ladies and gentlemen i present to you
this video about
ladies and gentlemen that's right today
we're talking about what it meant to be
a gentleman or lady
in regency in victorian england now i'm
not talking about
noble titles like lord nerd lady you're
looking for
that i actually have a video on what is
an english lord that you should
definitely check out but rather we're
talking about
what turns an average man into a
gentleman
or a woman into a lady and that
distinction was so important
in the 1800s it affected everything from
who you
talk to to who you married so it's
essential to understanding
really any literature from that period
for example have you ever wondered why a
class obsessed emma invites
poor miss bates to dinner but does not
want to talk to the wealthy coals
or why was mr darcy inviting elizabeth
bennett's
uncle to go fishing such a big deal
my name is ellie dashwood and this is my
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so many today think that it's good
manners or
etiquette that makes somebody a
gentleman or a lady
if a girl is on a date and the guy opens
the car door for her she might think oh
he's such a gentleman
or society looks at women like audrey
hepburn or grace kelly and they think oh
you know she's
so graceful and the definition of a
modern lady
but back in the 1800s there were very
different
and very specific standards to qualify
as a gentleman or lady and that's what
we're going to be talking about in this
video first we're going to look at what
automatically
disqualified someone from being a
gentleman or lady we'll talk a little
bit about gender dynamics and how that
plays into it
and then we're going to talk about the
major factors that either
made you gentile or made you just
plain non-genteel and then we're going
to talk about how we put
all these factors together to understand
the intricate
and complex web of gentility in that
1800s
so first we need to talk about the
number one
disqualifier from being a gentleman or
lady which is
you do a job that's manual labor
that's right if you dig ditches work on
the
factory line are a servant of any kind
you are automatically disqualified it
doesn't matter
if you're both a blacksmith but you also
read tennyson by firelight
you are not a gentleman it's that simple
so in literature you can think of the
higgins
in north and south you can think of the
timmins
and you can think of the baits in
downton abbey what do they all have in
common
except for the fact that some of them
all look the same
it's they are working class and that is
an automatic
disqualification i am so sorry but that
was the view of the 1800s
so let's move on to the next basic
principle we need to understand
before we move on to the factors of
gentility
which is gender dynamics and so just
very basically
women in the 1800s their life was
completely defined almost by
the men in their life their father their
brothers and then their husbands
and then their sons so i actually want
you to watch this short clip from
pride prejudice and i want you to tell
me what you notice about how elizabeth
bennett
identifies herself lady catherine in
marrying your nephew i should not
consider myself
as quitting that sphere he is a
gentleman i am a gentleman's daughter so
far we are equal
did you notice that she didn't say i'm a
lady she says
i'm a gentleman's daughter and that's
because daughters
were defined by the rank of their father
just as wives were defined by the rank
of their husband
in pride and prejudice we see very much
miss bingley trying to be defined by
her brother and so this is just how it
works so either
a woman could be born with the status of
being a lady
based on the position of her father and
society or she could marry
into it which was much harder to do to
marry into
the middle and upper class if you were
not born into it meanwhile there was
very little she could do
all on her own outside of trying to
marry up that could
dramatically change her situation so now
that we understand that really
both these defining factors for
gentlemen
and ladies are actually based a lot on
the men
of the family keep that in mind as we go
through these factors
so keep in mind that not all of these
factors are equal and we're gonna look
at how that plays out a bit later
okay first up is the category occupation
and leisure
now the ideal way to be a gentleman or
lady
is to be of the leisure class that is
where usually you own so much
land or other resources that you don't
have to do anything
other than manage it so in literature we
see mr darcy he's a man of leisure he
literally parties half the time
mr bingley nearly they're not crazy
parties but they're still partying
polio servants back running his estate
now if you're interested
in why mr darcy's so rich i do have a
video on that topic
i will link to it here so go check that
out is it very interesting
so that is the ultimate goal of pretty
much everyone is to
not have a job not do anything other
than the hard
work of being genteel which required
social calls
and entertaining and knowing what to
wear and dealing with servants
so much work guys so leisure is ideal so
if this is a
cast system then people of leisure
and major landowners and country gentry
are at the top now right below them
are the gentile professions this
includes
the clergy like mr collins this includes
certain types of lawyers i'm gonna go
into that in a minute
and of course it includes people in the
military and the navy
so these are the professions that
younger sons of families would often go
into because they were still considered
genteel professions if you couldn't be a
man of leisure then you should
definitely do this
now right below them in this cast system
of jobs
we see professionals and this is where
we got doctors
investors bankers and
artisans now below them is
