in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's companies.c it is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. announcer: on lectures in history, townsend university professor akim reinhardt teaches a class about victorian culture in the last half of the 19th century. he describes the societal customs of the upper and growing middle class and established gender norms for the time. he talks about how the conventions created expectations that covered behavior, dress, work, and home life. his class is about an hour. professor reinhardt: all right, this is a picture of queen -- queen ofean england from 1837 until 1901. for a long time she was the longest reigning monarch in british history. she was recently surpassed by

queen elizabeth ii, who is 90 years old and has been on the throne since 1952. what does all of that have to do with american history after the civil war? to be honest, not a whole lot. but her name does refer to a period in both american and european history that witnessed important and far-reaching changes to american and european culture. the timeframe of victorian culture as we call it often coincides with her reign, years of 1837 to 1901, and particularly when someone talks about victorian culture in europe, if someone says victorian culture, they are likely referring to what went on in england, not necessarily america. here in america is sometimes people take the view of victorian culture from the 1830's to about 1900 or so, but

you can divide that into an early and late. because this is post civil war, we will state focus on the victorian culture in america that takes place after the civil war, after 1865, and we will run it up through the first years of the 20th century, to the 10 and even a little bit the teens. when we talk about victorian culture in america, particularly after the civil war, we are looking at a society that has undergone a lot of changes because of that war and other things that are going on, some of which we have already talked about, and the changes, disruptions shape and influence shape the american society. we have to think about the war itself and all of the carnage and brutality that comes out of it, the great loss of life, the

sacrifices, the death and so forth, and the way in which the north in particular handles it. we talked about this early in the semester. preserve the union, maybe free some slaves. by the end of the war, the north has begun to rally around this idea that the war is a moral crusade to end slavery. what happens as a result his -- as a result is many americans were affected by the word this way. when the war was over, they carried with them that strong sense of moral purpose, that after 1865, many americans live their lives in a way that said, you know what, my life has moral purpose, my life needs to have moral meaning. i am not just living day to day doing this, doing that. morality is important, and it shapes how i understand my life, the world around me. that is one factor. americans living with a sense of moral purpose.

the second is spread of democracy, which is an ongoing process. we don't talk about pre-civil war stuff in this class, but it is ongoing, and it continues, and we see that americans are becoming ever more participatory in politics, and the political environment itself is becoming highly charged and highly competitive. so with a more overtly political culture that americans are living in. the third thing we want to talk about, we just talked about on tuesday, the rise of big business and the spread of modern capitalism. we talked about how it has been a nation that was poor when it was founded, cash poor, small businesses, tradespeople, spiral farmers in the north, and there is a transition to an era of very large businesses, very wealthy people, and a growing industrial economy that led the class divisions. this will be important for this

lecture, what we talked about on tuesday, how there is a small number of the elites. there is a growing middle class, but more and more americans are being trapped in wage work where they get poor wages, or barely livable wages are ok, but not great, right? so the economic problems of the south prior to the war, the planter elite, the segment of poor, free blacks and whites as well as slaves. now that kind of economic system -- not based on slavery, but the division will appear through the whole country in the north and west as well, where you have a small number of super wealthy elites profiting from the capital system, a middle class that is growing but small, and the growing mass of people struggling to get by. that is the third thing.

the fourth thing we want to look at, when we think of victorian culture in america is something else, the growth of cities and the rise of immigration. cities that seem to be popping out of nowhere in a nation that had been overwhelmingly rural is now increasingly urban, and waves of immigration, not just asia and europe but also within the nation, people leaving rural america and heading to the city, both of these things, while exciting and lead to the production of new wealth and other opportunity, they are huge disruptions to society. they put people back on their heels a little bit, that life is changing all around. so many people are not from america. so many people are immigrants or the children are immigrants. so may people are living in cities in what has been a very rural nation. so these four factors are going

