Importance Of Social Class During The Victorian Era

Class distinction was one of the major problems of the 18th century.The class one was coming from, the reputation of your family was taken into consideration by society.Society was divided into three classes;upper class which consists of people who had power and authority to control everything with money, middle class which includes merchants, farmers, shopkeepers and working class which consists of people who were living under the control of the upper class, usually servants and house keepers.This hiearchical order based on the worth of the people and wealth brought about some strict rules.One of these rules was to remind one one's place and to act according to that.Interaction between classes in the 18th century was limited.A man of upper

Regency England was very different from the world today. Society revolved around social classes, which typically correlated with wealth and family ties. There were many different social classes in the era. The highest class in society was the royal family, consisting of the king, queen, prince, and princess. The next highest class would be the aristocracy. This would include dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons (Ray 37). Knights and baronets were not included in this class. They were considered commoners (Ray 38). The gentry was a very wide class. Land-owning males in the gentry, like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, were called gentlemen (Ray 39; Gao). Ladies were also considered gentry (Ray 12). With all of these different classes, one might say that social classes played a big factor in Regency England society.

“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.

Social class systems in the nineteenth century were comprised of the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the underclass. The different social classes can be “distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life-styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture” (Cody). The poor, also known as peasants, were usually mistreated and segregated from the wealthy, or those of higher class. During his time, Charles Dickens “seen as a champion of “the poor” by some of the poor themselves” (“What was”). It is said that one of his greatest achievements “was to bring the problem of poverty to the attention of his readers through introducing varieties of poor persons into almost all of his novels, and showing the “deserving” majority of the poor, bravely struggling against the forces arrayed against them” (“What was”). This is clearly evident in A Tale of Two Cities. During the nineteenth century Victorian era, social class systems were a common excuse for the division and mistreatment of many individuals, as evidenced in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

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

Before imperialism, Okonkwo lives as a respected figure within his community. “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond” (Achebe 1.) He has many fine traits which cause him

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.

While there were many advancements in technology and literature in the Victorian Era, there were also many disadvantages; these included child labor, class disparities, and atrocious living conditions. There were incredible novels, artwork, and machinery created during the Victorian Era. However, the people were treated horribly. Children were put to work, and severely abused while they were there. The poor were seen as dirt on the bottom of the upper class’s shoes, and were rarely allowed to advance in society. Citizens lived in squalor, and many became ill because of it. Victorian society will always have a negative connotation because of how the people were treated during that time. Dickens is a major proponent of that connotation. He wrote

Ever wonder how the Victorian era class system worked?There were 3 classes,The class system was what kind of jobs and living you had.There were 3 classes Working class,Middle class, and Elite class.Once you were in a class it was near impossible to move up or down the classes.The working class never dreamed of moving up into a new class or leaving a class in any way shape or form(4).The Elite class was the rich and royalty,The middle class was the middle of the road and wasn’t laborious this was the most common class,The lowest class of the three is the working class the people who were on this class were the hardest workers in society.This was factory work and things of that nature(3).

During the 1880s, access was a large problem throughout the world for social class and women. One known sector that occurred around the 1880s was the ‘Cinderella ‘sector, the government created many evening classes to allow students to gain education throughout the nights. This increased the number of students that were in education as children would have worked all day to earn money for their families. The government never made this a priority, but they were becoming more focused to create elementary and secondary schools which we have today. This sector was more focused on further education as it was aimed for students who had left education (Bailey,2002).

Hundreds of years ago, England prospered under the long rule of Queen Elizabeth I. This period of time, known as the Elizabethan Era, consisted of distinct differences between social classes. Diverse education, clothing, and entertainment were all important aspects of life in the Elizabethan Era. To start off, differences in education not only included upper and lower classes, but also schooling for boys and girls.

The history of social class can be tracked to the late 18th century. The term “class” had began to replace normal classifications that were used at the time such as “ranks” or “orders”. Two broad definitions of social class emerged after the 18th century being the 19th –century materialist economic models of the Marxist and anarchists and the 20th-century sociological stratum models of society.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century social life in the United States was changing. The US was going through a time of heavy industrialization and this economic movement had dramatic impacts on the American social life. These movements brought the nation together by quick and heavy urbanization and an intense immigration boom. Before the industrial revolution people were mostly involved with agriculture life, which kept them spread out across the country in more rural areas. With the industrial boom and the innovation of factories and the bigger need for cities, people in from the countryside would migrate in search of a new life and more job opportunities. These changes in the work place were directly related to the new American

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,