Chapter 24: Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century 1

Chapter 24: Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century 1

CHAPTER 24

Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century

Instructional Objectives

After reading and studying this chapter, students should be able to describe life in a nineteenth-century city and discuss the most important changes in urban life over the course of the century. They should be able to assess the impact of the emergence of urban industrial society on all segments of society. They should also be able describe changes to the family in the face of the challenges and opportunities of urban life. Finally, they should be able to reflect on the relationship between major changes in science and thought and the new urban society.

Chapter Outline

I.Taming the City

A.Industry and the Growth of Cities

1.Since the Middle Ages, European cities had been centers of government, culture, and large-scale commerce.

2.Cities were also crowded, dirty, and unhealthy.

3.The challenge of urban growth was felt first and most acutely in Britain.

4.In the 1820s and 1830s, people in France and Britain began to worry about the condition of their cities.

5.Rapid urbanization without any public transportation worsened already poor living conditions in cities in the nineteenth century.

6.Government was slow to improve sanitation and building codes.

7.Ignorance and the legacy of rural housing conditions played a key role in shaping urban living conditions.

B.Public Health and the Bacterial Revolution.

1.Advances in public health, urban planning, and urban transport ameliorated these conditions by 1900.

2.Edwin Chadwick in England advocated improved sewage systems.

3.The miasmatic theory of disease held that people contract disease through exposure to the bad odors of decay and putrification.

4.Louis Pasteur in France discovered that bacteria caused disease (1860s).

5.Building on the germ theory of disease, Joseph Lister developed new methods for fighting infections among surgical patients.

C.Urban Planning and Public Transportation

1.In Paris and other European cities, urban planners demolished buildings and medieval walls to create wide boulevards and public parks.

2.Baron Haussmann (1809–1884) played a lead role in the reshaping of Paris.

3.Mass public transport, including electric streetcars, enabled city dwellers to live further from the city center, relieving overcrowding.

II.Rich and Poor and Those in Between

A.Social Structure

1.Real wages rose sharply over the course of the nineteenth century.

2.Wealth was distributed very unevenly throughout Europe.

3.Only 20 percent of the population was middle class or wealthy.

4.The gap between rich and poor endured, in part, because industrial and urban development made society more diverse and less unified.

B.The Middle Classes

1.The urban middle class was diverse.

2.The upper middle class included the most successful industrialists, bankers, and merchants. Increasingly, it merged with the aristocracy.

3.Middle ranks included doctors, lawyers, and moderately successful bankers and industrialists.

4.The lower middle class included small business owners, salespeople, store managers, clerks, and other white-collar employees.

C.Middle-Class Culture

1.Middle-class people were loosely united by a certain style of life and culture.

2.They were also united by a shared code of behavior and morality.

D.The Working Classes

1.Skilled workers lived very different lives from the semiskilled and unskilled.

2.The top 15 percent of the working class became a labor aristocracy.

3.Skilled workers’ income approached that of the lower middle classes.

4.Skilled workers tended to embrace the middle-class moral code.

5.Semiskilled and unskilled workers included many different occupations, from carpenters and bricklayers to longshoremen, street vendors, and domestic servants.

6.Domestic servants were one of the largest components of the unskilled labor force.

7.Domestic service served as a transition to urban life for many rural women.

E.Working-Class Leisure and Religion

1.Working-class leisure included drinking in taverns; watching sports, especially racing and soccer; and attending music hall performances.

2.Working-class church attendance declined in the nineteenth century.

III.The Changing Family

A.Premarital Sex and Marriage

1.By 1850, the ideal of romantic love had triumphed among the working classes

2.For the middle classes, economic considerations continued to be paramount in choosing marriage partners through most of the nineteenth century.

3.There was an illegitimacy explosion between 1750 and 1850.

B.Prostitution

1.Prostitution was common.

2.Middle and upper class men frequently visited prostitutes.

C.Kinship Ties

1.Kinship ties helped working-class people to cope with sickness, unemployment, death, and old age.

D.Gender Roles and Family Life

1.The status of women changed during the nineteenth century.

2.The division of labor became more defined by gender.

3.Economic inferiority led some women to organize for equality and women’s rights.

4.As society increasingly relegated women to the domestic sphere, women gained control over household finances and the education of children.

5.Married couples developed stronger emotional ties to each other.

E.Child Rearing

1.Attitudes toward children also changed during this period.

2.Emotional ties between mothers and infants deepened.

3.There was more breast-feeding and less swaddling and abandonment of babies.

4.Family sizes decreased over the course of the century as a result, in part, of parents’ desire to improve their social and economic position and that of their children.

5.Increased connection often meant increased control, including attempts to repress the child’s sexuality (for example, to prevent masturbation).

6.Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) formulated a striking analysis of the explosive dynamics of the family.

