Characteristics Of The Rich In The Victorian Era

The Victorian Era was a time of peace and prosperity. During the Victorian Era the society was divided into various social classes like the working class, middle class. Upper class, Dickens/Victorians. Above all those classes the middle class was the most hard working class with all the various occupations but also they also had quite relaxing life also speaking of which let's get into the middle class.

England under the Victorian Era was a fascinating place to live. The streets of London were filled with horse-drawn carriages and tightly spaced flats. Along with those, the streets were also a place for theft, sickness, and musk from the local factories. Crime was present throughout the cities. Drug use and prostitution were the highest forms of criminal behavior (Garside). Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved and well-known character, Sherlock Holmes, emerged from the Victorian Era. The people of London came to love the weekly stories that were published about the great detective and were extremely excited to hear the next short tale (Clausen). As the city of London began to change and the people gained more wealth, the social statuses of the citizens began to change as well. The most prospered groups were the Upper Class the Middle Class. In the Victorian Era, the Middle Class flourished because of the development of industrialization. Factories opened up creating new jobs for the Lower Class and provided supplies for many.

“ [Rich] Women wore corsets, bum rolls (which exaggerated a woman’s hips). They wore busks in the corset to make it straight. Also chemise or smocks (a women’s shirt with embroidery or lace on it)” (Brownfoot 4). “ Women had high collars. Farthingale was a type of skirt. They wore gloves, hats, ruffs, stomachers, and veils” (Brownfoot 5). Women who were rich dressed up a lot and had expensive clothes but for poor women that wasn’t the case. “ [Poor] women’s clothes were bland and involved draped fabrics which were baggy and mundanely colored” (C N). Poor married women had less rights with what they wore and their hair style as well. “Women dressed in what their husbands wanted them to wear. Married women wore hair up and unmarried wore their hair down. That was a sign of humanity” (C

After the Gilded Age people soon realized that the poor were not only in the western farm land. The poor were closer to home then they had previously thought. They had focused so much on the poor farmers that they did not realize that the lower middle class in the inner cities were struggling as well. Thousands of families were living in filthy condensed “homes” in the inner cities. Children were not being educated, looked after or being fed properly. They were running about the cities and sometimes they never came back to their “home.”

“There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully” (Chopin 129). One can interpret this to mean that parents in the 1800s (and to some extent today) desired a higher marital status for their daughters, so they could be well positioned for a stable life. As discussed in class, social status still exists in modern America which can significantly attract many candidates who want to marry a person for social status but not necessarily for love. These attitudes that continue to dominate America today stem from the aristocratic Old South as a means to achieve control of wealth for the few at the expense of impoverishing the masses.

The difference in class structures of Victorian England was dependent on the lifestyles and jobs of individuals. The Victorian era of England lasted from 1837 to 1901. The Victorian England hierarchy was divided into three different classes; the upper, middle, and lower class and was reliant of occupational differences. The hierarchy was very rigid and there was little social mobility, because of the fact that normally a person was born into their class and even their future career. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens displays the model of class structure through the character Pip Pirrup. Pip struggles to find his place within the hierarchy. Throughout the novel, Dickens writes about the different classes in England. Pip belongs the working class due to his family and is set to be a blacksmith, but finds himself in the societal shift that occurred in England in the nineteenth century. Pip wants to achieve his great expectations and change the path that his life was going on. He wants create a better life for himself than what he would have had if he followed in the footsteps of his family. Dickens also creates various characters in the different classes to expose the relationship between each class. An individual’s class was a dominant factor in creating an identity. People of the upper classes thought very little of the people “below” them. Throughout his journey, Pip reveals information about how the different social classes lived and how members of each

The women of a higher class would have extremely extravagant gowns and outfits. On a regular day they would wear a smock or shift, stockings, a corset, farthingale (a hooped skirt), a rowle, a stomacher, a petticoat, a kirtle, forepant, and a partlet. Over those clothes the women would wear a gown, separate sleeves, a ruff, a cloak, shoes and a hat. These were the clothing items that the women would wear on a daily basis.     

After William IV died, his niece, Victoria, became the Queen of England, starting the victorian era. In Victoria’s reign, the British Empire came to cover over ¼ of the world. The Industrial revolution is created during her reign, producing more products available to the common people of England. On the down side, people working in the mill had a hard life.

The Elite Class:The Elite Class was the highest tier of class only the richest of people and royalty fit here.Aristocrats,Nobles,Dukes,other wealthy families that work in the Victorian court.(3) The life of the elite class was easy and simple they didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table for the family or keeping a roof over their head.They were also very educated because back then you got what you payed for as far as education went.They had the most money out of the three classes.They often had feasts to celebrate a loved ones return from a trip or a visit.They would also make sure that only the best food would be served at these feasts.This class was almost always in the bigger houses and the best clothing etc,The position of the money when the parent died would go to the eldest kid if no will was

The ideal home in Victorian Britain was romanticized by means of social values. The man of the house was simply the man of the house. He threw down the gavel, while the woman made sure the house was a well-oiled machine. With these separate spheres of work and home becoming more important for a well-run lifestyle, Victorian domestic households shifted from primarily economic to sentimental and emotional . The chivalric hard-working man provided for the family while the domestic woman watched over the household and to make sure things ran smooth as well as making sure the house was a peaceful safe haven for her family as well as company one may welcome in for a hospitable

Wealthy and poor women in Victorian England ate lunch only, since the men were out at work. While the men were out, the women drank “unladylike” things such as beer, ale, and cider with their food at bars. After more industries were introduced to England, the working class men got jobs at factories. These factories were further from home, so the men worked longer, stayed up later, and ate dinner later. The wealthy men and women also got home late to eat dinner, but it was not because they were out working, but because they were out partying. Gas lamps soon came out, and this helped the wealthy to stay up even later than they already did. Others followed their examples, so dinner was pushed back again to eight or nine at

Victorian-era Londoners were very rich or very poor - there was no “in-between”. These class distinctions are shown in many ways throughout the book, this includes: ‘ Hell’ ( east side ) vs. ‘Heaven’ ( West Side ), Jekyll Vs. Hyde, and Jekyll’s home.

If the lower classes are not controlled it will be hard to maintain the social structure and prevent internal conflict.

The Victorian Period was a great influence to the authors who composed novels at that time where distinctions between social classes as well as between men and women were strongly marked. During this period, it was precisely a woman who ruled. Alexandrina Victoria who was born on May 24, 1819 became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 20, 1837 until her death on January 22, 1901. Victoria’s reign was one of the longest of a female in history. At only the age of 18, after her uncle William Henry IV died, she began a span of 63 years of reign. In spite of her independence and power, Victoria fell into a deep depression when her husband died in 1861 and ever since she wore black every day for the rest of her

great prosperity in Great Britain's literature. The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes. The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable. The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred,