Credit and Debt in Victorian England
The majority of Victorian society’s economic dealings can be summed up in two words: credit and debt. These ominous specters, which seemed to haunt Victorian England, were simultaneously able to evoke feelings of delight and doom in their “victims of vanity”.
There were several different factors that contributed to the Victorian’s propensity to abuse their credit, and as a result, fall deeply into debt. In her essay, “A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses”, Erika Rappaport discusses the significant role that gender played in the credit and debt “epidemic” that plagued Victorian society. Rappaport gives a fairly detailed account of the progression of buying on credit in Victorian society. In her essay, Rappaport states that “for most of the nineteenth century, consumer credit was still informal and was based on personal trust and a financial and moral assessment of the buyer” (165). Essentially, buying on credit was based on social position rather than financial stability. She comments that in the nineteenth century, selling on credit was still a widespread practice, and “many of the commodities that filled the Victorians’ homes and adorned their bodies were bought with its help” (167). Rappaport states that buying on credit “helped middle-class families on limited income set up households”, and that “approximately 80 percent of all sales in the small, elite shops of metropolitan districts were offered on credit” (167). However, as time progressed, informal store credit became increasingly risky. Consumers began to travel longer distances in order to buy their goods, and it became increasingly less common to conduct business with neighbors and relatives. As a result of these changes, “wholesale...
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... bills was perpetually in the forefront of the Victorian mindset.
Further Links
http://www.victorianweb.org/graphics/thackeray/17.1.html
Works Cited
Landow, George P. “Bankruptcy in Victorian England—Threat or Myth?” The Victorian Web. 22 March 2001. 7 Nov. 2004. .
Rappaport, Erika. “A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses.” The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Ed. Victoria de Grazia with Ellen Furlough. London: University of California Press, Ltd., 1996. 163-177.
“The Victorians: Debt Could Get You in Prison.” RomanceEverAfter. 7 Nov. 2004. .
Williams, Montagu Q.C. “London: Down East and Up West.” The Victorian Dictionary. 1894. 7 Nov. 2004. . Path: Finance: Money-Lenders.
In the beginning of the 1830s, the United States experienced a short period of expansion and a prosperous economy. Land sales, new taxes, such as the Tariff of 1833, and the newly constructed railroads brought a lot of money into the government’s possession; never before in the history of the country had the government experienced a surplus in its national bank. By 1835, the government was able to accumulate enough money to pay off its national debt. Much of the country was happy with this newly accumulated wealth, but President Jackson, before leaving office in 1836, issued what is called a Specie Circular. Many local and state governments liked to save specie, or gold and silver, and use paper money to take care of transactions. President Jackson, in his Specie Circular, said that the Treasury was no longer allowed to accept paper money as payment for the sales of land and the like. Most, if not all, of the country did not like this, and as a result many banks restricted credit and discontinued the loans. The effects of Jackson’s Specie Circular took effect in 1837, when Martin van Buren became president. All investors became scared, and in 1837, attempted to withdraw all of their money at once. Soon after this, unemployment and riots occurred in many cities, and the continued expansion of the railroad ceased to be.
Victorian rich life out to be less than what it seems. I think it was
The Victorian Age in England was a time when crime was rampant, people were starving, and life was generally difficult. In these times, there were really only two social classes, the upper class, and the lower class. Everyone in the lower class had troubles, but children had it the hardest. While most everyone had a difficult life, it was worst for children; forcing them towards crime and leading them into the arms of prison.
From the conventional Victorian dresses of the 1800’s to the rock-and-roll tee shirts of the 1980’s, American culture has experienced incredibly diverse trends in clothing. This ever changing timeline of fashion provokes the question: what is the cause of such differing styles? By considering the state of society throughout the eras, it can be seen that clothing directly correlates with the current way of life. Specifically, American women’s fashion of the 1920’s and 1930’s proves to not simply be a meaningless trend – rather an accurate reflection of the specific era.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958” The Journal of American History (March 1993): 1455-1482
Vanity and pride are two factors that have always been affecting our society, and been a driving force for people’s decisions and actions. So when we set the scene in nineteenth century France, what is the result? When Mathilde complained about her lack of a nice dress and her husband asked for her limit, she hesitated to make sure she would have a nice dress for the ball without being rejected. “She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk” (de Maupassant 23). Mathilde is willing to put their finances and physical well-being in jeopardy at the hands of her prideful desires. After realizing
Buzard, James, Linda K. Hughes. "The Victorian Nation and its Others" and "1870." A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Ed. Herbert F. Tucker. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. 35-50, 438-455.
The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial
When concerning the home front of 19th century Europe, women were “the cult of domesticity” and were highly regarded as wives, mothers, and part of the working class. A lofty character was necessary in completing the demanding tasks surrounding the home life. Images of women ranging from newspapers to fine art all displayed the univ...
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Freeman S. (2004). In Style: Femininity and Fashion since the Victorian Era. Journal of Women's History; 16(4): 191–206
Women in pictorial history have often been used as objects; figures that passively exist for visual consumption or as catalyst for male protagonists. Anne Hollander in her book Fabric of Vision takes the idea of women as objects to a new level in her chapter “Women as Dress”. Hollander presents the reader with an argument that beginning in the mid 19th century artists created women that ceased to exist outside of their elegantly dressed state. These women, Hollander argues, have no body, only dress. This concept, while persuasive, is lacking footing which I will attempt to provide in the following essay. In order to do this, the work of James Tissot (b. 1836 d. 1902) will further cement the idea of “women as dress” while the work of Berthe
As the middle class began to further divide, those who grew in wealth became known as a banking/industrial class. Along with their sudden economic prosperity there came a desire for social transformation- an aspiration for new aristocracy. They carried their traditional middle class values into prominence with their accumulation of wealth. They sought to achieve a merit oriented Society rather than social climbing, for their children's sake, into the existing one based solely on birth. This hindered the new class from ever attaining Aristocratic Social acceptance for their new wealth and deemed them the nouveaux riche. Despite obvious disapproval from the Aristocracy the nouveaux riche continued their economic ascent through "personal contact [which] was a crucial element in filling posts" (Loftus 5). This dependence upon others for mounting economic standing was contrary to the middle class value of independence. This industrial class was forced to rely upon the connections, potentially aristocratic, in order to succeed. Loftus explains that middle-class values were carved out in these attempts to define a society based on merit rather than aristocratic privilege. However, the importance of cultural capital and social networks to success in the period implies that the rise of the middle-classes in the Victorian period saw the replacement of one set of privileges with another (Loftus 4). However the Nouveaux Riche failed to fully assimilate into aristocratic society due to lack of pedigree.
Stent, S., 2011, ‘Fetishizing the Feminine: the Surreal Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli’, Nottingham French Studies, September, 50, 78-87.
Wilson, Ben. The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain, 1789-1837. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.