Insular privilege
In many such professions, promotion up the ranks was structured into the job. But, even here personal contact was a crucial element in filling posts. White-collar workers were largely recruited from within the ranks of the middle-classes. Clerk positions would more generally provide opportunities for the working class to move into the ranks of the middle-class. However, many of these posts were very poorly paid and of quite uncertain status. This uncertain status grew towards the end of the century as they became associated with women's work.
'Thrift, responsibility and self-reliance were important aspects of Victorian middle-class culture that could be used to define a society in which success was contingent on individual perseverance and energy.'
Thrift, responsibility and self-reliance were important aspects of Victorian middle-class culture. These middle class 'virtues' could be used to define a society in which success was contingent on individual perseverance and energy. In practice, middle-class society was not as open as this rhetoric implied. For a start, the categories of class were uncertain and shifting. The relationship between affluence and attitude was certainly not clear to contemporaries. Categories such as, 'respectability' and 'deserving' were often used rather than class labels in describing communities of like-minded individuals.
Middle-class values were carved out in these attempts to define a society based on merit rather than aristocratic privilege. However, the importance of cultural capital and social networks to success in the period implies that the rise of the middle-classes in the Victorian period saw the replacement of one set of privileges with another. The vast expansion of the service sector in the Twentieth Century perhaps did more than social reform and voluntary association to swell the ranks of the middle-classes in the Twentieth Century.
Published: 2001-08-01
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