The Victorian Age

The Social Aspects

Generally Victorian Society started with the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837. When she married Albert in 1840 the attitude of the whole Victorian society changed into a society more leaning on moral aspects. This status at last lasted until 1890 when Prince Edward’s, the Prince Of Wales, lifestyle became popular in public. His way of life was more lifely.

England started becoming capitalist. Families living in the country moved to the towns to earn money and keep up with the average middle-class families.

Machinery and bad working conditions plus low pay made Victorian prosperity grow faster then ever. Adults and children had to work and to live in bad conditions.

The structure of Britain changed so fast until 1850, that many people could not understand it. The railway and the growth of the cities made England become an industrial state. Small towns were overtaken by growing industries to become uncoordinated and sprawling industrial dwelling areas. Rail towns such as Crewe soon developed as main rail junctions. These towns were close to other industrial towns like Stoke On Trent which became densely urban, spreading to make six joined towns. By 1870 Britain had grown from 10 million at the start of the century to over 26 million.  

The working class life was horrible. Workers had to live in the old dilapidated houses of the rich. They had old clothes and there was not much to eat. Their chances of getting out of this condition were slim. They had to walk miles to get to work in industries or mills. Previously they lived just about next to their places of work. For them, work began at 5:30 a.m. and was never less than 10 hours. As a result of that it became rather normal for workers to use drugs or alcohol to get through the situation of life they were in.

Railways were a huge step of progress, as it now was possible to transport people and goods faster than ever before. This helped Britain to become more and more an industrial state.

Beside that fact, railways ensured the safety of workers in their position as for example track-builders or people from the delivery service. In addition to that, it became normal that members of parliament traveled from the countryside to big towns and cities fast enough, that they could reach more than 10 kilometers a day. Now all could manage rare day trips to the new coastal seaside.

Carriages were divided into categories called classes and the 1st class rail carriage was designed like a horse drawn coach. It had foot warmers, oil lamps and closed sides and roof. 2nd class carriages were roofed, but open sided. 3rd class carriages were simple unroofed trucks without seats. In third class, passengers could be blistered by sparks and choked. In the open sided carriage illustrated above an umbrella and a parasol are used for protection. The man protects his top hat from flying sparks and another man dons a blanket to keep off the chill and dusty smoke. 

In daily Victorian life, a good etiquette was particularly a must, while the etiquette for women differed from the men’s etiquette. These rules of etiquette were omnipresent, there were actually rules for everything.

For women, these rules affected the jewelry they were to wear; i.e. which jewelry as well as when it was to where. It was important who to walk with, who to dance with, how and when to speak to a stranger; those were all very critical knowledge.

The men’s etiquette included rules about bowing, hat tipping, chaperonage, where to sit and next to whom, even about the circumstances in which it was correct or not to smoke or drink in front of ladies.

There was also a correct title for almost every type of profession, social standing and rank.

One of the most popular events in Victorian upper class society was the dance. Dances were usually scheduled around full moons. Although the dance was so popular, even the largest houses  did not have great ballrooms, so as a consequence, balls were usually held outdoors.

They started around 8 o’clock so the light of the full moon allowed less lighting to have to  be put up. The hostess and her daughters greeted the guests at the front door.

During the 1850s and 60s, floral decoration was very popular, which later changed, by the 1890, too much decoration was frowned at.

At the usual dance, a band, consisting of a cornet, piano, violin, and a cello during the 1850s, played from the ‘top’ of the room, which usually was the area farthest away from the door.

Occasionally, in order to prevent difficulties, dance cards were written out enabling the guests to choose in advance which dances they preferred so no quarrel could be caused by disagreement.

Sometimes the dances were done so excessively that cavalry officers were asked not to wear spurs, in order to prevent injuries.

The typical Victorian household would not have worked without at least one servant. In the upper classes, having more servants than needed was even a symbol of status and wealth.

