Victorian Social Class in Middlemarch and North and South
V
The Victorian period is one of the most popular eras studied and is well known for many things; from fashion to inventions, to the Industrial revolution to their education. Despite how much people like to think that they differ from them drastically, so much of our modern society depends on what they first created and the changes they set in motion. Many perspectives on how the Victorians lived their lives come from misconceptions given to in literature and education. A lot of stereotypes held are of their social classes; the upper class were snobbish and shallow, and the lower or working class were dirty, illiterate and uneducated. Two historic and popular novels that examine Victorian life are George Elliot’s Middlemarch and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South; in both novels the writers try to portray the essence of the society as a whole, not merely of one class, sometimes more or less successfully than the other. The two texts both reinforce and contradict the clichéd representations of Victorian social class.
The class system itself is complex to define without using a superficial definition the system was always altering due to different legislations, and upon the development of the middle class began subcategories such as the ‘upper-middle class’ and the ‘lower-working class’. “Different social classes can be (and were by the classes themselves) distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life-styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture.” The middle class came about as a result of the Industrial revolution, those who had professions such as factory workers were not wealthy enough and did not have the same aristocratic heritage as the upper class, but were more affluent and comfortable in their lifestyle than the working class. They were the “new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions”
A fundamental aspect of society life in the Victorian era,
The Victorian period is one of the most popular eras studied and is well known for many things; from fashion to inventions, to the Industrial revolution to their education. Despite how much people like to think that they differ from them drastically, so much of our modern society depends on what they first created and the changes they set in motion. Many perspectives on how the Victorians lived their lives come from misconceptions given to in literature and education. A lot of stereotypes held are of their social classes; the upper class were snobbish and shallow, and the lower or working class were dirty, illiterate and uneducated. Two historic and popular novels that examine Victorian life are George Elliot’s Middlemarch and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South; in both novels the writers try to portray the essence of the society as a whole, not merely of one class, sometimes more or less successfully than the other. The two texts both reinforce and contradict the clichéd representations of Victorian social class.
The class system itself is complex to define without using a superficial definition the system was always altering due to different legislations, and upon the development of the middle class began subcategories such as the ‘upper-middle class’ and the ‘lower-working class’. “Different social classes can be (and were by the classes themselves) distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life-styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture.” The middle class came about as a result of the Industrial revolution, those who had professions such as factory workers were not wealthy enough and did not have the same aristocratic heritage as the upper class, but were more affluent and comfortable in their lifestyle than the working class. They were the “new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions”
A fundamental aspect of society life in the Victorian era,
Bibliography: Primary Elliot, George Middlemarch (Londond:2000) Gaskell, Elizabeth, North and South (New York: Cosimo Inc, 2008) Secondary [ 2 ]. David Cody ‘Social Class’ The Victorian Web: literature, history, & culture in the age of Victoria (2002) (accessed 2 November 2010) [ 3 ] [ 12 ]. David Cody ‘Social Class’ The Victorian Web: literature, history, & culture in the age of Victoria (2002) (accessed 1st November 2010) [ 13 ] [ 18 ]. Dr Donna Loftus “The rise of the Victorian Middle class” (Accessed 8th November 2010) [ 19 ] [ 20 ]. Dr Donna Loftus “The rise of the Victorian Middle class” (Accessed 4th November 2010) [ 21 ] [ 24 ]. Simon Dentith Society and cultural forms in the nineteenth- century England (London: Macmillan Press LTD, 1998) p.50 [ 25 ]