Page 46 - History 2020

attention and gaze were elsewhere. This has is a wider significance. The Victorians

faced a host of intractable new problems thrown up by the Industrial Revolution.
Their response was often tardy and patchy. There are many reasons for this: the
opposition of powerful vested interests; lack of the right to vote; the prevailing
laisser-faire ideology; disagreement over causes and remedies; a lack of reliable data.
But is it fanciful to suggest that an important factor may have been the Victorian
tendency to seek romantic escapism into medievalism or the cult of the garden or
celebrating the dignified parts of our Gothic constitution? Might this not have limited
their degree of engagement with these problems? This hypothesis is reinforced when

we look at our next topic, the late Victorian Parliament and the “Hotel Cecil.”