The Rise Of The Middle Class In Queen Victoria's Reign

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It goes without saying, Queen Victoria’s Reign was a time of much change, both social and political. With the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 that allowed legally separated women to keep their earnings, and many other acts and events that took place during this era, women were slowly gaining their rights in England. Another group of people benefitting in England during the Victorian era were the middle class. The newly invented steam engine led way to the Industrial Revolution in England. Therefore, their economy was undergoing a period of extended growth as a result. Due to the growth of the economy, more positions of work opened up as clerks, managers, factory workers, etc., which allowed more people to rise up from poverty…show more content…
The upper class was subdivided into the royal class (royal family and spiritual lords), middle upper class (included great officers of England) and lower upper class (included country wealthy gentleman and large scale business men). The upper class never did any hard or manual labor, since they earned their income through investments made by them or from their inherited lands. The middle class was subdivided into the higher level middle class (higher in terms of salaries and social status compared to the lower middle class) and the lower middle class (the people who worked on the orders of the higher level middle class people). The middle class earned their income according to the job they got done. The working class is subdivided into the skilled class (supervised the work of unskilled laborers) and the unskilled class (lowest rank of labor people). They earned their income through their labor. The underclass was subdivided into the poor (poor people and orphans who relied on charity) and the prostitutes (these women were at the bottom of…show more content…
Two hundred years before she took the throne, the British monarchy was temporarily overthrown by the Puritan Republican Movement. During the time that England was a republic, strict moral codes were inflicted on the people. Immediately after the monarchy had been restored, the people of England rebelled against the codes for a period of time by living lives full of vice and vulgarity. The particular immoral behaviors of the royal family greatly influenced the behavior of the public greatly. It wasn’t until Queen Victoria took the throne, that their low moral codes were raised when she no longer deemed their debauchery as acceptable
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