Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Download or read book Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century written by L. Young and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-12-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on expressive and material culture, Young shows that money was not enough to make the genteel middle class. It required exquisite self-control and the right cultural capital to perform ritual etiquette and present oneself confidently, yet modestly. She argues that genteel culture was not merely derivative, but a re-working of aristocratic standards in the context of the middle class necessity to work. Visible throughout the English-speaking world in the 1780s -1830s and onward, genteel culture reveals continuities often obscured by studies based entirely on national frameworks.