scholarly journals Voluntary Societies and the Process of Middle-class Formation in Early-Victorian Halifax, Nova Scotia

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nova Scotia ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Mass Influx ◽  
Set Up

Abstract Through the second quarter of the nineteenth century Halifax, Nova Scotia evolved from garrison town to commercial city. That transition, combined with a mass influx of immigrants, spawned unprecedented social dislocation and conflict. Those situated between the extremes of wealth and poverty responded, in part, by flocking into a host of voluntary societies set up to promote social stability as well as material and moral progress. Most influential among all these societies were those which stressed the element of fraternal bonding. They led with respect to forging the disparate "middling" elements of the community into something which, in terms of cohesion and consciousness, could be termed a "middle class".

Division and cohesion in the nineteenth-century middle class: the case of Ipswich, 1830–1870

Urban History ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 42-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Hills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Income Groups ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Class Power ◽  
The Subject

For a long time historians saw the increased wealth, numbers and power of British manufacturers, merchants and professionals as simply an inevitable part of the process of industrialization. As a result the formation of the class seemed to require no further exploration. More recently interest in the middle class has increased and much closer attention has been given to specific dimensions. It seems evident from this work that any analysis of the middle class faces a number of problems. Firstly, that of definition. There was a wide range of status and income groups within the middle class. What criteria of wealth and occupation should be used, how important is it to fix upper and lower boundaries for the class, how are questions of lifestyle and attitudes to be gauged? Secondly, there were certain divisions within groups who can reasonably be considered middle class by any criteria. Above all, we must note that there was no distinctive middle-class political party and differences were as deeply felt in politics as were antagonisms between Anglicans and Nonconformists in religion. In view of such diversities is it possible to speak of the middle class and, if so, what does class formation and unity consist of? What levels of unity allow or inhibit class power? This is the subject of my overall research, of which only a glimpse can be given here.

‘Here in India’: Nineteenth-Century British Women Navigating their Position in the Empire through Children's Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-185
Author(s):  
Jesse Aberbach
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Infants And Children ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
Maternal Roles ◽  
Female Writers ◽  
And Control ◽  
Botanical Study

This article considers how the children's books written by two nineteenth-century female writers, Eliza Tabor and Mary Martha Sherwood, when they accompanied their husbands to India, enabled them to navigate this new environment and their position as respectable middle-class women while revealing how India was deemed a place where British childhood was impossible. Just as many women took up botanical study to legitimise their ‘otherwise transgressive presence in imperial spaces’ (McEwan 219), writing for children enabled others to engage with the masculine world of travelling and earning money without compromising their femininity. Addressing their work to children also seems to have helped both writers to deal with the absence of their own children: the Indian climate made it impossibly challenging for most British infants and children. In this way their writing gives expression to what might be termed a crisis of imperial motherhood. Underlying the texts is an anxiety relating to British settlement and an attempt to comprehend and control a place that threatened their maternal roles.

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