Name _______________________________
Period _______
Date ______________
Victorian Era Webquest: Norton Online
The Victorian Age in England, from 1830 to 1901, is measured by the rule of England’s
Queen Victoria. The Victorian period in literature directly follows the Romantic period.
Navigate to
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/welcome.htm.
Read the Introduction section to answer the first set of questions.
1. The first paragraph of the Introduction informs you that the Victorian Age was
an era of great change for England. Which change does the text say was “perhaps
the most important”?
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2. In the second paragraph, the expansion of what led to the prominence of debate
about political and social issues in the experience of the reading public?
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3. In the third paragraph, what were the four major controversies that concerned
the Victorians?
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4. The Victorian Period was one of the first times that women began publishing
work in England on a widespread basis. The fourth paragraph mentions two
female authors. What are their names?
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5. Read the last paragraph of the Introduction. Imperialism is the practice of a
nation expanding its power overseas. (For example, the British had great control
over India at this time.) How did some British people justify the brutality that
was sometimes practiced overseas during this time when the British Empire
flourished?
_______________________________________________________________________
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Scroll up to the top, left-hand side of the page and click on “Industrialism—Progress or
Decline?” Use this section to answer the next set of questions.
6. In the first sentence, the Industrial Revolution is defined. What is that definition?
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7. In the second paragraph, the working and living conditions of the labor class
during the Industrial Revolution are described. What are three characteristics of
those conditions?
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8. Look at the end of the second paragraph. What began in the 1830s and the 1840s
as the result of parliamentary committees and commissions that introduced
testimony about the poor conditions of mines and factories?
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9. What are the two questions at the end of the last paragraph that were sparked by
the Industrial Revolution?
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Scroll up to the top, left-hand side of the page and click on “The Woman Question.”
Use this section to answer the next set of questions.
10. Read the first paragraph. What is “The Woman Question”?
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11. What year did women in England get the ability to vote? ________________
12. When did women in England begin fighting to get the ability to vote? _________
13. Read the second paragraph. What does author Dina Maria Mulock say about the
opportunities of boys in comparison to the opportunities of girls in the Victorian
Age?
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14. Read the third paragraph. A paradox is a contradiction; something that has two
parts that don’t make sense together. What is the paradox of Queen Victoria as
an example of womanhood?
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15. Read the last paragraph. Many people in the Victorian era “exalted domestic
life.” Domestic means in the home. Exalted means to make high or to glorify. If
many of the Victorians “exalted domestic life,” what did they think was most
important for women? ___________________________________________________
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Scroll up to the top, left-hand side of the page and click on “Victorian Imperialism.”
Use this section to answer the next set of questions.
16. By the end of the nineteenth century (1800s), what fraction of the earth’s land
surface was part of the British Empire? __________________________________
17. List three of Great Britain’s colonies or quasi-colonies (quasi-colonies means they
were “sort of” colonies) in 1901.
_______________________________________________________________________
18. Read the second paragraph. What are the names of two people who said that
imperialism was wrong?
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19. Read the third paragraph. What is the difference between imperialism and
colonialism?
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20. Read the last paragraph to fill in the blanks: (Note: Today all of these viewpoints
are seen as incorrect. This paragraph is about the mindset of some British people
in Victorian England; their ideas were not correct.)
But in general Great Britain was able to justify its expansion into other peoples
lands by claiming a _________________ _________ based on its own __________,
_____________, and _____________ superiority. As we see from the selections by
Edward Tylor and Benjamin Kidd, late-Victorian science sought to prove that
non-Europeans were less ______________, _________________ and
________________, and thus unable properly to ____________ themselves or
_______________ their own territories. Other writers like W. Winwood Reade
and Richard Marsh described the imperfectly evolved colonial subjects as
__________________ ___________ and ____________, hardly _____________ at
all. Thus they were patently in need of ________________, and taking on this job
was "The White Man's Burden" in Rudyard Kipling’s famous phrase.
21. Write a paragraph that synthesizes what you have learned about the Victorian
Age through this webquest activity. Your paragraph should be written in
complete sentences and should address the Introduction, the passage on the
Industrial Revolution, the passage on women in the Victorian Age, and the
passage on British Imperialism.