Middle class Victorians

Sticks

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Hello,

I've got what I'm afraid might be a very stupid question regarding Victorian social mores...

I'm writing a short story set in 1890's London. My female MC is a young widow. Her parents are dead. She is wealthy middle class (father and husband were bankers and businessmen). She is no longer in mourning. She lives with her grandfather in his house somewhere outside London (I'm not sure where yet, but it's not all that important).

My male MC is a middle-aged widower who lives in London. He is fairly close with the female MC's grandfather- something of a mentor relationship, or father and son, although they are not related.

My question is this: I want my female MC and her grandfather to stay with my male MC at his house in London for a few weeks, as his guests. Would social convention allow it? Would it be perfectly normal? Out of the question? Tolerated but frowned upon by others?

Any help would be greatly appreciated :eek:
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

As long as she's travelling with her grandfather, I don't think it would have been a problem.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

katci13

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Yeah, since she's traveling with her grandfather, I can't see why that would be an issue. If I'm not mistaken, it would be far more inappropriate for her grandfather to go off and leave her in the house alone while he traveled about.
 

TallyHo

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To the OP:

Yes, it would have been fine. Close family friends and the grandfather is present as a chaperone.

To katci13: the female MC is a widow. As a woman who was married her status is different from an unmarried young woman. It would have been perfectly fine for her to remain on her own while her grandfather traveled. Anyway, these people had scads of servants, so they weren't exactly alone, so even an unmarried young woman would have been fine in her family house.
 

Sunflowerrei

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If your female MC is out of mourning, does that mean she's in her half-mourning? The Victorians really knew how to drag mourning on.

But yes, as others have said, it's fine if she's with her grandfather as a guest in the male MC's house.
 

Sticks

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Thank you everyone! It's good to know my story can proceed as planned.

Good point about the mourning- I've read that 2 years was enough time for a widow to be completely done with it, so that's more or less what I'm going with for this story.
 

gothicangel

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Be careful of the term middle-class. The definition we understand today came into being in 1913.

While the nobility owned the countryside, and the peasantry worked the countryside, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city. Another definition equated the middle class to the original meaning of
capitalist: someone with so much capital that they could rival nobles. In fact, to be a capital-owning millionaire was the essential criterion of the middle class in the industrial revolution.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class
 

Sticks

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Thanks gothicangel, that's an excellent point and always good to keep in mind.

My characters are definitely middle class- mercantile, professional, wealthy- but I'm not going to explicitly refer to class in the story (I'm not knowledgeable enough about the nuances to tackle that issue head on!). I just wanted to be clear, for the purpose of my question, that they aren't members of the nobility or working class.
 

blacbird

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Be careful of the term middle-class. The definition we understand today came into being in 1913

Reiterate this. Victoria raigned for a long time, and Great Britain underwent enormous social alterations during that time, although she herself apparently was blind to all of it. The nation went from being a dominantly aristocratic v. working class society to one more of a spectrum of social and economic situations. Aristocrats often detested the "new rich", the mercantile/bourgeoisie people, more than they despised the poor, who were at least "in their place." Many aristocratic families, for one reason or another, were functionally poor, but managed to retain their class prejudices and faux-dignity, nonetheless.

WWI put a halt to much of that lingering vestige of medieval times. But that happened after both the antiquated and self-deluded Victoria and her bonvivant son, Edward VII,* had died, and the dour, irascible George V was on the throne.

In the 1890s, the Industrial Revolution was the major shaping force in British society, and what would come to be called the "middle class" was developing rapidly.

A really fine novel to read, related to this period of time and the society that had evolved, is Howards End, by E.M. Forster.

caw


* Corrected for erroneous Edward number, which I realized I screwed up late at night before I went to bed, and which Angeliz2k has kindly reminded me of this morning. But I never was much good at math, and when you combine that with the strangely clumsy system the Romans (generally so practical) employed, well . . .
 
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benbenberi

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Another good novel that's contemporary to your setting and deals with assorted issues in a similar social stratum is The Forsyte Saga (the first trilogy) by John Galsworthy.
 

