From Retribution to Reform

Abstract

It is common nowadays to talk about ‘Victorian values’, signifying thrift, hard work, independence, decency and respectability. Yet the concept is rather a surprising one since Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 until 1900, and it seems unlikely that in such a rapidly changing society as nineteenth-century Britain any single system of values could have persisted unchanged for so long. In fact, far from there having been any overall Victorian values, historians tend to distinguish between early, middle and late Victorian periods. This chapter considers the cultural revolution which occurred between the early Victorianism of the 1830s and 1840s and the mid Victorianism of the 1850s and 1860s, especially as it affected religious thought and social policy.