What made victorians “victorian” more than anything? in other words, what attitude did victorians have which made them different from people before them?

 I would say that in literature, Victorianism was partly influenced by Romantiscism which preceded it and by realism which followed it. Victorian novels had a tendency to portray lives ideally especially of difficult lives in th e course of which perserverance, hard work, love and luck win out eventually. Also, the morals of the society tended to be at a lower level than in modern times for example James Douglas the Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island had smallpox introduced deliberately to the First Nations to eliminate their resistance to gold mining in their territories and he had 3 chiefs hung for opposing this genocide. People simply would not stand for these type of actions now.