CHANGING ATTITUDES

AND VALUESThe Victorian Era: 1837 to 1901

A NEW SOCIAL ORDERTHE 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 SCIENCEAtomic 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 DARWINIn 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)