The Elite and Middle Class Values
The Victorian Era began with the elite in total control of society and its politics. The elite class was made up of 300 families which were firmly established as the traditional ruling class. However, the development of new types of values, such as individualism, introduced changes throughout the Victorian Era. The idea of the self-made man became dominant in the middle class. Similar to the American Dream, the idea is that, if they work hard enough, all men can become wealthy.
Read more about this topic: Victorian Morality
Famous quotes containing the words elite, middle, class and/or values:
“Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.”
—Rupert Murdoch (b. 1931)
“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves.”
—Norman Podhoretz (b. 1930)