The Victoria Period

• 1850s were the highest point of Victorian middle-class industrial and commercial civilisation
• Great Exhibition 1851


  Middle class in Britain had unprecedented material prosperity due to industrial and agricultural production, and social and political stability
• Middle class obsessed with 'progress' - denied older beliefs, values, and customs. Hardy thought this intensified human vulnerability to the destructiveness of time
• Loss of economic confidence due to industrial competition of Germany and USA in 1970
• Growing anxiety about political instability and social unrest - fear of the masses fueled by violence in urban areas
• Ideological crisis simmering - crumbling beliefs on religion, history, politics, and gender