In small households, the servant would usually be a maid-of-all-work, a girl who cooked, cleaned, scrubbed, mended, looked after the children, and got to stay in the kitchen while the family went out or enjoyed themselves in the parlor.

A grander household’s staff of servants would include a housemaid, a nurse and a cook, those were typically households of bakers or doctors. The greatest households’ staff would even include an amount of servants comparable to a small army.

A new kind of class system was built up by Victorian society. If it happend purposely or not, but the classes showed concrete and radical differences between the rich and poor. There were, with exceptions of course, only two different kind of classes. The upper-class and the lower-class. People were either poor or rich. The poor people had not much to eat and had to live in the old houses of the rich. They had to work hard to survive. The rich people had big houses and much to eat. Socially, being rich had its advantages as well. Rich people were preferred in restaurants and they had better seats at social events.

The grand managers built new streets and estates with big villas outside the cities. Others built normal houses to rent to the working class people. By doing that, they earned more and more. The poor had nearly no chance to get out of their situation. The class divisions used on the railway were echoed through the whole of England . Even in church the higher classes sat at the front in reserved pews and the lower classes at the back. The dresses showed their status of class. Wealthy people wore expensive and lavish dresses that showed their high class. The poor wore old or lower quality dresses.

The new social class that emerged was the bourgeoisie middle class. An outward display of wealth through clothing and possessions showed to those who were still climbing the ladder that the former had reached the top. The economic status of people was no longer shown by their land ownings, but by the number of servants and carriages they employed. On the whole, those nineteenth century Britains who had money concentrated their efforts on acquiring more through economic endeavors and social-climbing.

Even with the big differences in social class and prosperity, the daily routine of the poor was similar to the one of the rich. Most of the poor worked in houses of the rich and had to be their servants. So they got to peek into life of the rich, if they wanted or not. Ending their work in the evenings, they had to return in their rather small and plain appartments.

Anyway, for them it was a kind of vicious circle. They had no money to get out of their situation on their own. Even for their children it was not possible to climb up a step in social class.

Low wages, expensive food, bad housing, poor education, and other disadvantages were the cause of the steady situation many generations of the poor were in.

For a selected group, the mid-nineteenth century was a gilded era of prosperity; for the majority, however, it was an uncertain time of instability.

Women's clothes in the Victorian period meant basically a great struggle, especially upper class women had to wear dresses that distorted the natural body shape grotesquely and complicated everyday's life for the average lady a lot.

The clothing fashion of that area could be described as a major hidden instrument in the contemporary oppression of women.

Between 1835 and 1860, the beauty ideal changed to a more and more bell-shaped figure. The waistline moved more up, more towards its anatomical position while the dresses became fuller and fuller, with thick layers of petticoats as undergarment. As a peak, the corset was invented. Dress materials became heavier and heavier, as rich silks and velvets became the most popular fabrics.

To even underline that rotund apperance, women used to decorate themselves with feathers and jewelry. The most common colours were deep red, green and mostly blue.

For a modern viewer from our time, those dresses seem extremely shiney, but regarded under the Victorian light conditions, that were at most dim, it would just have seemed usual.

In the 1870s, skirts had become so long, that they had to be held up by at least one hand in order to be able to walk properly. Luckily, with the eighties, the length of the dresses changed to just above the ground, so that walking became easier again.

All those dresses were worn all the time, even during physical activitiy, as e.g tennis, which was very popular in the Victorian period. If you were in the upper class, you might have as many as 8 dresses, and wear as many as 5 in one day!

The lower classes were not as affected by the clothing etiquette as the upper ones, maybe one of the only positive aspects of living as a poor citizen in the Victorian age.

They neither wore bell-shaped dresses that ruined their posture, nor did they wear incredibly tight corsets to provide the right 'wasp-waisting'. So they generally just wore simpler clothing than the upper classes. But as everything else, this had its negative aspects as well. The underwear in lower class households was very unhygienic, because it was neither changed too often nor did those people bathe a lot.