quite possibly the lowest class
of the middle class possible
which is people in trade now people
in trade were so looked down on by
everyone above them in this ranking
system so there's this very big
prejudice against anyone in trade which
is where you would trade
money for objects like you run a shop
you run
a major trading warehouse and in fact
this even extends to
as i said certain types of lawyers there
were multiple different types of lawyers
in victorian and regency england and the
way they collected fees from their
clients were different
some accepted money directly from their
clients while
others were held on the sort of retainer
basis so the ones who accepted money
directly
that was trade and they were not cool
where the ones who had it through a
retainer
they were okay they're in the genteel
acceptable
professions and as much as this doesn't
really make sense
this was very real during that time and
we see this for example in north and
south where margaret hill
defends mr thornton as being a
manufacturer
not trade so in wives and daughters we
see
cynthia defending that her fiance is a
barrister which is the type of lawyer
that's acceptable
because they aren't in trade when anyone
tries to say that her
fiance is a lawyer she has to come to
his defense he is a
barrister and of course in prime pledges
we see miss bingley and mrs hearst
sneering at elizabeth for her uncle
who's in trade
it's very sad she should have such an
unfortunate family such low connections
now uncle she told us is in trade
and lives in cheapside which is the most
hypocritical thing in the world
because the bingley's wealth came from
trade
from their father and we're gonna talk
about that in a little bit
meanwhile in emma we have several
examples of this emma does not want to
talk to the kohl's
because they are in trade and then of
course we have mrs
elton whose family made their money
in trade and she has upstart pretensions
so this is exactly why when mr darcy
is welcoming to lizzie's aunt and uncle
who are
in trade it's so profound mrs god knows
my aunt mr darcy my sister jane stayed
at their house in cheapside when she was
lately in london
delighted to make her acquaintance madam
delighted sir and it shows how much he
really worked on his humility and during
this time period it wouldn't
be just the super proud who would look
down on those in trade
pretty much it would be all of them who
were non-trade would look down on those
and trade
next up is family and we're talking
about family history family connections
we can talk about noble
titles that might be passed down through
families really
who you were related to was so
important during this time period and
who your ancestors were
would follow you for generations so for
example let's look at the bingley's
his dad made money in trade which
as we learned was not good so what they
would try to do is amass enough money
that they could deposit it into the bank
live off the interest again if you want
to learn more about all this sort of
stuff
watch my videos i have some on why is mr
darcy so rich
and why are the minutes so poor anyway
so they would try to get out of trade
and start to live this gentile
life of leisure but even if you had all
this money
everyone remembered who you were related
to like yeah
that's came from trade versus if you
look at darcy he came from
generations of wealth and prominence
in the community so this is one of those
things of who you related to had a big
impact on how people
saw you so if you came into a great deal
of money but your grandfather was a pig
farmer
everyone would remember it and it would
be a count against you and as
we talked a little bit about how women
are defined by the status of their
fathers and their brothers
and their husbands we definitely see
miss bingley trying to
play off the status of her brother now
as a gentleman of leisure and be in that
same class versus being in trade with
her father
well even if you have money your low
connections in the past
will follow you also if you become poor
but you had good connections in the past
that will follow you and this explains
why
emma still visits miss bates because
she's a gentle woman who came from
clergymen which means she's probably
generations of gentility and now
even though she's in reduced
circumstances in their minds she still
counts
as a lady okay the next area is
probably a pretty obvious one it is land
and money basically the more the better
right so mr darcy he owns half a dar for
sure
and has ten thousand a year and he comes
from the super old family i mean he just
has
all of these stats going on for him but
of course as we thought even if you had
all this money but it came from trade
then it was still kind of a knock
against you but
you also had money a lot of older
families especially as the century wore
on their estates were very expensive to
maintain
they were not getting a lot of new money
in from them so they needed to start
marrying new money to sort of
rebuild up the estate and that's one of
the reasons we saw that trend
towards the end of the victorian era and
into the dwarian era when american
heiresses
whose fathers would be like still
tycoons would go in and they'd marry
dukes they'd marry earls because
they needed money and even if though
these women were new money
they needed it to support their estates
also on the importance of owning land
that is one of the reasons bingley is
always looking to buy land
he never really commits to it though
that drives his sister crazy because
of course owning land would definitely
up their gentility rating
up next is education and accomplishment
so for boys and girls this was very
different they did not go to school
together
boys usually went away to some sort of
boarding school at eight to nine years
old
