Poverty During The Victorian Era

When a woman married in the Victorian age, she did not have an independent legal status. Women also had no right to any money, including the money that she earned and worked for. She could not make a will or buy property, she had no claim to her children, and she had to move with her spouse wherever he went. If the husband died, he could name his wife as the guardian of the children, but he did not have to if he did not wish to.

The Victorian Era took place during 1837- 1901 and is known as Queen Victoria’s time period. She was the first English monarch to see her name given to a time period while living. It was a time of rapid advances in scientific, technological and medical knowledge, and even population growth. Although Victorian England was based around the ideals of proper etiquette and maintaining “high society”, the treatment of women during the Victorian Era highlights the contradictions of this time.

During the Victorian period, upper and middle class men and women existed in different spheres of life: the private sphere, and the public sphere. The private sphere, which included taking care of the home, entertaining guests, and raising children was dominated by women. Meanwhile men were superior in the public sphere, where they took part in politics and business. This lead to the archetypes of women being fragile and motherly, controlled by their emotions, and of men being rational and strong. Social norms, supported by laws, viewed women as “relative creatures” that were below men in the natural hierarchy and only defined in reference to men. These two ideas towards women created a gap of equality for women and constricted them to their sphere of domesticity. The suffrage movement, followed by the first and second waves of feminism gave rise to many civil rights for women, narrowing the gap of inequality. The quest for equality continues today, as these two spheres begin to merge, due to the rise in social media and the subsequent decreasing private life, and women gain more influence in the public sphere. While the forms of inequality are different and an issue for both genders, the Victorian ideas are still present and prominent today.

The world today consists of children roaming the streets, technology taking over the world, and being able to work wherever you'd like but, could you imagine a life without all these things? Believe it or not there was a time in life where these things were very uncommon to see. This would be known as the victorian era. This time period was between 1837 and 1901. Daily life was very different from now. Health, social classes, and fashion are just three examples of how daily life was different in the victorian era.

Life in Elizabethan England was hard. While some people believe that the life was great in that era, but they are mistaken. The life during Elizabethan England era was very hard because of the poverty levels being very high, the towns were unclean and their diets were very poor.

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

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

Victorian Era England Lifestyles were quite diverse depending on where you lived and how much money you had. The rich were well off while the poor were complete opposites. Although the rich had great lives, I would not wish to live in that time period.

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

The importance of the middle-class grew in the Victorian period the diverse group that had everyone from the working class and the higher class. The middle class had industrialists and wealthy bankers it also included poor clerks that earned only half as much as skilled workers. In the upper middle class in this group included the Church of England clergymen, military and naval officers, men in high-status branches of law and medicine. The lower middle class consisted of small store workers and clerical works they needed to be able to read, but nothing too high needed for the

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.

Britain’s Victorian Era was one in which the status of a person affected how someone lived their whole life. Not only in how they lived, but also in appearance, how they presented themselves, and how others treated them. In the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontё, socioeconomic status and how it affected the citizens of England is shown through the character descriptions of John Reed, Jane Eyre -the main character-, and Miss Abbot.

Like today, the Victorian society functioned on three main classes: Upper Class, Middle Class and Working Class. The Upper Class consisted of the wealthy, nobles, and any one with relations to the royal family. These people saw the life of luxury and did not have to worry about because depending on who you were, your family probably owned a major mining or shipping business. People in this class saw many privileged like access to phenomenal education and tutors and they could import expensive good from different countries.

During Victoria’s reign there were changes of great importance economically, socially, and technologically. London had a rapid growth from a 2 million to a 6.5 million population by the time of Queen Victoria’s death, due to a significant change. As a result of the industrialization, instead of a life based on ownership of lands, England was transformed to a modern economy. Based on trade and manufacturing they changed from an agrarian society in 1800’s with 75% rural to an industrial society by the 1900’s with a 75% modern urban economy. Socially, there were extreme discriminations especially between men and women. Consequently, women were not eligible for a higher education, employment and were denied the right to vote. Gradually and by the end of Victoria’s reign, women won significant political and legal rights. These included a greater access to education, the custody of children, economic independence and were able to work under fair conditions. Definitely, the Victorian Period was an era of dramatic changes that highly developed England’s power and

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,