As the school year is finally wrapping up, my American Studies class is putting together all the covered curriculum to decide whether or not progress is being made in the United States. This progress can be regarding multiple different themes, such as race, class, or gender. One theme that I believe has evolved over the past centuries is the theme of class indicators.
In the earlier centuries of America, class was usually indicated by descent, which meant that you stayed in the social class that you were born in to. Within the earlier colonies of America, it was especially hard to break out of the lower class, for education was extremely selective, and indentured service was often not worth the many years of work because of the quality and quantity of land given to the servant. Also, material possessions were often not an indicator, except for the amount of land that someone owned.
In "The Kentucky Cycle", a play written by Robert Schenkkan, I found a firm example of how people back in the 1860's started to realize how other's class should be indentified. Richard, a wealthy land owner whom seized property from the Rowen family, begins to realize that land isn't enough to make people happy. "It isn't about property! It's about somebody livin' miles and miles away tellin' you and me how we got to live". This "somebody" that Richard is referring to is the king of England. How I interpreted this quote was that the importance of land is starting to become less valuable in the minds of the people colonizing America. Slowly, the importance of land started to decrease, and more focus was gained towards education and money.
Before we started reading "The Kentucky Cycle", our class looked at how social class is determined now. The four areas we looked at were occupation, education, income, and wealth. It is clear that values have turned around a lot since the era of "The Kentucky Cycle", which begged a couple of questions.
First, is it easier now to change your social class than it was back in the earlier centuries of the U.S.?
Second, what four areas (ex. occupation, education, income, and wealth) would be used to determine one's social class during the era of "The Kentucky Cycle?
1 comment:
Hi Aid,
First off, I'm not sure if the KyCyc's Richard character was really referring to England in the 1860s. Remember that this particular play was set during the Civil War era. Perhaps he was railing against government authority in general?
Second, it would be great if you anchored this in a text outside of class. There are many forms of media currently discussing possible answers to your question. Check out Robert Reich's Inequality For All film, for instance.
Wish we could have seen more writing from you -- there's a lot of potential in this subject.
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