We tend to think of the Victorian period in terms of its many ‘wrongs’ – sexual repression, harsh labour conditions, poverty, and empire.  Yet the Victorian period was also a time of increasing economic, political and social ‘rights’.  This blog examines the role of Victorian literature in combating wrongs and campaigning for rights.  It explores the inter-connected, and sometimes conflicting, debates over ‘rights’ in the Victorian period as expressed in the literature of the period.  The blog focuses on the complex interplay between personal, social, political and economic rights (and wrongs) particularly as they apply to categories such as ‘labour’ (workers’ rights), ‘gender’ (women’s rights) and ‘race’ (the rights of colonised and enslaved peoples).  

My first blog post features some podcasts made by second-year students on the ‘Victorian Rights: Victorian Wrongs’ course at the University of Manchester. Students were asked to find an artefact from one of Manchester’s cultural institutions or a site in Lancashire relevant to the struggle for rights in Victorian Britain. They had to combine this artefact with one (or more) of the literary texts studied on the course in order to reflect on the nature of Victorian Rights and Wrongs. I hope you enjoy these podcasts!

Professor Michael Sanders, University of Manchester

Podcast 1: Know Your Rights! – explores the significance of the Preston Martyrs’ Statue in the context of the struggle for the right to vote.

Podcast 2: John Frost’s Table Leg – explores the Chartist movement’s struggle for basic democratic rights.

Podcast 3: Composing a Revolution – asks what the Pankhursts’ piano tells us about the Suffragettes’ campaign to achieve political rights for women.

Podcast 4: Moor than meets the Eye – what can a painting in Manchester City Art Gallery tell us about the fight for environmental rights in Victorian Britain?

Podcast 5: Cast to the Past – trade union banners, the Dockers’ Strike and the struggle for labour rights.

Podcast 6: Girl Talk With Gaskell – what choices did middle class women really have in Victorian Britain?

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