Middle Class In The 1800s

Elites’ taste were commonly adopted by people with lower income and status through the process of refinement which created the middle class. However, the middle class had to work in order to purchase all the material objects like tableware, china, carpets, and clocks. They earned extra income from household manufacturing. Thus, the middle class dealt with textiles and quilting to earn money and comfort. They were used to create family clothes or exchanged work with other people to create a strong fabric used to create summer working dressses. In the early 1800s, mills were starting to appear and they sold thread to women who would then weave it into cloth and sell it back. This caused a mixed between work and leisure, looms crowding furniture

Such as Bixby’s house who’s from Barre, Massachusetts, before the remodel it had the basic 3-room configuration and was dull but was changed to have more rooms, plastered walls, wallpapered or painted a fashionable gray, and exterior improvements that made it aesthetically pleasing. Before 1840s, garbage was usually thrown out from a convenient window but after, there was a designated spot for it to protect its exterior appearance. Fifteen years later after Quilting Frolic, we see a engraving of 1831 which shows the size of the fireplace and windows enlarged. Fuel for the fireplace have changed to coal, and other material objects such as the clock over the mantel, the globe, the draperies, the footstools, the lamp in the window, and the vase in the right foreground. Objects related to work are missing and work has been banished in homes. The amount of people in the engraving also tells a story, the family seems very small compared to Quilting Frolic. This was because the growing urban middle class realized that education was important for a good job and education was expensive so they limited their amount of kids. The families were extended in Quilting Frolic was because it gave farmers more helping hands from their