CHANGING
ATTITUDES
AND VALUES
The Victorian Era: 1837 to 1901
A NEW SOCIAL ORDER
THE UPPER CLASS
Includes: super-rich industrial and business families as well as the old nobility
THE UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS
Includes: Midlevel business people and professionals
THE LOWER MIDDLE CLASS
Includes: Teachers, office workers, shopkeepers, and clerks
THE LOWER CLASS
Includes: Workers and peasants
MIDDLE CLASS VALUES
Strict code of etiquette governed social behavior.
Rules dictated how to dress for every occasion
Parents strictly supervised children.
These ideals rarely applied to the lower classes!
WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS
Pioneers of the women’s movement:
• Mary Wollstonecraft (Enlightened thinker)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Political Activist)
• Susan B. Anthony (co-founder of Women’s Temperance Movement)
Women’s groups supported the temperance movement (a campaign to limit
or ban the use of alcoholic beverages).
In the U.S., the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 demanded that women be
granted the right to vote (women’s suffrage).
CHANGES FOR WOMEN?
In America and Europe:
Women could not vote.
Women were barred from most schools.
Women could not own property.
Elsewhere:
In New Zealand, Australia and western territories of the United States,
women were granted the right to vote.
NEW IDEAS IN SCIENCE
Atomic theory
• Developed by an English Quaker schoolteacher named John Dalton.
• Showed how different kinds of atoms combine to make all chemical
substances.
Periodic table of elements
• Created by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev.
Age of the Earth
• Charles Lyell showed evidence that the Earth had formed over millions of years.
• Earth was older than previously thought.
CHARLES DARWIN
In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of
Species.
He argued that all forms of life had evolved into their present state
over millions of years (evolution)
• To explain this, he put forward his theory of natural selection
• “Survival of the fittest”
Darwin’s theory ignited a debate between scientists and religious
leaders.
SOCIAL DARWINISM
Social Darwinism
• Thinkers used Darwin’s theories to support
their own beliefs about society
• Social Darwinism encouraged racism (the
belief that one racial group is superior to
another)
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