Chapter I. Victorian era. I. 1 Government and politics in the Victorian era

I.2 Religion and science in the Victorian era
Victorian era, in British history, the period between approximately 1820 and 1914, corresponding roughly but not exactly to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901) and characterized by a class-based society, a growing number of people able to vote, a growing state and economy, and Britain’s status as the most powerful empire in the world.During the Victorian period, Britain was a powerful nation with a rich culture. It had a stable government, a growing state, and an expanding franchise. It also controlled a large empire, and it was wealthy, in part because of its degree of industrialization and its imperial holdings and in spite of the fact that three-fourths or more of its population was working-class. Late in the period, Britain began to decline as a global political and economic power relative to other major powers, particularly the United States, but this decline was not acutely noticeable until after World War II. Today “Victorian” connotes a prudish refusal to admit the existence of sex, hypocritically combined with constant discussions of sex, thinly veiled as a series of warnings. There is some truth to both sides of this stereotype. Some few educated Victorians did write a lot about sex, including pornography, medical treatises, and psychological studies. Most others never talked about sex; respectable middle-class women in particular were proud of how little they knew about their own bodies and childbirth. In addition, Victorians lived with a sexual double standard that few ever questioned before the end of the period. According to that double standard, men wanted and needed sex, and women were free of sexual desire and submitted to sex only to please their husbands. These standards did not mesh with the reality of a society that featured prostitution, venereal disease, women with sexual desires, and men and women who felt same-sex desire, but they were important nonetheless. Victorian society was organized hierarchically. While race, religion, region, and occupation were all meaningful aspects of identity and status, the main organizing principles of Victorian society were gender and class. As is suggested by the sexual double standard, gender was considered to be biologically based and to be determinative of almost every aspect of an individual’s potential and character. Victorian gender ideology was premised on the “doctrine of separate spheres.” This stated that men and women were different and meant for different things. Men were physically strong, while women were weak. For men sex was central, and for women reproduction was central. Men were independent, while women were dependent. Men belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the private sphere. Men were meant to participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to run households and raise families. Women were also thought to be naturally more religious and morally finer than men (who were distracted by sexual passions by which women supposedly were untroubled). While most working-class families could not live out the doctrine of separate spheres, because they could not survive on a single male wage, the ideology was influential across all classes. Class was both economic and cultural and encompassed income, occupation, education, family structure, sexual behaviour, politics, and leisure activities. The working class, about 70 to 80 percent of the population, got its income from wages, with family incomes usually under £100 per annum. Many middle-class observers thought that working-class people imitated middle-class people as much as they could, but they were mistaken; working-class cultures (which varied by locality and other factors) were strong, specific, and premised on their own values. The middle class, which got its income (of £100 to £1,000 per annum) from salaries and profit, grew rapidly during the 19th century, from 15 to over 25 percent of the population. During the 19th century, members of the middle class were the moral leaders of society (they also achieved some political power). The very small and very wealthy upper class got its income (of £1,000 per annum or often much more) from property, rent, and interest. The upper class had titles, wealth, land, or all three; owned most of the land in Britain; and controlled⁴ local, national, and imperial politics. Most Victorian Britons were Christian. The Anglican churches of England, Wales, and Ireland were the state churches (of which the monarch was the nominal head) and dominated the religious landscape (even though the majority of Welsh and Irish people were members of other churches). The Church of Scotland was Presbyterian. There was some religious diversity, as Britain also was home to other non-Anglican Protestants (notably Methodists), Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others (at the end of the period there were even a few atheists). Alongside their faith, Victorians made and appreciated developments in science. The best-known Victorian scientific development is that of the theory of evolution. It is typically credited to Charles Darwin, but versions of it were developed by earlier thinkers as well, and the pseudoscience of eugenics was an ugly outgrowth of Victorian evolutionary theory. Victorians were also fascinated by the emerging discipline of psychology and by the physics of energy.