Home » Victorian morality Facts: Moral views on chastity, crimes, code of conduct, church influence

Victorian morality Facts: Moral views on chastity, crimes, code of conduct, church influence

Victorian morality is a cleansing of the moral view point that the people within society during the reign of Queen Victoria carried. These morals usually included any set of values that supported chastity, not committing crimes, a strict code of conduct within society. And because at the time the British Empire was powerful and at its best, these values did not keep to the Victorians themselves but they spread to other cultures and societies all over the world.

Victorian values were urbanized in all aspects of Victorian livelihood. The morality that was followed by the Victorians can come under the following classifications: Religion, Morality, Elitism, Industrialism, and Improvement. These principles take origin in Victorian morality which had a butterfly effect on the whole of the British Empire.

Nowadays, those studying history may view it as having a time when there were many contradictions within the moral regulations people had to abide by in order to maintain a good reputation and dignity.

But in terms of Victorian morality, an excess of social movements surfaced because attempts to make the living conditions better were constantly being tried out under a rigid system of classes.

Religious Victorian morality altered radically during this Era. Society was under the heavy influence of the Anglican Church who was very powerful at the time and owned several schools and universities and some of the priests even owned offices in the House of Lords.

This meant the church had a lot of control over how people lived their lives moreover society would look to them for morals and standards to set and be abided by within social settings. As a result, the church required obedience to God, submissiveness, and acceptance with the objective of making people more acquiescent to the will of the Church.

The type of class you were in also had a big impact on Victorian morality. Later on in the era, new values and standards started to emerge for example distinctiveness as a character. Also, the proposal of a self-made man was widely accepted and acknowledged during the Victorian era.

So the Victorian upper class held the following values:

– The Elite saw themselves as the father of the family of society, therefore it was their duty to take care of the society.

– The upper class felt it was their role to hold their heritage and traditions

– They intended to remain wealthy for the rest of their lives and quite often let wealthier middle class into their ranks when they were going through hard times financially.