A dolls house victorian morals
A dolls house-victorian moralsVictorian Morals, Values, and Ideals
The Victorian Era describes things and events in the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). Victoria was just 18 years old when she became queen upon the death of her uncle William IV in 1837. Many people today believe that the Victorian Era is really connotations of prudish, old-fashioned, and very traditional. But, the Victorian Era is very paradoxical and very complex.
In religion, the Victorians experienced a great age of doubt. On a large scale, there were many questions into Christianity and the status of society. One of them, was Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900). He saw a civilization so self-confident over its mastery of science, technology, politics, and economics that for it "God is dead," and that "belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief." Without a theological and religious education, he realized, virtues would become “values,” social conventions that could be debated and modified whenever convenience wanted. The moral system of European civilization is founded on Judaism and Christianity. He believed, once this foundation is removed, the structure would start to crumble. He predicted, "there will be wars such as there have never been on earth before." “Culture has,” Nietzsche argues, “hollowed itself out, and men, the ‘last men’, are left blinking in a world devoid of all meaning.” This is what Nietzsche calls nihilism.
The Victorian time was a time of ideological and scientific agnosticism . The Oxford Movement, a High-Church, anti-liberal movement within the Church of England, in support of tractarianism ; Utilitarianism, which is the teaching that the worth or value of anything is determined solely by its utility; Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) ideology, nicknamed Marxism, of dialectical materialism , communism and socialism; Darwinism, Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) entire theory of evolution; Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) suggested workable cures for mental disorders. Freud’s theories were at highly disputed.
Victorian virtues were centered on the home and the family. This is easily evident in a conversation at the top of page 65:
HELMER: It’s shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.
NORA: What do you consider my most sacred duties?
HELMER: Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?
[…]
HELMER: Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.
Respectability was something Victorians worried about, especially the working class. Mothers of large families kept her children clean and sent them to school. In a day and age without washing machines or refrigerators where food could be stored for more than a couple days, this wasn’t easy. Women of the upper class were likely to be volunteer positions in charitable or social service enterprises.
The Victorian period saw the emerging idea of feminism. It emerged mostly through literature. Charlotte Bronte’s (1816-1854) Jane Eyre was the first major feminist novel. The book doesn’t directly hint of any...
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