I've never heard of or seen a group of people so concerned with class than the Victorians.How much money you had was who you were as a person or a family.
It determined how you acted, who you were friends with, what you did for fun, your likes, dislikes, wives, husbands and how you raised your kids.
If God didn't bless you with placement with a rich family, there was little to hang your hat on except hard work and maybe a little bit of luck to hammer out a decent living where you could actually enjoy the small things.
At the time, it appears there were the haves and have nots. Even the middle class wasn't the modern middle class that we all know and love. The poor in 1900 would've killed to be a middle class family in 1990.
But as can be expected, money doesn't make you a good person. Being someone who can be snobby or even keep a dying woman's request clearly makes you a bad person. Or a person to ill-repute. Then to marry this woman as she stares spinsterhood square in the face, well, that's another pickle. It's downright sorry.
Say what you will about modern culture, but the idea of a woman having an illegitimate child is looked at totally differently in most cultures.
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