Victorian society valued a range of qualities that combined would result in being perceived as having good moral and gaining respect form society. This aspect of reaching and aiming to be of high moral and respect was apparent in the Victorian literature as well (Altick, 1973, p. 17). Victorian literature often explored the life of men and women in a given class and how they maintained their social status when pressured by outside factors, and just as often how they tried to improve their status (ibid. p. 17-18). The characters of Victorian literature were tested on how they managed to keep up their moral and respectability in maintaining or improving their status. The Victorians’ determination to live up to these values, such as sobriety,
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She has almost made it her mission in life to be kind and compassionate towards the people less fortunate than herself, and it is this attitude that makes her a hypocrite in the novel. While showing empathy towards the poor and needy, she does not offer people the middle classes the same emotion, the people who made their own businesses and aspired to improve their lives, economic status and social status. She also thinks she is too good to marry John Thornton because she is educated and he is not, even though he is rich while she is not. It is obvious that she is very traditional and conservative, and highly influenced by her family. Mrs. Hale is angry at Mr. Hale for not providing them a more economically comfortable life, and she is obviously from a family of old money herself. Margaret’s background and family are reasons for her behaviour towards both the lower and middle classes. She acts in accordance to how she is expected to act. She becomes a hypocrite because she refuses to adjust her views of social class with an increasing social mobility. She is too proud to realise that she is jealous and angry at Thornton and the people like him, because they have distanced themselves from their initial equals by making money, not by being more moral and respectable
She has almost made it her mission in life to be kind and compassionate towards the people less fortunate than herself, and it is this attitude that makes her a hypocrite in the novel. While showing empathy towards the poor and needy, she does not offer people the middle classes the same emotion, the people who made their own businesses and aspired to improve their lives, economic status and social status. She also thinks she is too good to marry John Thornton because she is educated and he is not, even though he is rich while she is not. It is obvious that she is very traditional and conservative, and highly influenced by her family. Mrs. Hale is angry at Mr. Hale for not providing them a more economically comfortable life, and she is obviously from a family of old money herself. Margaret’s background and family are reasons for her behaviour towards both the lower and middle classes. She acts in accordance to how she is expected to act. She becomes a hypocrite because she refuses to adjust her views of social class with an increasing social mobility. She is too proud to realise that she is jealous and angry at Thornton and the people like him, because they have distanced themselves from their initial equals by making money, not by being more moral and respectable