Upper and middle class men wore tights,  a vest (or waistcoat, pronounced 'weskit'), a cutaway coat, and a shirt. In the course of the 19^th century, the colors of those clothes became darker and darker, until they finally reached black in the 1860s.

Meanwhile, the dresscoat became less and less everyday wear. So the before mentioned full dress became more and more wear for the evening or for special social events. The so-called 'frock-coat' became the daily outfit, a long garment of black fabric, that was cut to a uniform length all around.

In this coat, all sober people and even prime ministers appeared until the end of the century.

Games and the invention of cycling were the main influence for modifying men's clothes in that period.

In the late 1870s, knickers became modern. At first, men wore them with Norfolk jackets but then they adapted this gear to hunting, hiking and young boys.

With the industrial process of standardization, clothes could be promoted much cheaper, but the old 'occupational' wear soon fell out of use, so that workers and children took the old stuff and started wearing it, with the consequence, that all of them looked like poor clerks.

Principally it was usual that women had to stay home and that their husbands would go to work.

Of Course there were a few rebels, that wanted to ignore the system.

Men’s attitude towards women was quite similar. They were convinced that women

ought to stay at the hearth and not think about having a kind of  what we now call career.

For them, marriage was their major goal in life. They were prepared for that event all life long. They had to be innocent, virtuous, dutiful,had to speak Italian and French and should have no personal opinion. Singing and being able to play an instrument were a plus, too. Women were seen as instable, fragile beings, that were unable to make decisions as to which meal to cook and how to spoil their husbands to exempt them from the stress they built up during their hard day in industrial Britain .

Women had to keep home a place for family to call secure and harmonic.

The prime use of women was to have a big family and to do all the housework, so that men could go on making money without wondering in what shape their house would be.

The upbringing of the children was also a thing women had to do. They had to teach them all the manners she was told once she was young.

Men were allowed to have mistresses. Women were expected to be totally faithful whatever their husband would do. If it became public, that a woman had a lover, society would exclude her. Men were praised for having some “projects” beside their marriage.

If a woman decided to separate from her husband, she had no rights to see her children or keep her property until 1887 when finally the Married Woman's Property Act gave them the right to keep their belongings.

It was not advisable anyway because you got kicked out of society when you were divorced.

The differences of the classes the women fit in was important for the way their average day would look like.

The way the day of a weathly wife in the Victorian time should be like, was very specific as well. She had to spend the day sewing, receiving guests, going for visits, letter writing and doing stuff for her husband.

Life for the poor people in Britain at that time was totally different from the way of life the rich lived. They had to eat the things the rich people left on their plates, and had a hard working life to own a little bit for staying alive. They had to eat simple meals, for example potatoes, tired vegetables or rancid bacon.

By the way the meals for the different classes look like, you can see the enormous contrast between rich and poor. There were only to kinds of people. The rich and the poor.

By the end of the Queen Victoria's reign there were great differences between members of society, but the most instantly apparent difference was through the garments worn.

Until the new century, clothing was used to show the prosperity of the family:

A wealthy woman's day was governed by etiquette rules that encumbered her with up to six wardrobe changes a day and the needs varied over three seasons a year. A lady changed through a wide range of clothing as occasion dictated.

Several kind of dresses were used to the few different occasions: The women had opera dresses, funeral dresses, morning dresses, mourning dresses, dinner dresses, travelling dresses, golf dresses, shooting dresses, seaside dresses, town dresses and so on.

With the years passing, the attitude of women changed as well. They became more and more like thinking beings, with personal opinion and they wanted more rights for themselves.

They did not want to be seen as social support for their husbands.

New inventions, such as the motor car, the camera, the post, the railway or the sewing machine led women to thinking and underlined their feeling of autonomy.

Women of all classes started fighting for their rights. They wanted to earn their own money and to be able to have a personal career. Though many of them fighted and did not even see the results.

Average underclass women

by Daniel Matuschke, Jonathan Strömer