La clase media en la Gran Bretaña Victoriana: identidad, poder y cultura, 1837-1901 (2001)

Abstract

The Victorian period in Britain saw unprecedented changes in social structure, especially among the emergente and developing middle classes of the 'first industrial nation'. Historians have been paying growing attention to this complex phenomenon, and this historiographical article explores the ways in which simple orthodoxies have been challenged and coplicated by recent research, as historians' neglect of the middle classes is being rapidly redressed. It begins by examining the structure and identity of the middle classes, drawing attention to the contrasting experiences of the manufacturing, mercantile and professional groups, and to the stratification between wealthy merchants and bankers and the 'lower middle class' of clerks and small shopkeepers. It then investigates the role of the middle classes in politics and culture, paying particular attention to issues involving religion, gender, leisure, consumption and 'respectability', which have recently attracted innovative and revisionist initerpretations based on new sources and asking new questions.