Vanity Fair Research Paper

This new society was divided into three main groups: an upper class of aristocrats, industrialists and merchants and, finally, the poor and working class. Such an unfair class division was hardly criticised by the writes of the age, as it may be seen in Thackeray's work Vanity Fair.

Since the power was in industrialists' hands, laws mainly favoured them and the conditions of the workers, as it has already been stated, deteriorated. Craftsmen disappeared as a result of industry competition and the increase of production lead to a decrease of salaries. Moreover, the industrial revolution created an unprecedented demand for female and child labour and thus, the use of woman and children as cheap labour became commonplace, working both for long

The political institutions were questioned and the trade unions could not exercise much power against the employers. Before 1832, Britain was ruled by an oligarchy of landowners. After that year, the urban middle class had an increasing say but the working class were excluded from the reforms. From 1838, a working class protest movement called the Chartists was formed. It was the first political movement that demanded improvements for the working-class and to ask for a parliamentary reform to make the system fairer by achieving the representation of the workers. They had other demands as well: they wanted all men to vote, the property qualification abolished, all constituencies to be equal in size and voting to be by secret ballot. But they did not get any of their

They doubt about inherited biblical religion was as much an acknowledged theme of the period as Victorian belief. Discoveries in biology and philosophy continued to challenge all accepted views of religious chronology handed down from the past. Perhaps, the most profound challenge to religion came with both Darwin's On the Origin of the Species and other works such as Kingsly's Hypatia.

The English religious panorama was very colours. The Church of England was flanked on one side by Rome and on the other by religious dissent. Both were active forces to be considered. Sometimes, the local battle between Church of England and Dissent was bitterly contested, with Nonconformist opposing church rates and preaching total abstinence and educational reform. A whole network of local voluntary bodies led either by Anglicans or Dissenters came into existence, representing a tribute to the energies of the age and to its fear of state