Elitism In Victorian Society

The 1850’s played host to an era of alternative art, these pieces begged for an audience instead of simply stood before one to be admired. These works are regarded now as masterworks of their time and are thought to influence whole eras of work after them, yet this was not always the case. The Pre-Raphaelites are the brotherhood known for creating these pieces, and their legacy is not un-noted, especially when trying to gain an understanding of them by reading into the appraisal written in the very era that they were exhibiting their work. A topic the brotherhood liked to experiment with; to the wide criticism from the British Academy, was the topic of women and femininity. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the woman's place was deemed …show more content…
The characteristics of the era can come under many different categories, ones of which this essay will be mentioning in more detail are the ideas of elitism, as well as morality and the obsession with progress in society and industrialisation all over the empire. To describe the era as a whole, ‘rigid’ is a word that can come into play with many components of what makes the Victorian complex. The official reign of Queen Victoria was between the years 1837 to 1907, this is where the boundaries for the Victorian era are placed, everything within them being able to be contextualised against the characteristics of the time. The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood was founded in 1848, early on in the reign of Queen Victorian, their intention being to reform art by rejecting the mechanistic approach. The brotherhood embodied a truth to nature style of painting, which contrasted to the painter Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Raphael), so came about the name the Pre-Raphaelites, as they examined and explored methods used before Raphael’s corrupted influence. William Hunt, John Millais and Dante Rossetti were thought to be the founding members, starting up the brotherhood and facing the public first, with their reformed art. The work of the Pre-Raphaelites took …show more content…
The exception being the expressions the Brothers gave to their figures, the faces shocked and appalled the Academy, who were not used to dealing with a realistic representation of a women, spending decades romanticising the features of a women to represent expressionless beauty to be simply admired and not thought too much into. The Pre-Raphaelites gave their women stories and roles to play in the imaginary and shocking realistic worlds they are encased in. The brotherhood faced issues that were happening within the society by exposing them to the public, the reaction being horror and confusion over the lack of femininity with a subject renowned for embodying it