Class in Victorian Literature
The Victorians were super status conscious. Between the working class and the upper crust, there was the catchall "middle class." And with the middle class growing in the nineteenth century, there were suddenly more class gradations to keep track of. How much money do you make per year? Do you have your very own carriage? What does your family do for a living? Are you going to inherit Pemberley? (Okay, maybe not so much that last one.)
Since you couldn't just ask people these things, it was tricky to figure out where exactly they landed on the social ladder. And the Victorians had it complicated; on top of just how much money you inherited or made, there was also the old system of nobility. So you could be the daughter of a self-made man, or you could be a penniless lord. Not surprisingly, Victorian novels find these figures endlessly fascinating. Especially when they might marry each other.
Anthony Trollope's novels are full of characters figuring out the social landscape so that they can make that ultimate of decisions—whom to marry. In Can You Forgive Her?, Glencora Palliser and Plantagenet Palliser seem like the perfect match: both of their families are old and super wealthy, and Plantagenet will be a duke when his uncle dies. The trouble comes when they ask themselves whether they'll marry for social standing or for love.
Trollope comes back to this question in The Prime Minister. In this one, our dear heroine, Emily Wharton, is also trying to figure out whom to marry. Her father wants her to marry into the same old English family that they've been marrying into for years, but Emily is fascinated by a handsome man with foreign blood—and very uncertain income.
Chew on This:
What happens when you fall in love with your employer, who's also a few (hundred) steps up the socio-economic ladder? How does Jane Eyre confront it?
A rich American heiress visits old England and meets an enlightened member of the aristocracy. Miss Money and Lord Fancy Title marry and live happily ever after. Sounds like a Victorian novelist's favorite theme, right? And yet, things go awfully awry in Portrait of a Lady.