Pioneer Settlement Age of Mechanisation Creole Heritage Downtown Louisiana Plantation Life The Acadians AfricanAmericanLife Victorian Era LA Heritage Education Home Educator Area 20th Century CaringForOurHeritage

EZ Content Blueprint

Some Glimpses of Victorian Life

 

STANDARDS:

The material in this unit may be used to address the following Social Studies Standards

G-1C-H2 H-1B-E1 H-1A-M2

RISE OF MIDDLE CLASS:

During Victorian Era the middle class expanded and its control of political, social and cultural issues increased.

Middle class consisted of people who did not work with their hands, earned a predictable salary, and could afford to buy a home. 

Middle class included: doctors, lawyers, ministers, skilled craftsmen, teachers, businessmen, bankers, newspaper editors, settled farmers, managers, clerks, white-collar workers, etc.                            

About half the population in an average city belonged to the middle class.

Due to availability of inexpensive manufactured goods, the Victorian middle class could afford to copy the manners of the more prosperous members of the previous generation.

THE HOUSE AS SYMBOL:

Members of the upper and middle classes expected their houses to convey meaning, i.e., a message which observers could easily understand.

Messages, portrayed by the elaborateness or simplicity of the home's design, included the wealth, class status, virtue, and taste of the owner, as well as the importance of family life.

Wealth and its display (through home decoration and the amassing of consumer goods) became the most important factor in evaluating success.

Specific architectural styles also relayed messages.  For example:

Gothic Revival   = owner of English descent

                               romance, chivalry

Italianate            = a cultured and artistic household

THE VICTORIAN WOMAN:

Middle class Victorians believed in separate spheres of activity for males and females.  Men were assigned to the work place, while women were to influence home and family.  (This belief did not extend to the lower class, whose women often had to work outside the home.)

This belief system stressed:
  • Home as sanctuary for the family
  • Woman as teacher of moral and spiritual values
  • Through the decoration of the home, woman as teacher of artistic merit and taste
  • Home as place of woman's care and labor

Eventually, middle class women were morally (although not legally) prohibited from participating in most activities outside the home.  Whatever leisure time they might have was restricted to visiting, handicrafts, church and charitable activities, card parties, book clubs, etc.

"An obsessive and self-conscious decorating and collecting frenzy resulted when women were cut off from participation in the world and made the guardian of the family's aesthetic and moral well-being." (Elan and Susan Zingman-Leith.  The Secret Life of Victorian Houses, p. 36)