A divided sensibility: Architecture, design and the Victorian consciousness

There existed in mid-Victorian Britain an apparent chaotic state of design. The period is described by John Steegman, in Victorian Taste, as being 'like a story with many plots and hardly a single thread of continuity.' Many current critics view the architectural achievements of the period as expressing a dissociation of intellectual and emotional processes, thereby inferring a divorced sensibility.;The method of research has been to select structures and manufactured goods that reflect both modes of design. Wherever possible contemporary criticism has been preferred to current comment and contemporary sources used to establish definitions of the terms picturesque and functional. The literature of the day has been drawn upon to illustrate the changing social conditions and cultural values.;The results of the research indicate that the changing values of Victorian society--the divided sensibility--were reflected in varying standards of taste, changing patterns of architectural patronage and diversified acceptance of mechanized production.;St. Pancras Railway Station and Hotel are offered as ememplifying the divided sensibility. The architect and engineer each solving his own particular set of problems and providing design answers that were precisely right. The middle class Victorians responding to these physical stimuli by displaying a divided sensibility and accepting both structures as monuments of the age.;This thesis represents an attempt at classification, identifying the major mode of picturesque design and the minor mode of functional design. It further demonstrates that the sensibility of the burgeoning middle class, formed by their reactions to the physical stimuli of the period, was not divorced, but divided. Having established the historical and literary background of the divided sensibility, the thesis demonstrates its expression in two theories of taste and discloses its social, economic and technological foundations.