IV.Science and Thought

A.The Triumph of Science

1.Theoretical discoveries resulted in practical benefits, as in chemistry and electricity.

2.Everyday experience and innumerable popularizers helped increase the importance of science in the general public’s estimation.

3.The philosophical implications of science gained wider acceptance.

4.Scientific achievements gave science considerable prestige.

B.Social Science and Evolution

1.Charles Darwin (1809–1882) formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection.

2.New “social sciences” used data collected by states to test theories.

3.Auguste Comte’s (1798–1857) “positivism” presented the scientific method as the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement.

4.Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) applied Darwin’s ideas to human affairs.

C.Realism in Literature

1.The Realist movement in literature reflected the ethos of European society.

2.Realists sought to depict life as it really was.

3.Realism stressed the hereditary and environmental determinants of human behavior.

Lecture Suggestions

1.“Improvements in Public Health.” How did public health and sanitation improve in the nineteenth century? Sources: J. P. Goubert, The Conquest of Water (1989); A. Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant (1986); E. Gauldie, Cruel Habitations: A History of Working Class Housing, 1780–1918 (1974); E. Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, ed. M. W. Flinn (1965).

2.“Building New Cities.” What architectural developments emerged during this period? What architects created the new modern cities? Sources: D. Pinckney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (1972); D. Grew, Town in the Ruhr: A Social History of Bochum, 1860–1914 (1979).

3.“Sexual Attitudes in the Nineteenth Century.” How widespread were prostitution and pornography in the nineteenth century? What were people’s attitudes toward sexuality? Sources: E. Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalenas: The Origin and Development of Victorian Sexual Attitudes (1976); A. McLaren, Sexuality and Social Order: Birth Control in Nineteenth-Century France (1982).

Using Primary Sources

What does the drawing in this chapter tell us about living conditions among the urban poor in the nineteenth century? Write a descriptive essay based on the picture.

classroom Activities

I.Classroom Discussion Suggestions

A.How sanitary were the houses of the British lower orders?

B.How did women’s status change during the nineteenth century?

C.Discuss the philosophy of Auguste Comte.

D.How was transportation transformed in the nineteenth century?

II.Doing History

A.Have students read selections from Darwin’s The Origin of Species as a basis for discussing his ideas.

B.Ask students to find illustrations of realism in the following novels: T. Dreiser, Sister Carrie; S. Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; I. Turgenev, Fathers and Sons.

III.Cooperative Learning Activities

A.Organize the class into twelve teams. Each team should be assigned one of the rooms in the picture of the apartment building in the text. Each team should write a creative essay chronicling the life of the people in the apartments. Each team should read its essay in class.

B.Six teams should decide on a nineteenth-century painting that best expresses urban living. After deciding on a particular painting, teams should show the painting in class, explaining it and telling how it reflects urban living.

Map Activity

1.Students should dot in cities with 100,000 or more inhabitants in 1900 on an outline map of Europe.

2.Have students list the major ethnic groups in Russia on a blank outline map of Russia.

3.Using Map 24.2 (The Modernization of Paris, ca 1850–1870) as a reference, answer the following questions.

a.What were the most important differences between Paris before 1850 and Paris after 1870?

b.What values were reflected in Hausmann’s plans? Which social classes benefited most from the changes in the city?

c.What was Hausmann’s attitude towards the city’s history? Towards its future?

Audiovisual Bibliography

1.Daumier’s France. (60 min. Color. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.)

2.Charles Darwin. (24 min. Color. University of California Extension Media Center.)

3.Louis Pasteur. (24 min. Color. University of California Extension Media Center.)

4.Dickens: Oliver Twist. (Videodisc. 116 min. Color. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.)

5.Dublin Suite. (Videodisc. 25 min. Color. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.)

6.National Gallery of Art. (Laserdisc. Learning Services.)

7.The Nineteenth-Century City ()

8.Illustrations from Dickens’ Novels (koti.mbnet.fi/dickens/illust.html)

9.United Kingdom, 1851 Census Records. (CD-ROM.)

internet resources

1.National Archives: Citizenship: A History of People, Rights, and Power in Britain (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/index.htm)

2.National Archives: Power, Politics and Protest (http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/politics/default.htm)

3.Charles Darwin: Online Library ()

4.The Victorian Web ()

5.Victorian Women Writers Project (http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp)

6.Nineteenth-Century British Public Health Overview ()

suggested reading

Ehmer, cited in the Notes, is one of many excellent contributions to Kertzer and Barbagli, eds., an important new three-volume history of the European family from 1500 to the present. T. Zeldin, France, 1848–1945, 2 vols. (1973, 1977), is a pioneering social history that opens many doors. F. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900 (1986), is a laudable survey.

