challenges faced by women or a man in regency period?
Answers
Answer:
women will face the problem
Explanation:
the landed gentry (Richardson 5).3 The middle-class, in contrast to the upper-class, needed “to generate an income from some kind of active occupation(s)” but distinguished itself at the same time from the working-class “by their possession of property [...] and by their exemption from manual labour” (Seed 115). The merchants, professionals and business owners, or simply the “middling sort”, as Daniel Defoe called them, were not “exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and suffering of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition and envy of the upper part of mankind”.4 Social mobility in this fixed class system was difficult to find. The upper-classes were determinded “to keep the lines between the classes firmly in place” in order to secure their elite status (Richardson 6).
Women in Regency society were exceedingly disadvantaged. They hardly had legal rights and were not allowed to own property, rather they were considered as property of either their father, brother or husband (Richardson 5). Marriage was therefore “not only a social preoccupation but a neccessity” to attain financial security, especially in a society where any male family member was preferred to a daughter when it came to inheritance issues (5).5 The couples’ affection for each other was secondary and happiness in marriage depended upon luck. Once married, women were deemed to live a passive life at home. It was their task to raise the children, manage the household and submit to their husbands (5). Upper-middle- class and upper-class women were expected to be “accomplished”, that is, to be able to sing, draw and play the piano among other things (5). The reputation of a woman was of essential importance in Regency England. Unmarried women were considered “morally corrupt” if they behaved inappropiately towards men (5). To sum up, moral conventions and gender expectations controlled Regency society and determined whether a person was accepted in the community or regarded as “a social outcast” (9). Individuality was subordianted to the values of society (9)