to shape victorian america. the abolition of slavery in the civil war that gives people more purpose, the spread of democracy as a central part of people's lives, the rise of big business and capitalism that leads to class division, a small division of wealthy people are and they -- and a large number of poor, the growth of cities and immigration that disrupts american society. when we look at that new wealth, this new class of wealthy people and all of the wealth that is being created in this new era, we see it is not distributed equally, that it is divided both geographically and in terms of the population. first of all, the new businesses are mostly in the cities. they are not in the countryside. we talked about how new businesses are in the cities where they can take advantage of

the population of workers, and have access to new infrastructure, waterworks, electricity, gas and so forth. so the bulk of the wealth is in the cities. in addition, the wealth is not distributive equally. there is a small number of people making immense fortunes, and a bigger but still not large number of people who are moving to the middle class. these people are largely nativeborn americans, not immigrants. they are mostly white, and they are mostly protestant christians. they are not jews, they are not catholics, they are not eastern european orthodox. so nativeborn white protestant christians -- that is not to say everyone fits that description is doing well. that is not true.

many of the rural immigrants from this countryside are struggling, many of them are nativeborn white protestant christians as well. they are majority of the country at this point. but when we look at the small number of people doing well, they are mostly in the cities and mostly fit ethnic and religious designations. when we talk about victorian america, we often focus on the upper class at the top, and middle class. these are people driving the new culture, the new victorian culture. we will spend less time what the upper class, but you need to understand that they are there and are very important players in all of this. when we talk about the upper class, we are looking at a new class of wealthy americans for

-- americans who are feeling a little insecure, because america had been a four country. now they are wealthy. how do you be wealthy? what does it mean to be a wealthy american particular for whenerican in particular the country seem so new? so people are taking their cues and europe. they are looking at france. what do the wealthy french people do? they mimic them to a certain extent. but we will look at the middle class is the today because they are in an interesting position. on the one hand, middle-class people of the time and very much today in a lot of ways are aspiring to be wealthy. middle-class people look at wealthy people and say, maybe i can be wealthy one day too. not every middle-class person, but a lot of us. then they look down at the poor people and think, i don't want to be poor. it is human nature. you aspire to have more. you are afraid of ending up with less.

what we need to remember is that when we think about the economics of the situation, if the middle class is here, lower classes are right beneath them over there or it -- over there. upper classes are way up there. think about in today's money. what is a middle-class wage today? for a single person, maybe $30,000, $50,000. maybe family of four, a couple of kids, $60,000, $80,000 to the middle class? what are poor working-class people making? that, half of of that, something like that. what do wealthy people make? they make $1 million a year. if you are the top end of the middle class and making $100,000 a year, you might only be making three times when working class person makes, but rich people are making 10 times that you make 50, 100.

so economically the middle class tends to be much closer to the poor working classes than they are to the wealthy classes. this can create a sense of insecurity. there is the reality that it is easier for a middle-class person or family to fall into poverty than it is for them to reach the heights of wealth that we all dream about. that can lead to insecurity. at the same time, we have to remember that the middle class of this time period is much smaller than it is today. when we think of urban and middle suburban, we are talking about the majority of the country. majority of today's americans are middle class whether city or suburb. there are not modern suburbs like we think of yet, so strictly urban at this time. the urban middle class are nowhere near as big, not a majority, decidedly a minority. they are growing in numbers, but they are very small.

so what is that mean? that means had the same time you are worried about falling into poverty and aspiring to be wealthy, you are looking at a city around you with lots of poor and working-class people. they are everywhere. there is lots of them. this has some upsides for you. if you are middle class today, you can stretch only so far. if you are middle-class 1870's or 1880's, you can do more with your money. because there are many poor people who are desperate and need help. it is not unusual for middle-class families to take servants into their homes, bring in a woman to help cook, clean, run the house, so forth. typically an immigrant, but not always. people who really need the money. there are certain parts to having a small middle-class with a lot of people if you are middle-class. there is a reminder there is a lot of poverty, and you can

start to take on as a small middle-class -- what is the word i'm looking for? a siege mentality. you can worry about the masses of poor and working-class people that surround you, and the rich people that are so far away. the rich people don't want to be like you, the same way you don't want to fall down to the working class if you are middle-class, wealthy people have no intention of falling to middle-class, which is a very, very fall far for them, as far as they are concerned. you have a new middle class that is small, growing, and confronting these circumstances. here is the other thing we want to think about. in this moment, they are smaller than the poor and working-class, the middle class that is, but they have more money than that. even though the wealthy are wealthier, there is more middle-class people than there are wealthy people.

