Middle-Class Culture 537

Other professions also gradually commanded respect. In 1820, the
Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, assessing the future of a nephew, said that
if the young man seemed fit for the army, he might well make his way
there, but, if not, “he cannot follow a better line than that of an accoun­
tant. It is highly respectable.” Newer professions in such fields as veteri­
nary science and pharmacology were open to sons of artisans and
peasants. Clergymen and schoolteachers were increasingly drawn from the
middle classes. The growing reach of the state also required more officials
and bureaucrats, providing attractive careers for middle-class sons.

Middle-Class Culture

The middle classes believed that the family offered the best guarantee of
social order. Most bourgeois held fast to the idea of separate spheres for men
and women. Education and religious practice (however varied) provided a
common culture for the middle classes. A wave of evangelical fervor swept
over Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and a
revival of religious enthusiasm was apparent in some places on the continent

as well.

Marriage and Family

An astute choice of a marriage partner could preserve and even enhance a
family’s wealth and position through the acquisition of handsome dowries
and wealthy daughters- and sons-in-law. There were fewer noblemen to go
around. The disasters of what were considered ill-advised or inappropriate
marriages (“misalliances”)—that is, a union between two people far apart on
the social ladder—continued to be a popular theme in novels and the theater.
Love could—and increasingly did—happily play a role in the choice of a
mate. Prospective partners were more likely to insist that their views be
taken into consideration in the arrangement of marriages. A Parisian woman
told her father that she could not marry “someone that I do not love ... in
order to give myself a lot in life.... How could I hold onto him, if I do not
love him and desire him?”
With an eye toward assuring the future of their progeny, some middle­
class families began to practice contraception after about 1820, limiting
their children to two. The economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) encour­
aged family planning, warning that “one must increase savings accounts
more than increase the number of children.” Coitus interruptus certainly
became more common, as well as other rudimentary forms of birth control.
The concepts of childhood and adolescence developed within middle­
class families. The “children’s room” and the “children’s hour,” when the
young came forward to see their parents or meet guests, were middle-class
concepts. In working-class and peasant households, there was no space for