Module: Victorian Britain: Society and Culture

Module Specifications.

Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025

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Date posted: September 2024

Module Title	Victorian Britain: Society and Culture
Module Code	HY227 (ITS) / HIS1060 (Banner)
Faculty	Humanities & Social Sciences	School	History & Geography
Module Co-ordinator	Leeann Lane
Module Teachers	-
NFQ level	8	Credit Rating	10
Pre-requisite	Not Available
Co-requisite	Not Available
Compatibles	Not Available
Incompatibles	Not Available

None

Description

Victorian Britain: society and culture: The purpose of this module is to introduce the students to key developments and themes in the society and culture of Victorian England. Students will engage with issues of class change, class divisions, poverty, work, gender and prostitution, crime and health. The students will examine these themes through secondary sources and a variety of primary sources including parliamentary papers, government reports, memoir, prescriptive literature and fiction.

Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation in Victorian Britain.
2. Understand concepts of class and discourses on gender against the background of key socio-economic transitions and transformations.
3. Identify and explain continuities and change in the context of the themes discussed.
4. Evaluate the key secondary sources and the historiographical debates.
5. Critically engage with primary sources.
6. Engage in written assessments which show an understanding of the core debates.

*Type*	*Hours*	*Description*
Workload	Full-time hours per semester
Lecture	20	Lectures These will be delivered synchronously as far as possible but will be recorded.
Online activity	15	Recorded material Additional recorded material that will develop on the material in the lecture. This might take the form of analysis of a primary document/piece of art/section from a novel or memoir.
Online activity	10	Forum discussions Discussion of primary sources. Pertinent questions that students should ask of the primary documents for the reading journal will be the focus of these discussions.
Seminars	3	Question and answer seminars Formal question and answer sessions to allow students to bring up/discuss matters relating to the module, the readings, the assessment requirements.
Independent Study	202	assigned readings, independent research and preparation/completion of written assignments.
Total Workload: 250

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

The industrial revolution
Students will discuss the transformation of Britain from a rural society into the first industrial nation of the world.

The Victorian city
Students will examine the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation in Victorian Britain.

Work and poverty
Students will consider the lives of the working classes in Victorian England with a focus on poverty, living conditions and the urban cities of the period. Issues of change and continuity in the period will be discussed. The manner in which poverty and the poor were viewed by those in positions of power will be discussed.

A class society
Students will examine the manner in which the industrial revolution gave rise to a class society. The emergence of the new middle classes will be considered with a focus on their values and material culture; dress, home life, etc. The manner in which these classes created a new identity for themselves and distinguished themselves from the working classes and the aristocracy will be discussed.

Gender roles
This section will discuss the manner in which the ideology of separate spheres determined gender roles in the period, ascribing to women a domestic role within the home. The manner in which this ideology was imposed on the working classes will be considered. The manner in which this ideology was underpinned by all pillars of the establishment will be analysed.

Victorian sexuality
Students will consider attitudes to sex and the Victorian double standard of sexual behaviour. Attitudes to prostitution and the attempt to regulate its practice under the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864, 1866 and 1869 will be considered.

Reform
This section will deal with the manner in which attempts were made to remedy social problems including those of working, health and housing conditions.

Poverty in the later Victorian period
Students will recognise that state intervention in the area of working conditions, public health and sanitation, etc., was piecemeal and that high levels of poverty, crime and disease was a part of life for many of the working classes in the later Victorian period. This will be examined using Robert Robert’s memoir, The Classic Slum and through an examination of the lives of the five women killed by ‘Jack the Ripper’ in the 1888.

The decline of Victorian Britain
Students will assess the factors that led to the decline of Victorian Britain and understand that this decline was influenced not just by economic competition. Students will look at the influence of the ‘crisis of faith’; the suffrage question, the Irish question and growing labour militancy. Students will also consider to what extent the competitive spirit of the early industrial revolution was blunted as Britain witnessed the creation of a plutocracy at the end of the nineteenth century.

Assessment Breakdown
Continuous Assessment	100%	Examination Weight	0%

Type	Description	% of total	Assessment Date
Course Work Breakdown
Assignment	Reading Journal: Students will submit a reading journal. This will comprise an analysis of primary documents read in conjunction with secondary sources. Students must submit 6 out 10 readings (each 500 words) and a 800 word reflection.	60%	As required
Essay	Students will submit a 2,000 word essay	40%	As required

Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories: Resit category 1: A resit is available for both* components of the module. Resit category 2: No resit is available for a 100% continuous assessment module. Resit category 3: No resit is available for the continuous assessment component where there is a continuous assessment and examination element.
* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a Continuous Assessment/Examination split; where the module is 100% continuous assessment, there will also be a resit of the assessment
This module is category 1

Indicative Reading List

Allen, Michelle: 2008, Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London, Athens,
Briggs, Asa: 1968, Victorian Cities, Harmondsworth,
Davidoff and Catherine Hall: 2002, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, 2nd edition, e-book,
Hilton, Boyd, A: 2006, Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846, Oxford,
Howell, Philip: 2009, Geographies of Regulation: Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Empire,
Roberts, Rob: 1971, The Classic Slum,
Spongberg, Mary: 1997, Feminizing Venereal Disease: The Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse,
Stedman Jones, Gareth: 1983, Languages of class: studies in English working class history 1832-1982, Cambridge e-book,
Steinbech, Susie: 2017, Understanding the Victorians: politics, culture and society in nineteenth-century Britain, Abingdon,
Thompson, E. P: 1963, The Making of the English Working Class,
Thompson, F. M. L.: 1988, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain 1830-1900,
Thompson, F. M. L. (ed.): 1990, The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950,
Tosh, John: 2007, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England, New Haven,
Walkowitz, Judith: 1980, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State, Cambridge, e-book,
Wiener, Martin: 2004, English culture and the decline of the industrial spirt, 1850-1980, Cambridge, e-book,
Williams, Raymond: 1973, The Country and the City,
0: English Historical Review, 0
0: Journal of British History, 0
0: Past and Present,

Other Resources

None