the middle class b will money than all those poor people. and so that allows them to develop an outsized influence. the new growing middle-class will have a profound influence on the country and its culture in a way that we have to think about a little bit, because today we say the middle-class is influential. of course it is. it is most of the people. not all, but a majority. of course the middle-class drives american culture. that is a no-brainer. but when the middle-class is a minority, a fraction of the population and still driving the culture or initially driving the culture, we have to remember the factors that play into this. let's talk about what this victorian culture is. any questions so far by the way? let's talk about the new middle-class culture in american cities, societies after the civil war, and what it looks like.

they are creating, the middle-class, the victorians, we can call them the victorians, upper and middle class, are creating and promoting a new set of values and mores. the fancy french word. it is like more with an s at the end and an accent over the e, an accent aigu as opposed to grave, if you are taking a french class. anyone know what those are? unspoken, sometimes they can be spoken, but there -- they are the ideals and values that a community shares. the mores are the codes of conduct you live by, what you avoid, kind of like values for the whole communities. a new set of values and mores are being promoted by these victorians.

an underpinning it is this strong sense of morality we talked about. they come out of the civil war with moral purpose, and that will guide them as they promote this new sense of values and mores. what are they promoting? what are the ideas that guides them? let me give you a few. restraint. don't be showy, don't give into your urges, don't be gluttonous , let me sit down, no. restraint shows being amoral, thoughtful person. modesty. don't brag. don't make yourself the center of attention. that is not polite, that is selfish, be modest. the third thing we want to highlight, hardware. work hard. sometimes this is referred to as

-- in american society as work ethic. that term is problematic people that are largely protestant. it is not have a monopoly on working hard, but in this context, when you see these are the values the victorians are promoting, restraint yourself, don't give into your urges and gluttony and desires. be modest, don't brag or make yourself the center of attention. work hard, do not be lazy. they looked at excess laziness and the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake as signs of immorality. they are being guided by a sense of moral for this. -- for a sense of purpose. if they see you being lazy, not working hard, they don't think he is just being lazy or she is being lazy, maybe she needs a little inspiration. maybe just not inspired, maybe needs encouragement -- they

think you are being immoral. they think you are sinning. doinghink you are not god's work. laziness is a moral problem, and immoral act. excess, eating too much, bragging, all of these are immoral, not just character flaws but transgressions against what god wants you to be and how god wants you to behave. so they set this new set of codes, behavioral codes, morals, values for themselves, but they also expect other people to follow them. as the gilded age is unfolding, this period after the civil war, the victorians begin to demand that their fellow citizens, who were poorer than them, follow their cultural lead. do as i do, do as i instruct you. in fact, they often blamed

people's poverty on their immorality. on their suppose it immorality. they would give into ideas like the poor are poor because they are behaving badly, because they are immoral. maybe the drink too much. maybe they are undisciplined, maybe they are lazy. isy have more flaws and that what is contributing to their poverty. they are less inclined to recognize the structural factors that we have talked about in this class. that these new businesses are sprouting out and running out small businesses. they are being squeezed, and the tradesmen and crafts people don't have those opportunities. those opportunities are going away and these people are being pushed into wage labor because they have nowhere else to go. and the bosses are not paying them well. these are the structural factors at work. from the victorian point of view, it is less about the structural factor but more your

poor because you are immoral. that is your fault. you can fix it by becoming a more moral person, and you can work on poverty. so victorians were consummate their way tothat live was the only right way to live. when we talk about victorians, it is not just a strong moral code,it is also -- moral it is also moralistic. moralistic meaning you have a strong sense that your mere -- a relative is the only right form, and people need to follow your lead on that. one of the most profound ways that victorians expressed their new morality was through gender roles. gender roles. victoria's created specific roles in society for both men and women to follow. one of the problems is they were

pretty much unaware of the difference between gender and sex. maybe your talked about this in other classes. what is the difference between gender and sex? anyone know? >> sex is biological, gender is social. professor reinhardt: sex is gender isbiology, about society and culture. so, are you born male or female or trans? that is biological. when you first come out, ok. your sexual acts are biological. gender is how society interprets the male and the female and the ideas and assumptions that it makes about as humanity and femininity -- masculinity and femininity. let's say you have a friend who is having a baby.

