Eugene De Rasignac. Throughout History, It Has Been Tough

Supposedly, both the individuals with ascribed statuses with hereditary wealth and the poor and homeless have equal chances to become successful although, Orestes Bronwnson in The Laboring Classes, pointed out that this is not true. “Do the young man inheriting ten thousand pounds and the one whose inheritance is merely the gutter, start even?” (219). As a result, the harsh separation of the rich and the poor, where capitalism thrives and,” the division of the community into two classes, one which owns the funds…the other provides the labor” (216). The inhumane apprehension of a capitalist society that keeps its workers “in a permanent system, [has] given preference to the slave system” (214) says a lot about the evils of capitalism corresponding with the false American Dream. An outcome of capitalism is the frustrating rivalry between the poor. “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining the country. The competition is maddening”

Have you ever wondered what life is like for people in specific social classes and all the baggage that comes with being wealthy? In the article “Amber Waves of Green”, author Jon Ronson has sit downs with hard working americans making a income of $200 a week all the way up to $625,000 a week. In another writing titled “The Mansion”, written by Michael Lewis, allows the reader to get insight on what life is like as a middle class individual taking on a higher style of living. Within the two articles the reader can point out that both Jon Ronson and Michael Lewis disagree on living styles, what wealth can do for you, and how it can affect the people around you.

There was a time when social classes were most easily identified through material goods and possessions. Whether wealth was gained through inheritance or hard work, it was the luxury items that made the most visible and tangible statement regarding a person’s social status. Men could rely on a large house or expensive car to proclaim the success they had earned. It was much more common to see women adorned in jewels, designer clothes, and furs as symbols of her upper class status. The extravagance of a woman’s appearance was a reflection of the success of her husband, so it was natural to indulge her desire for expensive material possessions.

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn all explore the effects of wealth and class on society. On closer inspection, a common strand seems to form between these three classic novels. The idea that wealth (and the social class that comes with it) determines a person is refuted via the use of deep characterization. In the end, it seems, wealth and class don’t determine a person’s moral integrity and value, but rather how they interact those two things. Ultimately, Twain makes a case for the lower-classes, that even the poor (and enslaved) can be truly good, setting a better example than the wealthy. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, shows that rich aren’t entirely superficial, rather, that they can be great men. Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a bit more of an oddball than the other two novels, focusing instead on a protagonist that leaps from riches (under the supervision of a cruel aunt), to rags, then back to riches once again. Still, this common strand holds true between the three books: no class, poor or rich, is entirely exempt from moral bankruptcy. A poor person like Pap Finn can be morally corrupt, while a rich man like Jay Gatsby can be good. All character-based judgments in these books lay solely on the person they are judging, blind of the class and wealth that surrounds them.

Grenouille is further conveyed as a victim of social decay when upper class supposedly high ranked and highly respected people are portrayed as fools and almost idiots. Through Comic Irony Father Terrier is seen as an uneducated fool and childish when using the phrase “poohpeedooh”. The repetition of this phrase further illustrates the foolish nature of a highly respected person showing social decay. Moreover, presenting the upper class in France as silly and foolish shows the decay of society and how even foolish people such as Father Terrier are respected and looked up to making Grenouille a victim to this social decay as well as an outsider as he does not respect these foolish upper class people and does not follow the demands of society.

In the modern Paris, society is divided into different classes of people, different jobs, and different features of modern life. The Belly of Paris, written by, Émile Zola is about a man named Florent who was wrongly put in prison from Louis-Napoleon’s coup-d’etat. He escapes from prison and returns from the countryside to find an unrecognizable Paris. The Belly of Paris describes the class differences in the 1870s - there is the bourgeoisie, which is defined as the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes; the capitalist class who own most of society's wealth and means of production contrasted with the lower working class. By portraying and describing characters as the food

You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism-- that is what our century wants." Through him, Dorian faces the harsh realization that his physical attributes are ever fading. Upon this sudden insight, he dreads the physical burden of aging. He envies the perpetual beauty of Basil's masterpiece. As Dorian says, "If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that - for that - I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" The materialization of this wish and the metamorphosis it will ensue are to bring his demise. Dorian's figure remains immaculate while the picture bears his abhorrent transformation. This is first confirmed following his amorous relationship with Sibyl Vane, an actress he meets at an infamous theatre. Like him, she is characterized by an entrancing beauty and a youthful naivety. Mesmerized by one another, they promptly exchange vows of fidelity. Dorian invites Henry and Basil to

