Throughout most of human history, it has been difficult or even impossible to change social classes. Those born into poverty tended to remain there as slaves or peasants, and wealth tended to remain concentrated in the hands of the hereditary social elite. While there have always been exceptional individuals who rose from obscurity to prominence, most people lived and died in the same classes into which they, their parents, and their grandparents were born. Large-scale social mobility did not become possible until the Industrial Revolution, when technological innovations developed in the last half of the 18th century led to the creation of enormous wealth by mercantile and manufacturing enterprises. Suddenly, land – which had been the main means of production since ancient times – no longer played such a vital role in the economy, and hereditary landowners – the aristocratic and noble class – lost much of their legal and economic. In the early 1800s, the old social order was in tatters across Europe as “new money” threatened to dominate or even eclipse traditional forms of authority. However, the way contemporary authors discussed and described social climbing behavior was heavily influenced by the political climate in which those authors wrote. While during the Industrial Revolution England was consistently governed by a constitutional monarchy, such that there was no significant interruption to the existence of wealthy and independent land-based “gentlemen,” the French economy and society were destroyed by a violent revolution in 1789 followed by a decade known as the Reign of Terror in which the French monarchy was destroyed and the hereditary aristocracy was deliberately eradicated. Even years later, following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo, a sense of continuing social upheaval prevailed in France. Yet that upheaval was not viewed as negative by French authors, who presented individual ambition and social ascent in a positive light, reserving much of their criticism and condemnation for the rigid mores and social hierarchies that suppressed the development of the individual. By contrast, English authors of the same period generally took the opposite approach, presenting their fictional social climbers in an almost uniformly negative light. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay This essay will compare and contrast the treatment of rising characters by mid-19th century English and French authors. On the English side, the social climbers will be represented by Jane Wilson from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and Rosamund Vincy from Middlemarch by George Eliot. On the French side, characters struggling for upward mobility will be represented by Eugène de Rastignac from Honoré de Balzac's Père Goriot, Porthos from Alexandre Dumas's Les Trois Mousquetaires and Jean Valjean and his nemesis Javert from Victor's Les Misérables Hugo. Women, who generally assumed the rank and social class of their husbands upon marriage, had the opportunity to move up in class by marrying a richer man from a more prestigious family. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, one of the minor characters named Jane Wilson attempts to do just that. He is ashamed of his brother Robert, who is a simple farmer, and tries to trap the rich Frederick Lawrence. Overall, his character is predominantly negative. Like his mother and theher best friend Eliza Millward, Jane is a vicious gossip who enjoys spreading and spreading rumors. He despises the novel's protagonist, a married woman on the run from an abusive alcoholic husband, and spreads negative rumors about her. This character flaw is what drives Frederick away from her: he appears to be the newcomer whom Jane despises, Frederick's beloved sister. Jane has so little control over her destructive, rumor-mongering behavior that she can't contain it long enough to snare the rich, handsome bachelor of her dreams. It is Jane's unreasonable and immature social warfare campaign against her sister that alerts Frederic to the fact that Jane is unfit for marriage. Jane never manages to break out of her social class. After despising the company of people she considers beneath her, like most of her own family, she finds herself without a husband. This, in a society where men control most of the money and assets, makes for a very unhappy and uncomfortable life. His legal status now matches his character in terms of immaturity. Indeed, the author presents Jane's misery as the predictable result of her actions. While this isn't the tidy cause-and-effect denouement favored by romantic writers, Bronte still makes sure the reader sees that Jane Wilson's attempts at social climbing go unrewarded. Thackeray's antihero, Becky Sharp, is Vanity Fair's most vibrant and interesting character. Raised in poverty, pushed - the text strongly suggests - into a form of child prostitution and subsequently orphaned after being dumped in a girls' boarding school where she must work to earn her education and food, Becky is almost completely devoid of social ties or resources. . He spends most of the book trying to ensure financial security, although he does so in an almost completely amoral manner. He makes mistakes along the way. Although she manages to marry in terms of social class, the husband she chooses is the handsome but stupid