utilitarianism
The idea of Jeremy Bentham that social policies should promote the “greatest good for the greatest number.”
germ theory
The idea that disease was caused by the spread of living organisms that could be controlled.
labor aristocracy
The highly skilled workers, such as factory foremen and construction bones, who made up about 15 percent of the working classes from round 1850 to 1914.
sweated industries
Poorly paid handicraft production, often carried out by marries women paid by the piece and working at home.
companionate marriage
Marriage based on romantic love and middle-class family values became increasingly dominant in the second half of the nineteenth century.
separate spheres
The nineteenth-century gendered division of labor and lifestyles that cast men as breadwinners and women as homemakers.
suffrage movement
A militant movement for women’s right to vote led by middle-class British women around 1900.
thermodynamics
A branch of physics built on Newton’s laws of mechanics that investigated the relationship between heat and mechanical energy.
Second Industrial Revolution
The burst of industrial creativity and technological innovated that promoted strong economic growth in the last third of the nineteenth century.
evolution
The idea, applied by thinkers in many fields, that stresses gradual change and continuous adjustment.
Social Darwinism
A body of thought drawn from the ideas of Charles Darwin that applied the theory of biological evolution to human affairs and saw the human race as determined by an unending economic struggle that would determine the survival of the fittest.
Realism
A literary movement that, in contrast to Romanticism, stressed the depiction of life as it actually was.
Jeremy Bentham
English social reformer credited with utilitarianism
Edwin Chadwick
Instituted major reforms in urban sanitation and public health in England.
Emily Pankhurst
Leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Britain.
Franziska Tiburtius
German physician and advocate for women's education.
Louis Pasteur
French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization.
Émile Zola
French Realist novelist