The struggle of an individual in a class alienated society is emphasised by presenting two disparate classes: the bourgeois and the proletariat. The bourgeois are describes by the narrator as ‘titans and their gigantic wives’ who ‘drink barrels of champagne and bellow at each other wearing diamonds bigger than I feel’. The exaggeration used adds to the cynical tone to mock the elements of the bourgeois, but also suggests the hollowness of their wealth and how they possess greater than the narrator can grasp. The narrator in comparsion feels like a ‘cockroach’ shown in the description; they ‘just want to see you run around their money…they know they can’t threaten you with the tip, to them

“In a world that was theirs it was almost a regulation always to wish for more than you could have.” Such a world had only just arrived during the early nineteen sixties—with a surge in economic output, an increase in the average income, and the commercialization of mass-produced consumer goods—following the Second World War. This was a time during which France, in particular, transitioned from a class-based, limited-consumption culture to a consumer society in which individuals defined their positions and self-worth based on the possessions that they owned. Georges Perec’s novella Things: A story of the Sixties details the rise of this wealthy consumer society and the various industries that made it possible, through the story of a young couple in their twenties striving to attain an idealized life-style, while hoping to somehow escape what they consider to be a bourgeois trap.

Society has evolved to the point where money is the biggest factor in our lives. People spend an incredible amount of time at their workplace for that miniscule pay raise. Money also plays a role in our relationships with the people around us, seen in the fact that people of similar economic status tend to congregate. This desire to gain more money causes conflict, mainly between people who have a great deal of money, and the people who struggle financially. There are many examples of conflict between the different economic classes. Class conflict in Russia led to the Russian Revolution, and class conflict in France led to the French Revolution. Economic status is also the cause behind many ordinary crimes. This conflict, both between and within classes, is exemplified in The Great Gatsby, which shows that conflict occurs because of the differences among the classes and the strive to rise to a new class, known as the American dream. In order to effectively reduce conflict in any form, something must be done to eliminate the distinction between the different economic classes.

In chapter sixteen, “Social Class and Inequality” the essays show different cases in which being rich, poor, smart or middle class can affect a person. In the writings of Angela Locke in “Born Poor and Smart” (338-339) Angela summarizes her life of what it was like growing up with a poor, yet smart mother. However, in “When Shelter Feels like a Prison” (374-376) Charmion Browne writes about being poor, and living in homeless shelters. Somethings in life, are no more than learning experiences, and only you can change it.

The Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age, was a period characterized by post-war euphoria, prosperity, profligacy, and cultural dynamism. There were significant changes in lifestyle and culture in the 1920s; many found opportunities to rise to affluence, which resulted in groups of newly rich people, such as the hero of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby. Set in this booming era, the novel portrays the lavish and reckless lifestyle of the wealthy and elite. With the aristocratic upper class in the East Egg and the nouveau riche in the West Egg, people are divided into distinct social classes. Contrasting the two groups’ conflicting values, Fitzgerald reveals the ugliness and moral decay beneath

In his novel, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo identifies the principle social evils of French society through the actions and qualities of his characters. By depicting each of his characters’ struggles through destitute and oppressed measures, Hugo is able to identify the social errors of 19th century France. The fact that characters such as Valjean, Javert, Fantine, and Cosette, attempt to rise above poverty and redeem themselves indicate that such inequalities did, and still do, exist to this day. Through the use of feminist ideals and the criminal injustice system, Hugo attacks the principle social evils that each of his characters face in Les Miserables.

Doctor Manette’s prison account clearly demonstrates the class gap, “The speaker [the Marquis] seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that different order of creature [the peasant] dying there, and that it would have been better if he died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind” (Dickens 329). Not only is there an extreme difference in lifestyle, but the upper class also treats the lower class with extreme disdain. The treatment of the people at the hands of their “betters” and the class gap catalyzes the French Revolution.

Throughout Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the character Jean Valjean, the Patron-Minette, and Gavroche have a lot in common. What defines them as people, though, are their actions in life and the actions of others. Hugo emphasizes how the lack of those things (education and kindness) leads to criminal ways and an ungratified way of life. No one has shown them affection or kindness which leads them to believe society is mean and they develop hatred towards it. Not one of them were educated, which leads to ignorance and a lack of opportunities in life, which leads to crime in the long run.