Rawdon Crawley, who embodies every possible stereotype of the early 19th century cavalry officer. He is also not only penniless but also in significant debt, and by marrying Becky he earns the ire of his wealthy aunt who previously supported him. The young couple must rely on Rawdon's paltry pay as a cavalry officer, supplemented by his gambling winnings. However, by borrowing large loans and moving out without repaying, Becky and Rawdon are constantly moving ahead of their creditors. Becky subsequently advances Rawdon's career with manipulative flirtations that may or may not include romantic services. She is eventually caught by her husband, but not before they bankrupt one of their creditors, the faithful Mr. Raggles, whose house they rent. Becky Sharp isn't entirely without principles or positive traits. She helps her old friend Amelia Sedley towards the end of the book, and does so not only with the hope of entrapping Amelia's wealthy older brother. But he is also shown to degenerate into drunkenness, dishonesty, and friendships with swindlers and card cheaters. Whether she kills Jos Sedley at the end of the book is left to the reader's interpretation, however, although she gets the money from the insurance policy, she never gets the title "Lady" Crawley she craves so intensely: her husband dies before her death. the title passes to him, so that his son becomes the new Lord Crawley. So the little social climber actually fails to reach her goal. Thackeray presents reasons for Becky's engagement in intrigue and behavior that resembles what one might expect from a greedy cockroach: she seeks the social and financial security that has been afforded herdenied in youth. . Indeed, to a modern audience Becky is a sympathetic character, yet the narrator's assertion that people often deserve their own bad treatment may have touched a nerve in contemporary audiences. While interesting and readable, Becky is not and will never be considered “good.” Middlemarch was written later in the 19th century, after the merchant class had established itself as possessing sufficient wealth to occasionally compete financially with independent wealthy families. Overall, George Sand is more charitable towards his social-climbing characters than early English realist authors were. It portrays the Vincy family, for better or worse, in a much more positive way, yet it does not allow them to achieve their goals. The Vincy family has two young adults, Fred and Rosamund, who both aspire to a higher social position due to their years of overindulgence from their financially overburdened parents. Mr. Vincy spends more than he can afford on Fred's education and Rosamund's nonsense, attempting to compete with wealthier families like the Casaubons and the Brookes and launch the Vincy children higher up the social ladder. In this effort, he is unsuccessful. He and his wife end up experiencing the predictable results of their financial folly. Their children are depicted in a more positive manner, however their ethical weaknesses are clear and George Sand clearly and explicitly describes the effects their egocentric social climbing behavior has on other people. Fred is depicted in a mostly positive manner, with recognition of his moral and ethical weaknesses which do not improve until he accepts the class he was born into. He studied alongside young gentlemen at university and adopted their spending and dressing habits. He has no other ambition than to ride good horses, follow hounds with a fashionable riding habit, and be generally respected for it. To this end he hopes to inherit a significant estate from an uncle who favors him, and in anticipation of this inheritance he spends heavily. Unpleasantly surprised when his uncle leaves most of his estate to someone else, Fred must become a minister (a career for which he is ill-suited) or go to work for Caleb Garth to repay a debt that cripples the Garth family financially. He ends up discovering an aptitude for property management and earns the respect of Mary Garth, Caleb's daughter. So, instead of marrying “in class,” Fred ends up sinking socially and becoming a tradesman who works with his hands, likes it, and makes an honest living. At the end of the book, he is overall happy. He is financially better off than at the beginning of the story, however he has slipped in social class. His sister, who is unhappy, did the opposite. Like her brother Fred, Rosamund Vincy grew up with a very wealthy standard of living. His idea of ​​running a household is simply ordering the best of everything and expecting someone else to foot the bill. He believes that Tertius Lydgate, whose titled relatives disapprove of his choice of a medical profession, will help him financially. But she is wrong, and her free spending and the systematic undermining of her husband's attempts to save lead the young couple into debt. Throwing little tantrums fails to solve the Lydgates' financial problems, which only improve after a loan from upper-class Dorothea Casaubon. Lydgate, after marrying a spendthrift, sacrifices her dream of serving the medical community, leaves Middlemarch and becomes an obscure doctor whose income never matches her expectations.Rosamund. It is only when Lydgate dies that the petulant and immature Rosamond finds a doctor rich enough to satisfy her material needs. Although she finds herself