On the European city, D. Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience (1985), is provocative. D. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (1989), and D. Pickney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (1972) are major studies. Also recommended are T. Hunt, The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (2004), considering British urban life and civic pride; O. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, and Vienna (1986), an architectural feast; and M. Hamm ed., The City in Russian History (1976), which still has no equal. G. Crossick and S. Jaumain, eds., Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850–1939 (1999), and M. Jacobs and P. Scholliers, eds., Eating Out in Europe: Picnics, Gourmet Dining, and Snacks Since the Eighteenth Century (2003), consider major aspects of urban consumerism in important studies. The outstanding study by J. Schmeichen, Sweated Industries and Sweated Labor: The London Clothing Trades (1984), complements H. Mayhew’s wonderful contemporary study, London Labour and the Labouring Poor (1861), reprinted recently. D. Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity (2000), is an innovative and extremely helpful historical investigation. L. Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Siecle France (2001), is a subtle treatment of women as consumers. E. Johnson, Urbanization and Crime: Germany, 1871–1914 (1995), presents a portrait of a police state zealously defending property rights. J. P. Goubert, The Conquest of Water: The Advent of Health in the Industrial Age (1989), and are excellent introductions to sanitary developments and attitudes toward public health. B. Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World (1993), is a wide-ranging synthesis. Sexual attitudes are also examined in S. Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (2004), and L. Engelstein, The Key to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (1992). P. Allen, The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present (2000), is the best history of sexually transmitted diseases. S. Coontz, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (2005), is a lively investigation of the historical background to current practice.

Studies on women continue to expand rapidly. In addition to the general works by Stone and Tilly and Scott cited in Chapter 20, B. Anderson and J. Zinsser, A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, vol. 2, rev. ed. (2000), is an excellent, wide-ranging survey. U. Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (1990), is recommended, and M. Perrot, ed., A History of Private Life (1990), is a fascinating multivolume work. Eye-opening specialized investigations include L. Davidoff, The Best Circles (1973), and P. Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860 – 1914 (1986), on upper-class society types; B. Engel, Between the Fields and the City: Women, Work and Family in Russia, 1861–1914 (1994); and P. Smith, Feminism in the Third Republic (1996). M. J. Peterson, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen (1989); J. Coffin, The Politics of Women’s Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750–1914 (1996); and M. Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (1985) examine women at work. R. Bridenthal, S. Mosher Stuard, and M. Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 3d ed. (1998), is a far-ranging collections of essays on women’s history. Feminism is treated perceptively in C. Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (1984). L. Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–1914 (1988), discusses Britain. J. Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian Britain (1999), is a major work, exploring fatherhood and the cult of the home, while M. Wiener, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (2004) argues for a lessening of male violence toward women.

Among studies on the working classes, M. Maynes, Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers’ Biographies in the Era of Industrialization (1995), provides fascinating stories and shows how workers saw themselves. Everyday life in a great city comes wonderfully alive in W. S. Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789–1914 (1996). A. Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School, and Street in London, 1870–1914 (1996), and J. Wegs, Growing Up Working Class: Continuity and Change Among Viennese Youth, 1890–1938 (1989), are recommended and make for interesting comparisons. Two good studies on the middle classes are P. Pillbeam, The Middle Classes in Europe, 1789–1914: France, Germany, Italy, and Russia (1990), a stimulating introduction, and J. Kocka and A. Mitchell, eds., Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1993), a collection by leading specialists. Two fine recent studies on the professions are A. Digby, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine, 1720–1922 (1994), and A. Quartaro, Women Teachers and Popular Education in Nineteenth-Century France (1995). Servants and their employers receive excellent treatment in T. McBride, The Domestic Revolution: The Modernization of Household Service in England and France, 1820–1912 (1976), and B. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoisies of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (1981), which may be compared with the innovative study by M. Miller, The Bon Marche: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (1981). J. Schmiechen and K. Carls, The British Market Hall: A Social and Architectural History (1999), is a fascinating and beautiful study of Britain’s enclosed markets, which revolutionized the sale of food and proclaimed civic pride. T. Griffiths, The Lancashire Working Classes, c. 1880–1930 (2001), reexamines both class and gender relationships, emphasizing the enduring centrality of family ties.

On Darwin and evolution, J. Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: The Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), is a prizewinning, highly readable account. D. Quamen, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (2006 and P. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, rev. ed. (1989), are also recommended. O. Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (1976), analyzes the impact of science (and other factors) on religious belief. M. Teich and R. Porter, eds., Fin de Siecle and Its Legacy (1990), is a fascinating collection of essays, ranging widely from industry and cars to sports and painting. The masterpieces of the great realist social novelists remain among the best and most memorable introductions to nineteenth-century culture and thought. In addition to the novels discussed in this chapter and those cited in the Suggested Readings for Chapters 22 and 23, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and Emile Zola’s The Dram-Shop are especially recommended.