The middle class seems more difficult to define. Cohen, synthesizing a wide range of commentary on class formation, suggests that understanding the middle class depends partially on the empirical and partially on understanding the epistemological underpinnings of the concept (19). As its name implies, the middle class falls between the upper and working classes as an unstable site of mediation between the two. The instability of the middle class means that arriving at a definition is difficult, but a point of departure might be the consideration of the broad terms of work for the middle class, which requires a degree of intellectual engagement and is remunerated at a level above subsistence; in these two ways it differs from the work performed by the working class. The accumulation of savings, frequently resulting in members of the middle class buying property, results in a horizon of expectation and imagined possibilities: affluence brings the promise of a better life, which seemed a consequence of the economics of Empire. As Cohen comments, .
Without too much quibbling [ ] we might say that the denizens of the Victorian middle class were those who had been able to advance themselves financially and socially in the accelerating, expanding, and industrializing British economy. Hence it included a wide array of individuals from merchant princes and entrepreneurial wizards, to an ever-growing number of professionals, bankers, bureaucrats, and civil servants, to local shopkeepers, artisans, teachers, clergy, and clerks, along with their families. (19, 20).
The broad range of individuals who make up the middle class means that, given the differing social locations of these individuals, it is relatively difficult for this class to coalesce around common interests: the aspirations of a curate serving in a rural parish are not those of a shopkeeper in an urban setting, although both are "middle class.
