Class:
Class can be defined as a group’s relation to the means of production, made up of workers or owners which share a specific level of wealth through the nature of their work. It has an effect on their experience of their existence by confining and limiting them to a certian class level within society. The concept of classes in some extent emerged from the Victorian ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with their perspective being that human beings could fulfill their cooperative roles within society without fear of exploitation.
The Victorian era had three broad classes in which society was divided within. There was the upper class which was the highest rank of aristocracy. It consisted of dukes, earls, and viscounts and they were associatd with the commercial expansion and with the idea of leisure. Proffesions which concerned with banking and finance allowed them their wealth which was sustained by wealthy families often related to royal families.
From professions such as bankers, merchants, manufacturers, doctors and teachers came the middle class which was sharply divided from the lower class. The middle class made great fortunes in the early days of the industrial revolution and converted economic success into political power in the 1832 Reform Act. The Victorian middle-class was largely associated with the growth of cities and the expansion of the economy.
Even though there were only three broad classes the commrcial expansion of the economy produced the lower middle class. With profession such as insurance, banking, accounting and trading they faded the line between the middle and lower classes. They valued merit, respect, competition and effeiciency.
The extremely poor group made up the lower class as they were the lowest rank of society. They represented disease and criminality and was the objects of pity and charity within the spheres of society due to their lack of education. The lower class was later also identified within a specific race and this was applied thorughout the rest of the centuries.
Gender & feminism:
Gender is usually a term used to denote the social role of men and women. It lies deeply rooted in other assumptions about the physicial body and its influence on the self. In the beginning of the Victorian period there was a certian set of beliefs that clearly seperated men from women. Women had to present a passive, nurturing and emotional character while men had to be active, aggressive and rational in nature.
Through the century there was a change in ideas about what that difference signified within a class-conscious society. This created the idea that women had to be seen as a leisured and decoratie wife as marker of her husband’s success and status. Home was idealised as the place of morality and women’s purity was threatned by association with the body and her weakness which meant that women had greater danger of moral ‘fall’ through temptation. Where men on the other hand, by the nature of their occupation, were comprised by their exposure to the world.Working-class women appeared not to be women at all through the nature of thier level within society and by the manner in which they had to sustain life.
Times changed and women were gradually gainning access to education and ‘respectable’ employment through the underlying recognition of the right to independance and self-determination, even though it was still limited. This caused a shift in the notion of masculinity as the ideal man was a hard-working provider and head of the family. The ‘gentlemen’ ideal was no longer limited to the men of the upper class esspecially after men of the upper class became the subject of suspicion of being morally weak and potentially corrupting after a series of homosexual scandals rose within the society.
By the end of the Victorian era masculinity and feminism was seen to be seperated from concepts of the body and biology and lead to a renewed vision of ideas for men and women of all classes.
Ideology:
Ideology is a set of beliefs that guides an individual to their ral conditions of exictence. It is not only ideas but they are given in a concrete form in the practices and social institutions that govern people’s relations and the nature of subjectivity. It communicates the impression of something that is internally connected and consistant. In the Victorian society the middle-class ideology was often contested and in the process of being defined which meant that society constinuesly disputed and revised it.
Here are some useful links:
Definition of class: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/class
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Victorian era: http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/phil2.html
Classes in the Victorian era: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Class_structure_in_the_Victorian_era
Definition of ideology: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ideology
No comments:
Post a Comment