".
The deliberate recoil to authority was aided by natural tendency. For one thing, the average Victorian was much more likely to defer to the opinions of his "elders and betters" than to question them or think out his own, which is to say that the tradition of respect for the upper classes survived for a long time.
One was now expected to have an opinion about everything, to take a position on a score of disputed points in politics, religion and morals. Not to do so was shameful, it implied indifference to crucial issues or failure to keep abreast of advancing knowledge. Anyone who as a person of importance, ought to know where he stood on the Oxford Movements or democracy or evolution. Faced with such expectations, the average man was glad to take his ideas from the periodical. "Private judgement" commonly meant passive impression. Hence the extreme influence of periodical publications at this day, teaching the multitude of men what to think and what to say.
Many of the middle class, now that they had political standing and social opportunities, were eager to acquire the education, or at least the veneer of culture, which they lacked. For that purpose they found the long essay exactly fitted to their need, with the wide range of literary and historical material and their rapid and simple style. Morley says the essays were "as good as a library: they make an incomparable manual and vademecum for a busy uneducated man, who has curiosity and enlightenment enough to wish to know a little about the great lives and great thoughts.".
Gender: .
"The greatest difficulty in England today is the relationship between men and women. The principal difference between our ancestors and ourselves is that they took society as they found it while we are self-conscious and perplexed. The institution of marriage might almost seem just now to be upon trial." Justin MCarthy.
Until the passage of the Married Women's Property Acts (1870-1908) married women could not own or handle their own property.