i know most of you are maybe a little young for that, but use your imagination. your friend is having a baby, and you decided as a gift, a shower, you will bring a onesie, the little things babies where, you put them in, they throw up in them. the boy, what color onesie? just say it. if the kid is a girl, what color are you getting? if they are doing old-style, did not want to find out, what color? yellow, green, things that are supposedly gender-neutral. what does that have to do with biology? absolutely nothing. zero. there is nothing inherently pink about women are inherently blue about men. these are ideas society has used to interpret masculinity and femininity. i almost more my pink shirt to make a point, then it -- then i andized we are being filmed

it didn't fit right. gender is culturally interpreted and ideas about masculinity and femininity. sex is biological. victorians don't see the difference between these ideas, gender ideas, and biology of sex. so when they create gendered , ideas, they assume that is the biology of it, so their ideas about masculine and feminine they also believe that that is just the way things are. here is how they defined men and women, so not only defined them through gender, but really believed this was inherently, innately held. -- innately how men and women work, -- were. they just popped out this way. men they saw as highly competitive. men like to compete. they are robust that way, kind of macho. physically robust.

and maybe on the bad side according to them, men could be into decadente urges. what do i mean? sex. they like the sex. men come out and grow out and are naturally horny, and there can be a problem with victorians. as we will see in a second. let's turn to women. women were seen as physically frail, the opposite of men. men were fit and robust, women were physically frail creatures. be gentle with them. they were seen as intellectually inferior, not as bright as men. on the positive side as far as they were concerned, women were seen as inherently gentle and nurturing, that they have what it takes to raise a family, make people feel better, heal people, the mother and teach and do all of these wonderful, important things.

so men are competitive and strong and kind of oh, got to watch out for that guy. the women they are weak and maybe soft, but they will be -- they are really nice and take care of us. these are the definition of gender roles. with this interpretation of gender roles, they put forth a bunch of ideas about how men and women should behave, what is the proper way to be a man, the proper way to be a woman. and it starts in some ways with sex. victorian ideas about sex were very restrictive. they only countenanced heterosexual, heterosexuality. the others were no, they did not even consider them for the most part, not acceptable. only heterosexuality.

and beyond that, sexual activity was something that is not really good unless you are doing it for one purpose only, and that is to make babies. sex with the purpose of making children, that is wonderful. you are doing god's work. but sex for pleasure, that is not really -- men might have urges, but that is a bad thing. women were thought to not enjoy it anyway, if you can believe that. sex was seen as something only for procreation, never to be done for marriage, and even within the confines, kind of really relegated to that realm of making babies. if you are not ready to start your family, you should not be having much sex. if it is not the right time of fouronth appropriation -- procreation, maybe you should not be having sex. if your past childbearing age or

decided you have enough kids, you should not be having sex. who is this guy? does anyone recognize him? he is younger than most of pictures you see. teddy roosevelt. a young teddy roosevelt. in 1880, theodore roosevelt got married to a woman on his 22nd birthday. the day before, he is writing in his diary on the eve of his wedding. he writes, thank god i am absolutely pure. i can tell alice everything i have done. what is he saying? what does he mean? thank god i am absolutely pure. i can tell alice, his soon-to-be wife, everything i have done or not done, if you want to think of it like that. he is a virgin. that is what he is saying.

