HY 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 61: Auguste Comte, Class Consciousness, Tyrant
30 May 2018
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I.The Middle Classes
A. Balzac as observer
1. The French and Industrial Revolutions had replaced one aristocracy with another
a. From rank, status, and privilege to wealth and social class
B. Who were the middle classes?
1. Not a homogeneous group in terms of income or occupation
2. Upward mobility impossible without education
. Easier in Britain than on the Continent
3. The examination system
4. "Getting ahead"
. Intelligence, pluck (luck), and hard work
a. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859)
5. Respectability
. A code of behavior
a. Financial independence
b. Providing for family
c. Avoiding gambling and debt
d. Merit and character
e. Hard work
f. Live modestly and soberly
6. Aspirations and codes not social realities
C. Private life and middle-class identity
1. The family
2. A well-governed household served as an antidote to the confusion of the business world
D. Gender and the cult of domesticity
1. The respectable home
. Rituals, hierarchies, and distinctions
2. The "separate sphere"
. Women were supposed to live in subordination to men
a. Boys educated in secondary schools, girls educated at home
b. The idea of legal inequality between men and women
3. Middle-class identity—neither aristocratic nor working-class values
4. The "angel in the house"
. Middle-class women to be free from unrelenting toil
a. The moral education of children
5. The "cult of domesticity"
. Central to middle-class Victorian thinking about women
a. The reassessment of femininity
b. Keeping the household functioning smoothly and harmoniously
c. The servant as the mark of middle-class status
6. Outside the home
. Few options to earn a living
a. Voluntary societies and campaigns for social reform
b. Protestantism and charity
c. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
7. Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901)
. Reflected contemporary feminine virtues of moral probity and dutiful domesticity
a. Successful queen because she embodied middle-class virtues
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