in a good financial situation later in life, Rosamond never becomes an attractive or positive character and is not ethically redeemed as her brother Fred is. Among English realist authors, attempts to rise in class are considered evidence of a moral, spiritual, or character flaw. Characters who ultimately achieve happiness rarely do so by marrying, and characters who achieve improvements in their social status generally do not do so without a great deal of amoral connivance or self-centered disregard for the effects of their actions on others. The predominant message is that permanent class divisions are good and appropriate and that human beings are happiest and most effective when they live, work, socialize, and marry within the class they are born into. Those who try to rise above their station generally cause and incur misery even if they succeed, which many do not: in fact, some of them end up worse off than before. In contrast, French realist authors have a more tolerant and benevolent view. of social climbing. This may have been due to the social instability that devastated the French economy and culture in the late 18th century. By the 19th century, although Napoleon had been defeated and France's imperial ambitions had been temporarily curtailed, decades of nationwide social engineering had produced an environment in which people could, for the first time in human history, expect to be promoted to positions of power. temporal authority based exclusively on merit. Freed from the oppressive social structures of the Church and hereditary aristocracy courtesy of Madame Guillotine, the French became accustomed to the idea that it was possible to accumulate not only wealth but social status. For an individual to desire to rise in the world was not heretical but noble. Even after the restoration of the French monarchy and the return to a society and economy that contained a hereditary upper class, the French character was permanently changed to the point that things condemned elsewhere in France were deemed reasonable and understandable. The desire to change one's social class was one such addition to the French national psyche. While English authors and readers still viewed social climbers with suspicion, in France the behavior was considered right and legitimate. It is now important to draw a distinction between social climbing and blatant overconsumption. Social climbing is an attempt to permanently change one's social class by gaining acceptance into a more elite clique of associates. To do this, people acquire habits, preferences and mannerisms appropriate to their desired position in life. Sometimes this means spending more than they can afford. Eugène de Rastignac, in Honoré de Balzac's Père Goriot, harshly tears apart his family to equip himself with clothing suited to the social life of the nobility so as to obtain a rich mistress who will be able to organize profitable business appointments. Becky Sharp throws expensive parties on the credit of merchants and vendors, who only give her credit because they think she is the Marquis de Steyne's mistress. Becky's parties have several goals: to spark mutual hospitality, to arrange military promotions for her husband, and to allow Rawdon to fleece guests at cards or pool. Eugène and Becky then spend with a purpose. In contrast, Gustave Flaubert's eponymous heroine, Madame Bovary, brings her family to ruin not with the aim of being accepted into highprovincial society, but to act out his fantasies of wealth and privilege. Similarly, Mathilde Loisel of Guy de Maupassant's story La Parure imagines herself born beneath her rightful social position, yet her financial difficulties are only distantly related to her desire to appear rich and beautiful at the ball. Matilde's big mistake is due to pride. It is not her social ambitions that lead her to bankruptcy and her husband to replace the diamond necklace she loses: it is pride that prevents her from telling her friend about the loss, confessing everything and including the other woman in her replacement plan . the necklace. If she had admitted to losing the necklace, with its fake diamonds, she and her husband would have had only a short period of financial hardship and would not have been ruined. Honoré de Balzac, in the body of novels sometimes described as his "human comedy", writes repeatedly about Eugène de Rastignac but first presents him in Père Goriot. As a realist writer, de Balzac has no problem showing Rastignac's willingness to sacrifice other people to achieve his own goals. The hardships endured by his family from whom he continues to extort money to prepare for a place in high society, his love for a woman who aggressively exploits his elderly father Goriot in a way that today would be considered elder abuse, and his willingness to move into an apartment with Goriot's daughter at the already poor old man's expenses shows a willingness to financially abuse others. However Rastignac has standards. He does not participate in the murderous plot proposed by Vautrin, even though he could earn a fortune from it. He not only attends Goriot's funeral, but helps pay for it along with an even poorer student from Rastignac. While Rastignac is willing to exploit others for financial gain, he does not exploit them except in service of his own upward mobility. She doesn't manipulate people