he is saying, thank god i am a virgin, i have nothing to hide from my future wife. i did not transgress the moral codes. he would have said, i have not done anything wrong. i have not given into my decadent urges. i'm still pure, i am still a virgin, i have saved myself for my wife. so in this quote from the young teddy, we see these ideals are -- ideals, so what was it like in everyday life for society of people who had very restrictive ideas about sexuality? if a young couple were dating -- they would not use that phrase, chording, seeing each other. a man and woman, single man and woman that might save dating, were expected to be chaperoned at all times. if you are seeing a young woman or a young man, you would not be left alone. that would be, very, very inappropriate. if a young couple were dating -d

someone fell down on the job. chaperoned all the time. if a man wanted to write letters to a woman, there was no email, text. if a man wanted to write women letters, it is the only way to communicate privately with her. if you can't communicate privately with her in person, you are chaperoned all the time, if you wanted to write her letters, you are expected to ask her permission first. to simply write letters and send them to her was a little too forward. now you are crossing some lines, buddy, behave yourself. if a man kissed a woman, this was akin to asking her hand in marriage. if you kissed a woman, you might as well say i am ready to commit for the rest of our lives. these are the standards of sexual conduct that the society is advancing.

then when the couple is together, married, then a dynamic emerges or was thought to emerge in any case. low knows what goes on behind private doors, closed doors. the thinking was this. men are given to decadent urges. they are horny. women are not seen to have a sex drive. and not really enjoying it when a habit. how is this dynamic supposed to play out? men will naturally want to do it at times that are just for -- are not just for procreation. doing it is going to be very conservative as you may think. there is no fancy stuff in the bedroom. they still want to do it. even if it is straightlaced stuff. it is the wife's job to say no. we are not having sex tonight, we are not ready to start our family, or we are past that age,

or maybe it is that time of the month. whatever the case may be. if we are not going for it's theion, then wife's job to keep the man from acting up. a little different from a modern marriage. within the victorian family, the man was the breadwinner. it was his job to go out, make the money and supply for his family. to have his family taken care of. he was seen as someone going out and being competitive, working hard, elbowing, competing and metaphorically elbowing and wrestling other men to get his share and taken home to take care of his family. men are seen as competitive. men are seen as somewhat macho. there is an irony here. what do most of these victorian men do for a living?

i should say work. are these manual laborers? are these blue-collar guys going down to the factory and being physical all day? no, these are the new white-collar workers. this is that managerial class. the one we talked about on tuesday that managed the big business. the owners cannot run it so they hire a new class of managers. that is these guys. they aren't going to work and doing super macho stuff. they are going to work and sitting behind a desk for the most part. pushing papers around and doing this, that and the other thing. they are seeing themselves as being part of some highly competitive world. it can be competitive when it is banking and there is money on the line. there can be pressure in any of these jobs. they are not physically demanding. they are men who are casting themselves as highly competitive and then they come home. what is the home? the home is something the woman

has prepared and manages for them. the woman's domain is seen as domestic. the man goes and makes the home money and can -- comes home that the mother manages. her job is to create a nurturing and well tended, come, peaceful environment where the husband can come home after that hard day and recharge his batteries so to speak. to put that nasty, competitive world out there behind him and rebuild his moral character and his spirituality and replenish his soul before he heads out the next day to do it all over again. the wife's job is to maintain the home and raise the family. and, very often this was with the help of servants as we mentioned. the father was the patriarch. the father was seen as the boss, the commander, the leader of the family. this is not a gender equality

situation as you have probably sense. to this is a patriarchal or male-dominated culture. the man gives the orders and the wife is expected to obey him. she is subordinate to him. she is not his equal. so the wife then, she has tools. -- two rules. on the one hand, she is underneath him, following his orders and she also acts as his lieutenant. she takes his orders and then uses them to run the household. so when he is gone and she is tending to the kids and carrying out his will. she is doing it the right way as an the kids shouldn't be eating this at this time -- that is her task. she uses her domestic qualities to raise the children. the children themselves, not the childhood you were raised with.

did your parents ever call you buddy or refer to you as their best friend? hey champ, how's it going? not the victorian way of doing things. that is not victorian childbearing. children were supposed to be obedient. they were to do as told. they were to tend to their chores as need be. when they were playing in the house, were you the wild kid? were you throwing things around? yellen and scream and? screaming?and no, calm down. from an early age, they were learning about restraint. babies scream but once you are not a baby anymore, you are 5, 6, 7 years old, you start learning to behave yourself. the parent doesn't treat the child like a equal in any respect.

