According to the historian Leonore Davidoff, “the late- eighteenth and early nineteenth- century middle class flourished partly because the institutions it created, produced vast material resources and social confidence in a period when the nation was poised to reap the benefits of an overseas empire.” Victorian values were developed by the middle class and were highly beneficial during the last half of Queen Victoria’s reign. Because the middle class was so influential, their behaviors and attitudes were adopted by other social classes both above and below. Kent eloquently sums up her argument about gender-based hierarchy, its ideology, and the structure it upholds in the following
According to the historian Leonore Davidoff, “the late- eighteenth and early nineteenth- century middle class flourished partly because the institutions it created, produced vast material resources and social confidence in a period when the nation was poised to reap the benefits of an overseas empire.” Victorian values were developed by the middle class and were highly beneficial during the last half of Queen Victoria’s reign. Because the middle class was so influential, their behaviors and attitudes were adopted by other social classes both above and below. Kent eloquently sums up her argument about gender-based hierarchy, its ideology, and the structure it upholds in the following