ESPANSIONI DI TESTO

MODULE B - Social Classes in the 18th Century (p. 89)

TASK
a. Highlight all the words referring to professions and social status in the text below.
b. Write ten questions using these words with different question words.

In the eighteenth century Britain was a country of villages and farms, with one metropolis, London.
Its society was mostly a rural society, structured into three layers: the upper class, the middle class and the lower class.
The upper class was represented by the nobility and gentry. It was the landowner class. Some were great lords with large estates and grand mansions. Others (the squires) owned less land but occupied an important social position. The squire ran his farm and enjoyed hunting, fishing and shooting. He was the top man in the village. He usually had a large family. His sons went to local schools or had a private teacher at home. Many squires were interested in the arts and filled their houses with paintings and fine furniture to show off their wealth.
The lords and squires gave part of their land to tenant farmers who paid them a rent. Both squires and farmers employed labourers to work their fields. While the farmers were rather well off and belonged to the middle class, the rural labourers were poor and their life was hard. They lived either in the farmers' homes or in rough cottages. They had perhaps a pig, a cow and some sheep which they kept on the village common. But when the landowners and farmers started to enclose the open fields, the labourers lost their right to use the common land. On enclosed land farmers grew new crops, tried out new machines and farming methods, and raised new breeds of cattle and sheep. All this brought more profits to farmers and good rents to landlords, but labourers' wages were still very low and many villagers left the land to become traders or craftsmen.
The middle classes acquired more and more power with the development of a new bourgeoisie. Wealthy merchants, lawyers, business people and factory managers were the wealthiest and most important people in urban society, and their political power grew together with their wealth. These people supported the Whigs and were for expansion of the colonies abroad. London became the business and trading capital of the nation and its population increased to nearly one million people by the end of the century. Bath was the most fashionable town in England and the wealthy merchants and landowners spent time there taking the waters, attending dances and parties, and learning the customs of polite society.
Beside the growing bourgeoisie there was a lower middle class formed by artisans and craftsmen. Most worked hard for low wages. Often it was all the family who worked in their own home, for instance weaving and selling cloth for a small profit.
The lower classes remained desperately poor, both in the countryside and towns, where large numbers of people lived in unhealthy and depressing slums. Some were small shopkeepers and craftsmen, some were unemployed, and many tried to survive by expedients. Throughout the 18th century hundreds of riots burst out both in the countryside and in towns, over food, wages and living conditions.