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)