he is just a child, she is just a child and does not treat them like a friend. -- the parent treats the child like a child. the inferior that they are who needs to grow up by modeling our behavior. from an early age, the girls should be modeling the mother's behavior. the boys should be modeling the father's behavior. going about their business and learning to be adults. speak when spoken to, be a good child. in everyday life, the victorians demanded that people be sober, that word has a couple of meanings. there's the literal meaning, don't get drunk, don't drink too but -- drink too much. but also always say be sober we

mean be serious. be a sober person. work hard, be humble and display good manners is what the victorians saw as good manners. these are good things. a lot of this. we don't want to come down too hard on the victorians. their way of understanding and culture may be different than ours. some of it we see as very problematic. they are very sexist. there are other ideas that can be very classist and judgment -- judgmental about the poor that are very unfair. not all of it is problematic. not all of it is bad. there are some good qualities they are trying to advance as well. for victorians to be a sober person, a humble person, a well mannered person, it meant that there was a certain way you carried yourself. let's think about victorian

fashion. what does it mean to be a supermodel strutting down the walkway, runway, catwalk in 1870's and 1880's america? nothing like that. women are expected to display themselves very modestly. to show basically as little bit of skin as possible. women wore long dresses, black shoes that laced above the ankles. gloves were popular, hats were popular. a lot of these dresses are collared. coming right up to the neck. it is a very modest appearance. it is a very modest appearance.

you can also see some elements of class distinction. we do have some money. the hats show elements of style and flair. they are kind of big, they got some frills and buttons on the dress. show off a little bit, but just a little bit. this is about modesty, good manners, could behavior. -- good behavior. here is a picture from 1899 from a catalog. this is late victorian era. you can see a covering of almost everything. there are elements of design and fashion. there are elements of flourish and stylishness. the main theme is keeping things covered up. early in the victorian era, early in the gilded age, there

is an emphasis on what you see here. there is kind of a remnant left over of tight waists. in order to accomplish this, they would wear a corset. it was not something you could put on yourself. you probably had a domestic helper. the way it went was, you put the corset on, you took a deep breath, suck it in. your helpers behind do put your -- put their knee in your back and pulled the laces tight. you are stuck there. think about your waist. men are wearing pants. what do you got here at your waist. i'm a 32. i am reasonably slender. a lot of you are 34 or 36 inches. women are shaped more curvaceous leave, they might have something similar in the hips and the narrow waist. the ideal waist size in the

victorian era is 18 inches. think about that. 18 inches. yeah, ok. there is an element of sexuality to it but it is hidden away in many respects. here is a more modest version of women's victorian dress. these are not upper-class, not upper-middle-class, these are modest women, the lower ends of middle-class. they don't have the buttons or the frills but they are still dressed very plainly and modestly. what about for men? men's fashion, for these white collar and middle class workers favored suits. women's colors were generally not loud. there is a lot of neutral tones. black, white and gray.

occasionally some color flourish. mostly, it was a lot of neutral coloring. shirts with collars. i have a collar, it is firmly attached to my shirt. in this time, in the 19th century, collars were attached separately. you would put on a shirt and tie it on after. a sign of wealth was that you had good, starched collars. poor people who would wear collars would buy paper collars. you could wear them two or three times before they start falling apart. think of it like a disposable razor. the more well-to-do people have collars that were more lasting. paper collars for the people who were more aspiring. neck ties were becoming more popular. this color does not fully cover ck. tie around the net -- ne

hats were also common for men. this is a derby. it is a good shot of a derby hat. the kind of head aware that victorian men were apt to wear this. one thing to keep in mind is that we are being filmed here today. ok, fancy, 21st century. you have the phone out. back then, photography is a much more difficult technology to rangle and manage. it is still complicated. you have to set up the thing on the tripod. the photographer goes under the dark blanket and holds up the power thing, when that happens you just have to sit there.

