The darker side of Victorian England

One of the things that would have made the Victorian era so perfect for the authors who wrote the classic Gothic Horror literature was the fact that everyday society in Victorian England presented some rather dark and peculiar behavior, although purely down to a lack of understanding and knowledge and partially down to religious beliefs the morbid and bizarre beliefs of the Victorian era would have provided some great inspiration for Gothic horror writers of the time.

Modesty privacy and etiquette were all extremely important to Victorians. Queen Victoria was said to live her life in a way that provided a good example for her subjects. topics such as romantic relationships and sex were never to be discussed in public. Relationships between unmarried young adults during the Victorian era were very different to the goings on of today, dating consisted of young males taking supervised visits to a young woman's home or going out for walks in large groups, again this enabled the coupe to be watched over by their elders. young couples who were courting were never to be left unsupervised, women were to dress modestly and wear minimum amounts of make up as heavy use of cosmetics was frowned upon by anyone of middle or higher class as it was associated with women of the night and actors who were also looked down upon by society.

however the as strict a they may have been in what was classed as decent material for disscussion in public, the Victorian era actually saw a slight shift in what was considered acceptable to read and watch  for entertainment. Prior to Queen Victoria's reign a number of famous texts and plays were supposedly amended by a man named Dr Thomas Bowdler in order to edit out words, conversations or topics which were deemed "unsuitable for family reading" women in particular would have been kept form reading or seeing any woks that discussed subjects like adultery due to the fact that the Victorians were very strict Christians. Censored or "sterilized" versions of famous works such as Othello by Shakespeare and The history of the decline and fall of the roman empire by Edward Gibbons were corrected so to say, via the removal or adaptation of inappropriate subjects and or phrases so that the works may then be considered clean, allowing them to then be read by Victorian families. However During the reign of Victoria a number of new authors created works which challenged the moral ideals which had previously been in place and romanticism and horror began to become popular in literature with authors such as Mary Shelly penning classic Gothic Horror novels such as Frankenstien.

Not only were there advances and changes in literature during the Victorian era there were a number of so called medical and scientific developments one of the most commonly associated with that of the Victorians was the rise of Victorian "lunatic asylums" as they were first known, which by today's standards and with much more advanced medical science we know the treatment of patients in these institutions was inhumane as well as useless (as the experiments and treatments carried out did not work) the stories and images of these buildings and the knowledge of what was carried out inside these "hospitals" is another reminder of the dark, morbid and somewhat bizarre ways of the Victorian society. due to the grim goings on associated with the treatment of mental health during our Victorian past, these Mental asylums and tales of haunting's in such places are often featured in today's horror stories and have become popular settings for horror film and t.v story lines.

Not only were the Victorians obsessed with death and fearful of mental illness, their strange almost dark behaviors did not end there, a common (and cruel) form of entertainment for the Victorian public during this period was to go to circuses or for a more unpleasant term "freak shows" to gaze at other human beings born with abnormalities or who were able to do at the time what would be described a un-explicable things with their bodies (what would now be known as contortionists) not only did people stand and stare at the acts but they were told fascinating morbid but almost always fictitious stories about how they came to be, merely thought up by the creators of the show.

Bibliography

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G.M.W.R.A.G. (no date). Minutes of the May 2012 North West Mental Health Welfare Rights Advisers Group. Available at: https://gmwrag.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/minutes-of-the-may-2012-north-west-mental-health-welfare-rights-advisers-group/ (Accessed: 25 January 2015).

London By Gaslight (no date). Posts about Mental Health on London By Gaslight. Available at: https://londonbygaslight.wordpress.com/category/health/mental-health/ (Accessed: 25 January 2015).

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Parker, O. (2011) ‘The metamorphosis of Shelley’s Frankenstein’,Culture, 23 February. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/8343915/The-metamorphosis-of-Shelleys-Frankenstein.html (Accessed: 25 January 2015).

Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine.(no date). Glossary: Available at: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/menalhealthandillness/mentalinstitutions.aspx (Accessed: 25 January 2015).

The Victorians: Art and Culture (no date). Monday, 4 October 2010. Available at: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-victorians-art-and-culture (Accessed: 25 January 2015).

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Citation

(Facts on Victorian England Culture, no date)

(The Victorians: Art and Culture, no date)

(Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine., no date)

(Victorian freak shows, no date)

(G.M.W.R.A.G., no date)

(Mental: A History of the Madhouse, BBC Four, no date)

(London By Gaslight, no date)

(Parker, 2011)