The Time Machine: Class Conflict in the Victorian Period Essay

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.

The wage-earning class was the debtors, debtors who owed money and had to work to make a living for creditors, most of whom made up what would be known as the middle class. The tradition of fathers passing their land on down to their sons was slowly dying such as with Mayo Greenleaf Patch and his sons. Mayo Patch’s life was riddled with owing debts to the middle

The best class to be in was the gentry because they were the richest of the rich. The people that made up the gentry included plantation owners (the Tidewater), merchants/business owners, ministers, royal officials, successful lawyers and wealthy artisans, such as goldsmiths. The gentry owned most of the land, were very powerful, were the most likely to hold office, and the men had the right to vote.

The lower class consisted primarily of Native Americans, African Americans, and impoverished whites. Author, Howard Zinn revealed many examples that showed the congregation of lower class individuals, in spite of their differences “ In spite of such seventeenth century, there is evidence that where whites and blacks found themselves with common problems, common work, common enemy in their master, they behaved toward one another as equals. As one scholar of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, has put it, Negro and white servants of the seventeenth century were “remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences” (Zinn 68).When it came down to real talk, the lower class rose above their differences and worked together to achieve one common goal, freedom. However, the upper class knew they wouldn't be able to withhold all the power with the lower class citizens joining forces. The upperclass attempted to divide the lower class by the separation of race, sexuality, and wars and ideas of war. In between this conflict lied the middle class, who struggled to chose, as they were tempted by the upper class wealth. Although early settlers envisioned a country of liberty and equality, the upper class used their wealth and power to obstruct the lower class from achieving complete freedom, which lead to the oppression of lower class individuals.

Urban workers and the poor: they were dependent on the upper classes for work, believed in artisan republican ideology, joined unions and went on strike, and occupied working class neighborhoods. The poor suffered terribly from disease, occupying substandard housing in slums, had high rates of criminals, alcoholism and fighting, and high unemployment, and experienced a lack of government and social services. (Henretta, 301 – 305).

Having only recently permeated the public and political lexicon, there are few debates that evoke such passion as that of the underclass. Karl Marx tabled the idea of the lumpen proletariat, yet in the modern era, the concept did not take hold in Britain until 1989. Today, the debate focuses on whether frictional forces create a continuum of inequality, or whether a defined underclass does exist. The question asks if 'poor people' belong in a separate underclass, which is a vague definition. There will always be 'poor people', but whether or not this automatically qualifies them as a separate underclass is tenuous at best. Even the most radical proponents for the existence of the underclass stop short of declaring all those below the

The community was divided into three different classes. The Aristocracy, the Middle classes and the

The upper classes had all of the political power, and the middle and lower classes had absolutely none. There was also a group below the working class called the sunken class. They lived in poverty and struggled immensely in their daily lives. While the lower class people were working for a living, the rich were living glamorously. They had large houses, plots of land, and maids and butlers. Even with all of these amenities, the upper class paid no taxes. The citizens under the aristocrats paid nearly all of the taxes, even though they worked for pennies a day. This created hostility towards the upper class, and made the class disparity even more severe. In A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge was a wealthy, upper-class man. He did not do anything to help the poor or the lower-class society. Meanwhile, Bob Cratchit had a sizable family that lived in a cramped house, and struggled to make ends meet. Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit, his employee, poorly, and said multiple times that the poor should be able to work their way out of poverty. He was incredibly disconnected from the lower classes, and this showed in his treatment of them. He was unaware of the struggles of the poor, and he was unwilling to learn until he was forced to. This is one very apparent example in fiction of the class disparities of Victorian

A member of the working class is someone who receives an hourly wage—this definition—not only excludes the true middle class—professionals, managers, and small-business owners—even if one claims that a cop or a fireman might live in the suburbs and drive a big car, it actually belongs to the middle class” (Deresiewicz). “Those middle class workers would find themselves squarely back in the working class”

The people of this class possessed the uppermost power and position in the society. To be a part of this class you simply had to be born in

Time traveling, a concept known to modern man as inconceivable, but in The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, this fathom of human fantasy has come to life. Wells entangles a unique blend of contrasting characters, conflicts of capitalist verses laborer divisions, and foreshadowing of the destruction of humanity to seem together this novel of visionary proportions. "The Time Machine is a bleak and sober vision of man's place in the Universe."(McConnell Pg.1581)

In the novel, two main groups are presented to the reader in very different ways. When the Time Traveller first appears in the year 802,701 he is confronted by the Eloi. Eloi are pretty, but idiotic creatures that play and eat fruit all day. “Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness” (Wells 25).

An important note to make when talking about class, is that it is not only based on income status but also on what job an individual has, relations in economy, political affiliations, and overall the way of living. The chapter describes how Karl Marx felt about class inequality because it would be the leading cause to a revolution causing it to displace capitalism. Other aspects of economic life that are linked with class are education level one obtains and employment rates. According to the text, the level of education helps identify which group of social class one fits, for example someone with no degree would be considered the working class since many jobs pay at the minimum wage whereas someone with a high level of education can be above

The Time Machine As I understand it, Darwin in his book ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES published in 1865, argues that natural selection leads to adaptive improvement. Or even, if evolution isn't under the influence of natural selection, this could still lead to divergence and diversity. At one time, there was a single ultimate ancestor, and from this, hundreds of millions of separate individual species evolved. This process where one species splits into two different species is called speciation. Subsequent divergence leads to a wider separation of taxonomic units, the genera, the families, the orders, the classes, etc.

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,