Download or read book Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century written by L. Young and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-12-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on expressive and material culture, Young shows that money was not enough to make the genteel middle class. It required exquisite self-control and the right cultural capital to perform ritual etiquette and present oneself confidently, yet modestly. She argues that genteel culture was not merely derivative, but a re-working of aristocratic standards in the context of the middle class necessity to work. Visible throughout the English-speaking world in the 1780s -1830s and onward, genteel culture reveals continuities often obscured by studies based entirely on national frameworks.