DBQ

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Europe went through transformations. The changes affected the working middle class the most of any people in Europe. In figure 1, a women is breast feeding her child in public. In earlier times, this never would have been painted. Classical nudes were the only accepted naked paintings by the majority of the population. Pictures such as this caused and uproar of emotions from people who viewed it. In figure 2, the painting is not a close up of people. In the back of the painting, people are walking around with their backs to the viewer. This was another change during the second half of the nineteenth century. New ways a painting were just a small portion of the changes going on. Socialism was coming about during this period. People like Karl Marx had ideas for a better life style for middle class people. The idea of Socialism was a good idea to create a perfect society; but a society cannot be perfect full of imperfect people. Different biases about ideas during this time stopped Socialism from being successful. During the second half of the nineteenth century, transformations were prominent. Transformations in art and culture help society grow; but things such as Socialism led to radical new ideas that bettered the present but worsened the future.

In the 19th century, middle class people were over worked and under appreciated. They were also underpaid, with the minority of the population having the majority of the money. Marx thought this was backwards and wanted to transform society. He wanted a society where everyone was even. This is the idea of Marxism, a subsection of Socialism, with slightly different ideas. This idea would take affect on the middle class the most. The majority of people in Europe were a part of the middle class, yet they took orders from the smallest group of people. In a factory there is one owner in charge of numerous workers. If all the workers came together for a common good, they could over throw the factory worker that took advantage of them. This is the idea of Marxism. The idea was good for the moment, but over time turned into a nightmare. After the middle class came together as one, somebody had to become the leader of the group. This brought everyone back to square one. Without a leader, the group will have no direction and fail. With a leader, people will always be unhappy and want more for themselves.

Other transformations took place within the culture of European society during this time period. The art work before this time had been about nobility and religion. Now, people were beginning to paint things everyone could relate to. Figure 2 has middle class people walking around in a town. A simple painting that spoke volumes to the people at the time. Paintings of Kings and Queens, Gods and Goddesses could not be related to the average person. The working class was thought of at some points as uncultured, but that was because culture failed to include them. The transformation of art types opened new cultural doors for people. They were suddenly interested in art because at any point in time, they could substitute themselves into the scenes. This helped to bring the people of the middle class even closer together. This had its advantages and disadvantages. And advantage would be a more cultured society. A large disadvantage would be more people coming together to accept things such as Socialism, which cannot work in society.

The culture of Europe definitely had been changed forever by these new ideas. People bought into the ideas because at the time they seemed like a good thing. But bad came out of the ideas also. People were killed in mass numbers in something called "the bloody June days". This was a scary time where revolution again tried to change culture more than it needed to be changed. The change in culture through art was an advantage and helped people come closer together. Things like Marxism and Socialism tried to do the same, but on a more radical level. Like the radical Jacobins of the French Revolution, their ideas were not successful.