Understanding the Victorian class system is crucial to understanding Victorian literature. The novel you are reading will have many different characters in it. Understanding their class and how they then interact with each other is a key part of unfurling the story and the author’s intentions. In this blog post, I will explain how the class system worked in Britain in the Victorian era. This will then give you some information to use when analysing the characters in the text you are studying. The Class systemFirst of all, let us look at what we call “the class system”. In this context, the Oxford English Dictionary defines class as “a system that divides members of society into sets based on perceived social or economic status.” In the Victorian era, these classes were called upper, middle, and working. Everyone was deemed to belong to one of these and which one depended upon a number of things as follows. The Upper ClassIn the Victorian era, the upper class was made up of the Royal family, Lords and Ladies, Earls, Barons, Dukes, Duchesses and other titled people. These people inherited their titles, their homes and their money from other members of their family. They didn’t have to get a job, so to speak, because they just took over the running of the family’s stately home and grounds. The men usually inherited a seat in the House of Lords too, giving them the opportunity to vote on political matters. All upper-class children were educated. Boys went to boarding school from the age of 7, and girls stayed at home to be educated by a governess. The eldest boy then learned how to run the family estate and look after the tenant farmers, and any younger brothers usually landed roles in the army, navy or church. The girls were expected to marry men from similar families and have their children. The Working ClassThis class was made up of the majority of the people in Britain. They earned little money as they were paid only for the hours they worked. The work they did was very physical. The job roles included farm labourer, sailor, fisherman, mine worker, building labourer, docker, factory worker and servant. Women also worked, despite having children, otherwise there was never enough money to feed the family. It was very easy for these people to lose their jobs if they were ill or injured as there was always someone else to fill the role. Working class people had to rent their homes as they never earned enough money to buy them. The size of the home depended upon how much they earned, which is why most working-class people lived in rooms in slum housing, especially those who lived in the cities. This also meant they were never eligible to vote. The children were lucky if they received any education, as most of it had to be paid for, but then education wasn’t deemed necessary for becoming a servant or a miner anyway. Working-class young adults usually married within their class and so the poverty cycle continued. For many years, there were just these two classes, but at the end of the Georgian era, something called “the middling sort” started to grow and became known as the middle class. The Middle ClassTo be middle class in the Victorian era meant that a person became quite rich through their work rather than inherited wealth (like the upper classes). To start with, the middle class was mainly made up of merchants and factory owners. Merchants were men who traded in goods for money. They owned ships which sailed to countries such as India, taking British-made goods and trading them for Indian goods, such as tea, coffee and spices. These commodities were then sold back in Britain, making a profit for the merchant. The merchant was an employer, employing a captain and a crew for his ship, and men to load and unload the boats. This put him on a similar footing to upper class lords who employed tenant farmers to produce corn, wheat, dairy and other produce from the Estate. Meanwhile, factory owners rented or owned the factory and the land surrounding it. They also employed hundreds of people to work for them. Other middle-class jobs included becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a master at a boarding school, a builder, an engineer, a banker or a stockbroker. These well-paid jobs meant that the man was able to buy a nice house with a piece of land. This then made him, and all the others listed above, eligible to vote alongside the upper classes in general elections. Middle class children were also educated at boarding school and by governesses. The boys were then expected to help run the family business and the girls were expected to make good marriages to men from the middle classes and maybe even the upper classes. So each class system was mainly defined by how much money a person had. The more money someone had, the more opportunities were open to them. But each class system also had its own set of values and rules. As the Victorian era progressed, these rules were bent and eventually broken, and I will talk more about this in another blog post. This post should give you enough information to understand your text’s characters and their position in Victorian society. In the meantime, if you would like to read more about the class system in Britain today, I fully recommend this article: https://www.seijo.ac.jp/graduate/gslit/orig/journal/english/pdf/seng-43-15.pdf For more information on the Victorian era, please see my introductory post here. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think, or you can find me on twitter @_backinthedayof.
Page 2
 Online Tutoring: You still need to schedule a time to meet with a tutor either by email or phone ( or 903-565-5995) • The only difference in online sessions, is you email your paper and assignment instructions to the writing center's email address before your appointment time, and, at your appointment time, you wait to get an email from us with further instructions. • Online tutoring uses GoogleDocs for real time tutoring help Social hierarchy is classification of society of a nation that segregates the residents of a country into certain groups based on various factors out of which the wealth and occupation play a significant role in this segregation. A huge number of people are normally accrued in a society but all those people do not have the same job for their living or same status in the society. So there are mixtures of factors, depending on which the basic social structure of a society is divided into different classes in diverse ways. These factors incorporate division on the basis of power, education, economic status, prestige etc. The same was the thing with the 19th century England social hierarchy. The 19th century England was divided in several classes and those classes were further sub-divided accordingly. The 19th century England social hierarchy is described below in a descending order pattern describing all the classes in brief. AristocratsThe highest power, authority and social status holder of the 19th century England social hierarchy were the aristocrats. These people usually were not involved in any manual work since their time was so valuable to do such work that were non artistic and could be completed by normal people. These Aristocrats include following profiles:
Middle ClassThe middle class of the 19th century England social hierarchy included people who were quite wealthier than the lower class. As a social class, this ‘middling class’ usually referred to a wide band of the England population. This class further got divided into two parts depending on the social status and economical power. These two categories are as follows –
Lower ClassThis was the lowest social class in the 19th century England social hierarchy. This class was further sub categorized into two parts. These were as follows:
More Resources: Mesopotamia social hierarchy Latin america social hierarchy Social hierarchy of ancient china Victorian england social hierarchy 19th Century England Social Hierarchy was last modified: March 22nd, 2018 by |
What was the British class system in the 19th century?
zusammenhängende Posts
Urheberrechte © © 2024 frojeostern Inc.