if you move, it will blur. the other thing is that this is expensive. it is rare, it is a big deal. people did not typically smile in these types of family portraits. or any other type of portrait. that may be why they are not looking the most festive. it is a big deal to put on your sunday best. your best clothing or some of the best clothing. beyond that, we can see the victorian ideals being presented. how this family wants to present itself. the children are calm and well behaved. the family unit sits together. you can see the rank here with the father, the wife to his right. the older children standing behind him and the younger children on the side and between them. we are getting the impression that the victorian lifestyle is

aspiring to this. calm, sober. people who are modest and putting their best foot forward. photo upave the family for just a little bit as we move on. victorian sense of morality started in the civil war. the horrors of the war. how that led to a sense of people developing a strong sense of moral purpose. during the war, northerners invented the idea that ending slavery was the great moral cause. after the war and particularly after reconstruction, they are going to take that sense of moral purpose and transfer it to other areas. what is it next that americans of this class are going to look to as a way of expressing their moral outlook? there was a variety of causes that the victorians supported.

they saw as not just the right thing to do, but the moral thing to do. the righteous thing to do. popular victorians included eliminating corruption from government. we will talk more about it next week. this is a very bad time for corruption in american politics. we see it at the urban level. we read a little bit about the urban machines. we will talk about the more where there are people buying votes and stuffing ballot boxes. it permeates up to the state level as well. even in congress. senators are being bought and paid for by big businesses, railroad companies. victorians see this as a real problem. understandably, and worked to eliminated here it -- eliminate it. the charity for the poor, they

can be very judgmental of the poor. that doesn't mean they are heartless pastorates. -- heartless -- they want to help it is not so simple. it is going to be within their moral framework. we said, victorians have a tendency, not every victorian all the time but generally, they had a tendency to blame the poor for being poor. you are poor because you are immoral. you have some moral failings. maybe you are lazy. or what have you. maybe you are not following the bible well enough or reading the bible well enough. you don't go to church enough, maybe you would not be so poor then. these types of ideas. for the victorians who wanted to help the poor. what it meant was that we will set up these charities and give you some money and apply -- provide some services. it is not as simple as lining up

and getting it. the first thing that had to happen was that you had proof -- -- you had to prove to these charity operators that you were what they called the worthy poor. what do you think the worthy poor means? i am a victorian and i want to help the poor people. i am not helping all of the poor people, i am selectively helping all of the poor people that i think are the worthy poor people. what do you think that means? >> moral? professor reinhardt: moral. people who recognized the error of their ways. people who are open to the idea that maybe they have been sinn ing. people that will be open to the idea and more receptive to your brand of moral tutelage, moral teaching. it wasn't a matter of giving money or services. there he often, charity required that there be an interviewing process, what is your lifestyle, how are you living? when it comes time to be helped,

you may have to attend our bible classes or go through moral training of some sort that we provide for you. it is a charitable notion of helping people. one that is framed by their understanding of what poverty is, what causes it and what cures it. that moral training was very much a reflection of their morality. american, protestant, christianity. if they were working with an immigrant community that was perhaps catholic, orthodox or jewish, they were looking for conference. they were trying to moderate their behavior and morality as they understood it. another cause that was very popular with the victorians was prohibition. another word for prohibition is temperance.

to temper is to to tamp something down. the temperance movement will be known as the prohibition movement. this is the effort to restrict and even ban the sale and consumption of alcohol. this movement was particularly popular with victorian women who saw alcohol as a threat to stable family life. if a woman's domain is the domestisphere. that's how victorians defined women, working in the home and -- home. they raise the children, 10 to tend to the husbands, what kind of activity is going to be acceptable for women to be engaged in? women are supposed to be in the public sphere. they are supposed to be in politics and these kind of things. this opens up an avenue for

women, -- victorian women to be in the public sphere. helping other poor women through charities or in this case, helping to fight what is seen as the scourge of alcohol. alcohol is seen as ruining families. the ideas that men, these immigrant men, these other men who aren't living up to our moral code, they work in their blue-collar jobs, they don't make enough money and then they go and waste it on drink. they get drunk -- they waste it on drink. they get drunk. they don't behave like a good victorian husband should. so, because of that, this becomes an avenue where victorian women can enter the public sphere and get involved indirectly in politics and more directly through charity. the women's christian temperance