very famous ones being like eaten in
haro meanwhile girls stayed at home and
learned
from a governess usually unless you were
elizabeth
bennett we never had a covenant i'm
going to do a whole video on governesses
and what it was like to be a garminess
so i'll link to that here whenever it
gets made but for now
basically let's talk a little bit about
what they learned
boys in school they were very heavy into
greek and roman mythology
reading the iliad and odyssey in their
original languages
in school and then a lot of them then
would advance onto oxford or cambridge
and then they would take up
additional studies meanwhile home girls
would be learning things like
grammar and literature and history and
geography but
most importantly what they'd be learning
was refinements
and accomplishments let's take a minute
to listen to
miss bingley explain this to us i cannot
boast of knowing more than
half a dozen women in all my
acquaintances that are truly
accomplished nor
are i to be sure goodness you must
comprehend a great deal than the idea
i do absolutely she must have a thorough
knowledge of music
singing drawing dancing and the modern
languages to deserve the word
and something in her air and manner of
walking
so those modern languages she's talking
about would be conversational french and
german being a good wife was the
defining characteristic
and for the upper and middle class being
a wife wasn't about
necessarily running a home as much as it
was about being an ornament to society
being really refined and polished and
being able to
dance and sing and draw and so those
were the type of things
they were learning so they could catch a
husband and
be rich with them so since we are
talking about refinements and
accomplishments i just want to take a
minute
to talk about skillshare you think this
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skillshare is a website that has so many
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i feel like the
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and i was able to make this picture
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are interested in learning some great
refinements
definitely click that link and up your
gentility game and i feel like this is
the last category
on this list but i feel like it's the
one that everyone thinks of first which
is manners and etiquette they had guides
to this
they studied it and being able to behave
properly in any social situation
knowing how to put others at ease being
able to make social calls
for an acceptable length of time which
was at a maximum
15 minutes and between certain hours by
the way
all of these intricacies of social life
needed to be refined
polished and perfect so that they could
make the
best impression on those around them so
a perfect example of this going
completely wrong is of course
pride and prejudice elizabeth bennett's
family loves to run wild kitty and lydia
throw all decorum
out the window mary's over there singing
when nobody
asked her to which was very presumptuous
and not an etiquette of the time
so let's just all realize that
bennett family did not have that factor
going for them on this gentility rating
okay so we have talked about all of
these major factors
including occupation and leisure family
connections and history
money and land education and refinement
and etiquette so how do all of these
work together
and the answer is very complexly if you
ever get confused why certain
characters interact in classic
literature it's easy to understand
why because all of them have their own
weighting
and combined in ways that you can't
always predict
for example you have mr darcy who
definitely qualifies as
a gentleman the only thing he's really
missing is a rank of nobility
otherwise he has family history he has
money he has
land he has manners he has education
so really he is the whole package and i
feel like that's why
jane austen wrote him that way so what's
interesting is if you compare him to
someone who does have a rank of nobility
but perhaps
that rank of nobility was just recently
granted by the monarch
and they don't have a lot of money and
they came from blacksmiths
well guess what mr darcy in a lot of
people's eyes
is still going to outrank him just from
having
so many factors in his favor so let's
talk about
margaret hill in north and south if you
haven't seen north and south you should
definitely check it out it's based on a
novel by elizabeth gaskell
and what she is is she's a clergyman's
daughter so she comes from a family of
gentility
she has been educated with her rich
cousin so she definitely has the
refinements and accomplishments and
manners and etiquette required of a lady
and she has a good family history on her
mother's side and her father's side
and they're poor right so this is
another one of those examples
of where even though they are poor she
is still considered
a lady and we even have mr thornton
saying
no mama she is a lady and then he tries
to propose to her meanwhile thornton
is definitely way farther down on this
gentility rating
yes he has money but he is a
manufacturer which is not of the
gentry class he does not seem to have a
long family history
of being in the gentility and so overall
he nowhere near ranks margaret even
though he has a
lot more money and we can kind of see
that in the way she initially
treats him and his family but when she
really realizes that he's a manufacturer
and not in trade she gets over that and
also you know he's good looking and like
all romantic by the end of the movie so
i'm sure that helped too so that's it
for what it meant to be a gentleman
or lady in regency in victorian times
basically the whole 1800s and even up to
world war one anyway i hope you enjoyed
this video if you did please like it or
subscribe and i'll see you next time