19th Century England as Depicted in North and South, The Outcast and A Living Wage for Factory Girls at Crewe

Child labour became a popular trend during the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the late 1700s. During this era, many products could be made using power-driven machines. Since children were able to operate these machines, were easier to fit in small places, and most importantly, cheaper to pay, growing amounts of factories had hired children. As this became a common practice, child labour unfortunately became very popular by the mid - 1800s.

The theme for this week is gender roles in Victorian Britain before and after 1860. The roles of a male and female starting from a child to an adult varied between the two. Men were generally independent while women were dependent, which affected their progression in society. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century were women able to have more of an education and the right to divorce However, during the Victorian period men dominated the workforce and politics. Though the working class, middle class, and upper class experience different levels of accepting norms.

Child Labor during the Industrial Revolution: Great Britain The Economic Impacts Throughout the Industrial Revolution, children played a pivotal part in economic growth of England, but they also played a pivotal part in the future of their ancestor’s wiliness to work. As history can tell us, in today’s society, both women and men are present in the work force.

A bunch of research has shed light on how early some children during this time period started working in the Victorian Era.  Some children started working as early as a mere eight and a half years old to twelve years old, working in factories, repairing machine equipment that was tedious or required small hands to fix, cleaning factory floors or chimneys or working in mines (Humphries 1).  The machines that children were working on were dangerous and often resulted in injury due to no safety features on them.  The kids working on them had to be careful or they could very well lose a finger or hand, which would lead to them losing their job (Cunnington).

Women in the 1800s were stereotyped and confined to specific roles in society, however it all changed. The 1800s in Victorian England, created an environment, which encouraged stereotypes, aimed at women in which they were required to stay at home and be ‘The Angels of the House.’ Women were not only constricted to very narrow gender roles where they are expected to be mothers, pure, naïve and dependant on their husbands. Jobs such as teaching and nursing were seen as women jobs only and these were the only jobs women should do. However, the Industrial Revolution helped open a new era for women in society and this allowed women to feel the need to stand up for their rights and challenge the stereotypes of the society. Lucy Westenra is a typical young, beautiful girl whose main aim is to marry and do what is accepted in society as a wife. She is seen as a marginal figure whose

In present day America, there is no societal statement that is proclaimed more often than "all people are created equal." However, this value is in complete contradiction to the class oriented views of the 19th century. The 19th century was most known for society's oppression towards the lower class and especially women. Jane Eyre, an award winning novel, depicts and vividly describes these stereotypical beliefs that the people of this time withheld. All these beliefs are told and persevered through one character, Jane Eyre. Eyre’s character and events throughout the story reveal the oppression towards women and the diffident feelings that the lower class in the 19th century endured.

Women were seen as economically incompetent because only men in the middle class were allowed to work and support their family. Women were excluded from the professions, except for writing and teaching. The acceptable occupations in the 19th century were factory labor or domestic work. Society used to think that a woman was just able to serve her husband. Eventually, by the 20th century the great majority of women who were employed in clerical positions, factory work, retail sales, and service jobs. Women in factories often work as machine operators, assemblers, and inspectors. Many women worked as waitresses, cooks, hospital attendants, cleaning women, and hairdressers, secretaries, and bookkeepers. However, they were paid less than men.

The Victorian Era brought new changes to Victorian England, some were positive and helped to improve society. However, some were negative. Charles Dickens captures these changes in his book Great Expectations. One of these negative impacts was child labor. Children were brought into factories because their families needed money to survive. Factory owners used the children to increase profits because they would not have to pay as much for a child than for an adult. Therefore, these children were exploited. Child factory workers were injured and abused in the factory environment. Overseers would place iron bars on children’s torsos for hours if they got caught dozing on the job. Most of the time they were not allowed to sit down and had to stand at the machines working all day. Factory owners would also come together with other

Gaskell represents the older characters negatively as to criticise the antiquated viewpoint that they seem to represent, which generally go against her romantic ideals and sympathies with the working class. To contrast the older ideas, she uses the personal growth in Margaret and occasionally Thornton in their changing views of Milton, as when Margaret comes to dread the stagnant lifestyle found south and appreciate the industrious nature of those in Milton, and likewise Thornton’s final epiphany about the tranquility of the south when he visits at the end of the movie. Her support of more modern ideals is also shown in the portrayal of Thornton as a diligent and noble man who has worked to create his wealth, showing her inclination to support

Not only were the working conditions less than desireable, the medical field was next to none. There were three factors that lead to the ability for disease to run rampant through the cities, the lack of medical knowledge, the housing in the cities, and the Industrial Revolution. "Cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, and influenza ravaged through new industrial towns, especially in poor working-class neighborhoods. In 1849, 10,000 people died of cholera in three months in London alone ("Public Health Timeline"). Tuberculosis claimed 60,000 to 70,000 lives in each decade of the 19th century” (Robinson 7). More people died due to tuberculosis alone in ten years, than the entire casualties caused during the American Civil War. The doctors

Victorian England was a period where women faced enormous financial uncertainty and social vulnerability. Due to a prevailing social construct of gender and gender roles, women of the time were perceived as the weaker sex thus belonged to the domestic sphere. As a result of this, there were very few prospects for a single woman with regards to improving her socioeconomic status other than through marriage. Jane Austen’s Emma and Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, novels written in 19th century England, both provide a lens through which the challenges of young women of the time can be observed and analyzed. Emma portrays a tenacious heroine, who is strong, intelligent and confident

The Factory Act, 1833 was an attempt to set up a normal working day in

In Great Britain during the nineteenth century, women experienced less rights in many aspects of their daily lives when compared to twenty-first century. Women lived a stricter lifestyle and men decided on many decisions in a women’s life. During the nineteenth century in Europe, women and men had an expectation to live on opposite spheres of society. Men were familiarized with living a public life, whether it was working in a factory or socializing with like-minded men in public places, like clubs, meetings, or bars. On the contrary, women had the expectation to live their lives largely at home, which included cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. Free time for women was not supposed to be spent socializing but doing other things related to

In Victorian Britain, monumental changes were occurring in regards to class structure and gender ideals due to social and economic changes sparked by the Industrial Revolution. These changes caused a new image of masculinity to emerge. The concept of masculinity came to embody a new ideal, self-made man, measured by advances based on personal success rather than birthright(M19). It was expected that men were to exude manly toughness and independent spirit while providing the financial support and leadership for the household(m19). Beyond these basic characteristics, Elizabeth Gaskell’s construction of the ideal man incorporates a fusion of gender traits as strengths of masculinity, notably her emphasis on “manly nurturance” and “tenderness” as seen in her novel Mary Barton(wcm334). While the evolving social structure of 19th century Britain was a cause for the increasing emphasis on manliness, it was also the source of challenges faced by working class men as they struggled to achieve and maintain this new sense of masculinity. By analyzing Gaskell’s Mary Barton and additional texts from the period, supplemented by contemporary analysis of the concept of masculinity, this paper provides insight into the constructions of masculinity in working class men of Victorian society and discusses the struggles workers faced as they strove to achieve manhood amidst the changing social climate.

Lenore Davidoff is less interested in criticizing political theory than in showing how historians and others must look carefully at the ragged edges of the public, the semi-public, and the private spheres to understand how Victorian women and men of a variety of social classes came to define others and themselves in terms of rationality, individuality, the market, and property. Temporal and contested as these boundaries were, however,