youn, whose local -- logo see here was one of these organizations dedicated to this. trying to tempter alcohol sales -- temper of all sales and consumption. they are founded in 1874. they are wctu. they are successful in a number of ways. by the end of the century they had overhead a million members. here is a picture of a wtcu rally in alabama in 1909. we are talking about victorian culture is something that spreads threat the country, it is a function of the middle class wherever it appears. north, south, wherever you find it. in big cities, smaller cities. even in town. -- even in towns. here you see people rallying to

crusade publicly against alcohol. this is a moral crusade for them. god does not want you to be drunk, behave better. her is a woman christian temperance union pledge. this is something that goes along with the values that we are talking about. your word is your bond. if you take an oath, you stand by it. lying is seen as a very bad thing. to publicly pledge something and take an oathe, here is one strategy they tried. getting people to take a pledge. i hereby solemnly promise, god helping me to abstain from all distilled, fermented and malt liquors, including wine, beer and cider. we are not talking about apple juice.

we are talking about one of the more popular alcohol beverages. when you let that apple juice get a little hey hey. in order to discourage the use and traffic of it. i will not do this anymore and do what i can to help my fellow brothers and sisters in christ to refrain from drink. let's talk about, and this will be our last segment for today. let's talk about resistance to the victorian ideals. we are going to start from within. just like with any other culture or subculture, not everyone is on board 100% all of the time. there are always dissenting voices. that is a defining characteristic of a culture. the tension between those who

advance the culture and promote the culture and those who have disagreements and want to shift it or change it or overturn it. not everything went with everything. not everyone thought it was peachy keen. children were not always well behaved, obedient and quiet. not all victorian adults were capable of meeting all the expectations. this is a very repressive system in some ways. it is very rigid and unyielding. right is right and wrong is wrong. and you live up to it all the time or you are wrong. not everyone is always living up to this. not everyone wanted to live up to all of this all of the time. example, not everyone was a virgin when they got married. that doesn't mean you publicly talked about it. you absolutely did not. if a man had sexual adventures

, they might say, before marriage, it was not looked upon kindly. it would not be talked about in public and the men themselves might even joke about it privately. it was wrong, don't do it. there was this notion that men were this way. they had these urges end boys will be boys. they were given a little more latitude. women on the other hand are subjected to a much firmer, stronger standard about sexual behavior than men are. if a woman is known to have had sexual relations before marriage, it is a major scandal. this would ruin her reputation, sabotage her chances at finding a good marriage and in many ways could ruin her life. that creates an inconsistency. everyone is being told no sex before marriage or no sex outside of procreation. even within marriage. everyone is being told that.

but the reality is, when men do it, it is not good, whatever. it will not ruin his life. he might be chided, he might be spoken to. his reputation might suffer somewhat, what, all right. if a woman does it, wow, major fall out. major problems. what that means is men are likelier to pursue if they want to, they are likelier to pursue sexual relationships. women have to be very careful about not having the wrong kind of sexual relationship. what does that mean? that means that if you are a victorian guy who wants to have sex with a woman, either the for -- either before marriage, outside of your marriage, whatever the case may be, what are the odds that you will find a victorian woman to do that with you? that could be hard. it happens. people have affairs, kids do what they will do. i'm not saying that it didn't happen, it happened. it is hard.

instead, what happens is we see a thriving prostitution industry in victorian america. particularly in the cities. in the cities in particular where there is more anonymity. what you have of this phenomenon of victorian men. upper middle-class men are all going to bordellos, brothels, prostitution houses and purchasing sexual activity from poor women. from working-class women. they live in a different world in many ways. who are struggling to get by, many of them. the prostitution industry is quite robust. despite the fact that it was illegal in most places. for victorian women, these double standards and repressive

culture led to the emergence of some critics. woman,ings us to this charlotte perkins gilman. you can see her name up top there. she was born in 1860, right before the civil war starts. she dies in 1935. after theit victorians have gone into a decline. she really lives her life in this late victorian era. she was openly critical of these victorian gender roles.