Characteristics Of The Victorian Era

The Victorian Era was a period spanning Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901. This period proceeded the Romantic period in English History which had poetry as its main source of literature. Nevertheless, the most important genre in the Victorian Period was the novel. In contrast, the Romantic Era, the era prior to the Victorian Era, most influential genre was poetry. Most of the major literary artist came from England, although, there were also authors from other countries in the same time period of the Victorian Era. To demonstrate, some of these authors were: Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Grant Allen, among others. Undoubtedly, the literature of this era was relatively easier to read than novels from other eras, the plot was more interesting and easier to understand, and the main protagonist of the novel were the same people who read it (first person point of view) so the reader was deeply involved in the character’s feelings and adventures. Moreover, the setting of the novels was big, well known, cities that the reader probably already is familiar with. The Victorian literature characteristics were mostly composed of social issues that plagued the middle class, and the major changes the population were seeing with industrialization. Some notable characteristics were for example: industrialization, as seen with Charlotte Brontë novel “Shirley”; serialization, as seen with Charles Dickens “The Woman in White”; social class, taking for example Jane Austen’s