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Whether you call it "the Napoleonic era," "the Regency," or "late Georgian," the era of
c. 1795-1830 is one of the most dramatic times in the history of the world. It is a time of war. And gaiety. Sorrow and pain.
Downright hedonism. It is social manners taken to the ultimate degree. It is the heyday of the Industrial Revolution when
merchants were becoming wealthier than noblemen. There was more education, for a wider range of people. More ideas. New evangelical
churches, mostly appealing to the middle and lower classes, and beginning to preach a new morality. There were riots. The
landed class lived in terror of a French-style revolution, which was based on the rebellion of the American colonies, both
well within the lifetimes of most people of the Regency.
To the outsider, it might seem as if women of this nobility and gentry did very little--but their work was very important
and sometimes very hard, as they were expected to manage the home and the household. As Etty Raverat, who was a young woman
in the late 1800s, said, "Ladies were ladies in those days; they did not do things themselves, they told others what
to do and how to do it" (Harrison and Ford, 226).
However, this lifestyle left ample time for leisure. Social parties and balls were held often. Dancing was a favorite
pastime among most upper-class women and men. An evening party often would end with a few sets among the four or five couples
present. Unmarried women spent a great deal of time with other unmarried women. However, once a woman was married her role
was considered manager of the household, and she had much less time than before to walk and talk with former friends.
Though the life of an upper class woman might seem easier and more secure than that of a lower class woman, it was not
always so. Land, titles, and money were inherited by the closest male relative--typically the older son, but if there was
no older son then it would go to a more distant relation. Only the small amount of money set aside as a woman’s
marriage dowry went to an unmarried woman after the death of her father. As a result, many mothers and daughters were left
extremely poor after the death of their husband and father (Mitchell, 107).
The next-highest class was the middle class. Women of this class were much like women of the upper class, though their
lands were not so extensive nor their way of life so grand as that of the aristocracy and landed gentry. People of the middle
class associated with their peers and sometimes with those in the upper class. Women of the middle class depended heavily
on marrying "up" into the upper classes, therefore gaining social prestige as well as a great deal more worldly
goods.
The middle class itself was a much broader area of people than the upper class. It included everyone between the working
classes and the lower gentry. It depended mostly not on how much money one had, but on how this money was obtained (Mitchell,
20). Because of this, the singular roles of middle class women varied greatly from family to family. Some unmarried women
might have a place in the family shop, while others might live very much as a genteel woman would, with little work and much
leisure.
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