Middle Class England
To be rich or to be poor that's the question of life. Their are some people that are poor. There are some people that are very well of. Then there's that group of people that sits right in the middle between poor and rich. This cluster of people is the group of white collar workers who make enough money to live comfortably. This group is the middle class, and in the story the Pardoner's Tale there is three characters that are deemed as middle class people. These three are Merchant, the Oxford Cleric, and the Sergeant of Law. The author does a good job depicting the life of a middle class person. He this does by showing the three main aspects that separates them. By describing their degree of wealth, their level of education , and their political power.
The first middle class character we are introduced to is the merchant. The merchant was a middle class man trying to live like he had lots of money. He spent money on clothes that he could not afford. He also borrowed lots of money and spent the borrowed money on clothes. He was a man of trade and was very good at his job. He did not need a high level of education for this job. He was also not a man of high power in politics due to his problem with borrowing money. He was looked down upon for this. Which is why he was thought less of by higher ranking people.
The second character we are introduced to is the oxford cleric. He was never worried about money and how he looked .He was also addicted to
Most members of the middle class “the bourgeoisie” who made almost 13% of the third estate’s population, some had come from the peasantry background. And the lower middle class consisted of the business men, traders, lawyers and other skilled workers, most of whom were professionals and well educated. The traders wanted personal economic
This brings us to the characters that compose the middle class. These characters are: Curly, Hatfield, Doc Boone and Peacock. The roles of these characters are not built and manifested throughout the film. For instance, Curly is introduced as the sheriff out to imprison the Ringo kid. This is in line with the 'B' men of the justice of the peace. His major concern is to see that the laws of the land are upheld. He deviates from this role at the very end of this film by letting the Ringo kid go. Clearly this is an action that is not in line with his law keeping duty. Hatfield, a southern gambler, is really a unique character. Most 'B' western icons depicted as gamblers are usually shown as hard and
The events of the play reveal that most people in the upper-middle class (Mr and Mrs Birling and Gerald) look down on the lower class with derision (‘girls of that class’) and the only middle class person in the play (the Inspector) seems to detest the upper-middle class because he believes in socialism.
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 different view of wealth from the Edward and the narrator ties into the main theme of the story: People are never satisfied with what they have. This was shown throughout the story with the symbol of wealth. Some other themes in this story is “lack of power and desperation leads to violence. This theme is shown when the narrator and the other Black Man decide to nab the first white man that “looks like bucks.” They are powerless, no money, starving—they resorted to violence because of it. Another theme that takes place in this story is money does not buy happiness. Neither the narrator nor Edward are happy. One is rich, the other, is dirt poor. A big theme in this story that applies to a lot of history is that by breaking the law and envying the rich there will still be one left empty handed. Whether it is something small like robbing a rich person or something big by overruling a government there is still going to be someone who is not benefiting. Even if it is for a good cause.
The world is full of hypocrites and in the story “The Pardoner’s Tale”, Chaucer writes about a man who is living a life of sin. The Pardoner’s tale is an epologia of a pardoner who has the power from the church to forgive others for their sins but makes a living out of lying and tricking his audience. Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale he preaches about greed, drinking, blasphemy, and gambling but in the Pardoner’s Prologue he admits to committing these sins himself. The pardoner is really just a 14th century con artist who makes a living by his own hypocrisy.
There has always been a class system since the beginning of civilization and it was extremely difficult to get to a higher class. A person could not choose what class they were born in and the majority were lower class-man. As before the only way to become wealthy is by education and it was hard for lower class-man to get one. One way was for girls to get married like Johnny’s mom did or Mrs. Lapham marring Mr. Tweedie. For boys to become a higher class they need to be educated or have great skill at a craft which is usually only born with like Johnny. As these kids have little to no money they are picked on by arrogant adults, an example is Dove as the horseman for the British. These lower class-man children were given brute and labor intensive jobs. The children’s jobs are unimportant so they are given the least money for their work. Some children with low pay would be accused of theft if they had a valuable object. When court action is taken the upper class-man are listened to, unless undeniable evidence, like in Johnny vs Mr. Lytes case. A common stereotype for these children is that they are sick and thieves. The class system has created rough jobs for the lower class children and most jobs are extremely
The upper, middle, and lower class. The upper class streamed from the aristocrats of earlier time periods. The middle and lower classes were the working classes. The middle class however had jobs with better pay, a better standard of living ,and better sanitation then the lower class but still had struggles with day to day necessities. The lower class were very poor and had difficult lives. Many children worked in the lower class. This relates to A Brave New World as the lower classes were not focused on in society very often, and had difficult jobs and less access to resources from their conception, this caused the lower classes to in general have low
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.
Socially, the first middle class was developed in the North. With the industrial movement, there was less focus on slavery and more focused more on allowing individuals to work in factories that created a middle class. The South
The upper middle class consists of managers and professionals, while the lower middle class is made up of clerks, office workers, telephone sales and shop workers. These jobs are usually not very well paying and do not require very high qualifications. The petty bourgeoisie on the other hand are small business owners. This group may consist of people who may own a workshop or shop and may be employing a small number of people.
During the medieval times corruption in the Catholic Church was prevalent. As corruption was prevalent during Chaucer’s time so was a Pardoner’s practice of selling indulgences, becoming one of deception and greed. Similar to the upper class focusing their time on becoming the richest and most powerful. In many of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer would use satire to criticize different social classes. For example, the middle class, those people who worked for their possessions. He satirizes religious hypocrisy in such tales as the Pardoner, in which a middle class man, showing the corruption of the Pardoner’s job. Through his description of the Pardoner as being a man who is disitful, greedy, and hypocritical, Chaucer uses
Nobles, Priests, Peasants, and scholars few of many descriptions given to people living in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages, was a time in European history when people were separated by jobs, religious beliefs, and money. During the Middle Ages a class system began to develop and out of that rose the middle class. Middle class is the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business workers and their families. In literature many writers have been able to depict economic and social changes through poems, novels, and short stories. Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem, The Canterbury Tales, depicts the rising middle class in the midst of the Middle Ages through the use of characters, their actions, and language.
Despite the actual terms of “wealth,” “income,” or “money” seldom being used in the prologue, each character did in many ways give hints of their financial standings by the way in which they led their lives. For example, the Prioress seemed to live a comfortable middle class life based on descriptions such as “speaking French fluently,” “had meat on which to dine,” and “she was so charitable” (Chaucer 124-143). Based on simple assumptions, it seems fair to say that the prioress made modest wages to fund her style of living. While she may not have been bathed in riches like the nobility, she certainly had the resources to be educated (literate), eat meat for dinner, and donate to the poor who certainly did not have what she had.
In the Canterbury Tales, the majority of the characters are in the middle class. The middle class is talked about on multiple occasions and is discussed throughout the story. There are multiple examples in which the character of the middle class is shown. Though the middle class has a variety of different people from different backgrounds with different skills the usually all have around the same ways of acting towards certain situations. These are some of the reasons that they are all grouped together with the same characteristics.They are strong, hard-working, and yet easily manipulated.