Evangeline

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Regarding the concept of the middle class, while the facts are true, they are missing the social history of the middle class. There were multiple layers in England at this time based on education, profession, and income (with location being another element). If your FMC's family are bankers, they are very much in the upper strata of the middle classes, almost tipping into the upper classes if they had the right education and the right friends. The Baring family comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baring_family

To answer OPs question, your scenario wouldn't happen not because of propriety or class, but because Victorians invited guests to stay over at their country houses, not a cramped London townhouse (only those huge Mayfair mansions were large enough to accommodate guests-and even then, aristocrats & upper classes either put up at hotels or at their clubs). If the MMC invited the FMC and her grandfather to stay for a week or so in his country estate, that would make more sense. And yes, the upper middle classes did own homes in the country. They weren't Blenheim Palace or Chatsworth, but they were comfortable and elegant.http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/
 
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Sticks

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Thanks everyone for the replies, you're giving me food for thought.

I had thought of reversing the locations in my story- that is have my female MC based in London, and visit the male MC at his country house- it just seems to make more sense (as Evangeline's post confirms).

FWIW, my female MC is actually from Montreal, from a prominent Scottish-Canadian merchant and banking family with strong ties to England. After her husband dies, she travels to England with relatives for an extended stay with her maternal grandfather, who I currently have living at a rural estate. Then my female MC and her grandfather go to London to visit the male MC on their own, and during that visit is when the story happens.

Everything before the visit with the male MC is backstory that exists in my head and I don't really get into it in any detail on the page.

It's important that the 3 of them stay under one roof, but beyond that it doesn't really matter if it's London or the country (I just have a personal bias towards London because I like it in particular and cities in general). So I think I'll put female MC and her relatives up at a hotel in London, then have her head out to the country with her grandad.
 

TallyHo

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London townhouses were cramped, even for the well to do. But people certainly did have visitors. Family members came to stay. Close friends from the country visited friends in the city. If in doubt, 19th century English fiction is filled with examples of family and friends staying with London connections. People squeezed in :)

If the man who owns the London house is a bachelor, he will have spare bedrooms, even in a relatively cramped Bayswater or Kensington townhouse as he doesn't have a wife or kids to take up the other rooms. And the house itself may very well be a detached villa in the suburbs or a more urban place like St. Johns Wood rather than a terraced house in Bayswater or Kensington.

Just to round this off, a single male of this class likely belonged to a London club, so he would probably stay at his club when he came to town rather than at his friend's house. But it certainly wouldn't be unusual to be staying with friends, especially if he had a granddaughter with him. For the OP, she could have the grandfather say that he normally stays at his club when visiting London, but because his granddaughter is with him and he disapproves of hotels for he holds the old fashioned notion that respectable women shouldn't stay at hotels, this time they're accepting the invitation to stay at their friend's house.

To answer OPs question, your scenario wouldn't happen not because of propriety or class, but because Victorians invited guests to stay over at their country houses, not a cramped London townhouse (only those huge Mayfair mansions were large enough to accommodate guests-and even then, aristocrats & upper classes either put up at hotels or at their clubs). If the MMC invited the FMC and her grandfather to stay for a week or so in his country estate, that would make more sense. And yes, the upper middle classes did own homes in the country. They weren't Blenheim Palace or Chatsworth, but they were comfortable and elegant.http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/
 

Evangeline

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Thanks everyone for the replies, you're giving me food for thought.

I had thought of reversing the locations in my story- that is have my female MC based in London, and visit the male MC at his country house- it just seems to make more sense (as Evangeline's post confirms).

FWIW, my female MC is actually from Montreal, from a prominent Scottish-Canadian merchant and banking family with strong ties to England. After her husband dies, she travels to England with relatives for an extended stay with her maternal grandfather, who I currently have living at a rural estate. Then my female MC and her grandfather go to London to visit the male MC on their own, and during that visit is when the story happens.

Everything before the visit with the male MC is backstory that exists in my head and I don't really get into it in any detail on the page.

It's important that the 3 of them stay under one roof, but beyond that it doesn't really matter if it's London or the country (I just have a personal bias towards London because I like it in particular and cities in general). So I think I'll put female MC and her relatives up at a hotel in London, then have her head out to the country with her grandad.

With trains, tube, and automobiles (this last after 1896), the journey between London and a suburb wouldn't take long.

Hampstead was a popular middle-class enclave in North-East London that was partially city/partially "rural"--it is easily reached by the Tube. The area around Regent's Park was city/rural as well, but is closer to the West End. Both areas had lots of villas in which the upper middle classes resided.

Here's one in Regent's Park: http://search.savills.com/property-detail/gbsjrssts120049
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/
 
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