for fun or spread gossip like Jane Wilson, nor needlessly scorn or blatantly discard people she believes are socially inferior like Becky Sharp does. He is not stupidly short-sighted, lazy or selfish like the Vincy brothers and, unlike Rosamund, he is capable of changing strategies. Overall, Rastignac is an intelligent and likeable young man. Character-wise, he's well-developed in a way that most social-climbing English characters aren't. Alexandre Dumas (Père) is not considered a realist but a romantic author. His series of novels revolving around the character d'Artagnan are historical novels which he uses to criticize different aspects of the Old Regime before the French Revolution. The first novel, Les Trois Mousquetaires, is set in the late 1620s during the Huguenot rebellion. Musketeer characters uphold their ideals of honor and service to a just and competent monarchy, in an increasingly ambiguous and dishonorable world. His character Porthos, who appears in Les Trois Mousquetaires and its two sequels, is a lovable man. Big, strong, loyal, but not too bright, Porthos is a musketeer with champagne tastes and a limited budget for water. He is not of noble birth like Athos, nor is he as well educated and refined as Aramis. However he has a taste for the finer things in life. To this end he initially hopes to marry a rich widow. In the first sequel Twenty Years After, Porthos is a very rich man whose fortune has grown considerably due to one happy coincidence after another. He then desires a noble title: he desires to be a baron. At the end of the second book he succeeds in his aim. Yet Porthos, unlike Rastignac or any English social climber, never pretends to be anything other than what he is. Don't try toharm others, except through his participation in escapades with Athos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan. Interestingly, Porthos' desire for social advancement is not seen as somehow contrary to the natural social order. His fellow soldiers, including the aristocrat Athos, support not only his pursuit of wealth but also his desire for rank. This view is radically different from that of the English aristocrats and peers portrayed in Vanity Fair, who shun the new Becky and her comically dim-witted husband unless it is in their best interests to do otherwise. At no point do English realist authors introduce democratic motivations into their characters. Dorothea Brooke visits Rosamund on a business errand at Lydgate's house, but it never occurs to her to socialize with her or Mary Garth. Although she designs new homes for her uncle's tenants, Dorothea does not socialize with them, and when her name is linked romantically to that of Ladislaw in a codicil to her husband's will, her friends and relatives are shocked. When she later marries the assetless but somewhat liberal Ladislaw, sacrificing her husband's entire inheritance and living only on her own assets inherited from her mother, her decision is not presented as good or intelligent. In fact, Ladislaw's attraction to Dorothea is something he himself considers inappropriate. Yet in Dumas's book no one suggests that Porthos's courtship and marriage to a wealthy widow is somehow inappropriate despite their large age difference and a considerable class difference between an enlisted musketeer (not even an officer) and the wife of a well educated lawyer. A point to remember is that Dumas wrote in the romantic tradition and not the realist tradition, so Porthos' lack of opposition to financial and social progress was neither plausible nor realistic. However, Dumas's treatment of Porthos is not exclusively a product of the romantic perspective. In Les Misérables, the romantic writer Victor Hugo spends several chapters chronicling the various rises and falls of Jean Valjean. Valjean begins as a convicted and escaped thief, and at first reoffends by stealing from a child and a priest. Yet, after receiving mercy from one of his victims, Valjean changes his mind. He changes his ways, becomes an honest man, and, in effect, becomes the mayor of a town, emerging from obscurity to become one of the most powerful, wealthy, and influential men in the area. Yet Valjean is not allowed to continue to succeed. He is recognized and recaptured after heroically saving a man from being crushed under a cart. When he flees again to save Cosette, he seeks a life of quiet anonymity as a private citizen, but is rediscovered at the end of the novel. Valjean does learn to live a moral life - he is among the most noble and selfless of literary characters - but aside from his brief stint as mayor and factory owner, the author does not allow him to keep any of his earnings. no matter how well earned they may be. This exaggeration of luck can also be attributed to the romantic perspective. Valjean's desire to live as an honest person instead of the stigma of having been a convict is a driving force in his life, yet the entire world is arrayed against him. Unlike anti-heroine Becky Sharp, who is similarly trying to emerge from an ignominious start, Jean Valjean is a hero in his own right. The reader cannot help but empathize with him, and the humans who persecute or mistreat him are presented as malicious, ignorant, or irrational. Indeed, the entire system that keeps him and the other characters down is exposed to the reader's critical judgment. It's about,