was one of the most influential and important authors of the Victorian Era Allingham.

George Elliot was a third author who used literature not simply just to entertain, but also to inform people of the conditions of people in the society around her. Elliot, who was a fan of art and its origins, believed that any form of art should be based off of life rather than other pieces of art. For instance, The Mill on the Floss was taken and modeled from her real life experience of being rejected by her friends and family for her common-law marriage.

Although she was also an influential author of the Victorian Era, she criticized authors like Dickens and Austen on their styles of writing Allingham. Herself, her husband Albert, and their many children became an icon of lateth-century middle class femininity and domesticity.

During this period, the roles of men and women became more sharply defined than they had ever been in history. Rather than women working alongside the men in family businesses, the 19th century saw an increase in men commuting away to their places of work, leaving the women home all day to oversee the household. Women, considered physically weaker yet morally superior, best suiting them for the domestic sphere. Marriage and Sexuality.

Women could not seem too focused on finding a husband, lest it appeared they had a worrying amount of sexual desire. Women were meant to only desire marriage in that it allowed them to become mothers rather than for any sexual or emotional satisfaction.

Women had no choice but to stay pure until marriage, usually not even being allowed to speak to a man unless there was a married woman chaperoning. After a woman married, her rights and property ceased to remain her own.

Everything that she owned now belonged to her husband, including her body, property, and money. Roles of Upper Class Women. The responsibilities of upper-class and aristocratic women were limited because of the common opinion that they were weak. These women had a range of servants to perform the domestic chores for them, so they usually just had to oversee them. However, these changes did not take place overnight.

When slums were knocked down in the poor people had little choice but to move to another slum, making that one worse. Few could afford new housing. In this lesson on Victorian homes students are gradually introduced to sources on Hackney, starting with a small map section, then photographic evidence, concluding with the census. Teachers may wish to ease their pupils gently into working with the census returns.

They can be asked to look first at column headings, then down the columns. Although the tasks do not directly ask pupils to make comparisons, it is likely that they will do so anyway. The largest differences are between the photos. The activity presented here can be extended with illustrations of the interiors of rich and poor housing.

Suitable for: Key stage 2 , Key stage 3 Time period: Victorians Download: Lesson pack Related resources 19th century people What can we tell from this photograph? This website uses cookies We place some essential cookies on your device to make this website work.

Set cookie preferences. Skip to Main Content. Search our website Search Discovery, our catalogue. View lesson as PDF. View full image. Lesson at a glance. Was there much difference between rich and poor homes? Tasks 1. Look at Source 1. This is a map of Hackney from What things does it show?

Are all the streets the same width? What work places are shown? Cooking was done on a fireplace in the kitchen - this would also have provided the main source of heating for the house so the family would have spent a lot of time in this room. The slum areas in most towns and cities were either cleared away or improved in the 20th century.

Photograph of a typical Victorian working class cottage. Visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to see clothes that upper class Victorians would have worn. Take a tour of the Charles Dickens museum , which is in a house where the famous author used to live.

Embark on a virtual tour of the Crystal Palace, site of the Great Exhibition of organised by Prince Albert , to see its beautiful and innovative design and discover amazing facts about the exhibition it housed. Need help? How to videos Why join?

Life in the Victorian era. What was life like in Victorian times? The inventions of machines in factories replaced jobs that people used to do, but people were needed to look after the machines and keep the factories clean. Factories were built in cities, so people ended up moving to the cities to get jobs. Half the population in Britain lived in cities by the end of the Victorian era.

Cities became crowded, busy and dirty, but discoveries about hygiene and sanitation meant that diseases like cholera were easier to prevent. People in the Victorian era started to use electricity for the first time , and to listen to music by playing records on the gramophone.

Steam trains made travel a lot easier, and rich people started to go on holidays to the seaside in places like Blackpool and Brighton. There was a big difference between rich and poor in Victorian times. Rich people could afford lots of treats like holidays, fancy clothes, and even telephones when they were invented.

Poor people — even children — had to work hard in factories, mines or workhouses. By the end of the Victorian era, all children could go to school for free. The way we celebrate Christmas was begun in Victorian times — they sent the first Christmas cards and made Christmas crackers.

Start your child on a tailored learning programme Weekly resources sent direct to your inbox Keep your child's learning on track. Trial it for FREE today. At the beginning of the Victorian era in , most people would have used candles and oil or gas lamps to light their homes and streets.

By the end of the Victorian era in , electricity was available and rich people could get it in their homes.