In what ways did the emergence of class consciousness in the nineteenth century transform European society?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary. The answer revolves around the individual's relationship to the economy in a given area. As the economy of Europe was radically transformed by industrialization, so too were people's places within society. The emergence of a distinct middle class was seen across most of Europe, and it differed from earlier forms of the well-to-do, nebulously described as middling sorts, in the adoption of a distinct set of cultural values. In Britain, this development also coincided with the reign of Queen Victoria, and the people in the new middle class adopted the conscious replication of class values in the Victorian mentality. Many perceived their identity as deriving from their work, accomplishments, or training, as well as from their socioeconomic status. Personal consumption of goods played a major part in fashioning the identity of the middle class throughout Europe. Within the working class, there was a greater sense of itself as a new and different entity than the traditional third level of society in the agricultural tradition; members of the working class were now factory workers in urban areas, disassociated from the traditional links of communal identity in the rural settings.