Class Discrimination

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"Oh, how coarse and grating were the sounds to be heard around me! Lack, nay, not lack, but utter freedom from the first instincts of cultivation, was to be heard even in the great heavy footfalls and the rasping sharp voices which fell on my ears. So different had I been listening in a room at Caddagat to my grannie's brisk pleasant voice, or to my aunt Helen's low refined accents; and I am such a one to see and feel these differences" (162, My Brilliant Career).

        Sybylla looks at the people for whom she is working as "coarse and grating" and lacking the refinement that she is used to. She was brought there to help teach the children, so she could have become friends with them and fostered understanding and a good learning environment. Instead she focused on their "differences" from the life she was used to. This demonstrates an idea of being almost born with this "cultivation" and she seems almost jealous of them for their "freedom" from it. She sets herself apart by saying that she is "such a one to see and feel these differences" as if being able to recognize a difference in levels of education is something that is unique to her. But Sybylla's family got a loan from the M'Swat family and they are technically in a worse place financially. This bias comes strictly from education level, which you could argue that family is trying to improve simply by having Sybylla there to teach the children. And yet she both is jealous of their "freedom" and disgusted by it, disdaining the "rasping sharp voices" and the "coarse and grating" sounds.

       In a sense it represents some of the mixed feelings that other Victorians also held towards the poorer part of the nation. They were sympathetic, but in their sympathy they were still unwilling to give up their own places in society. People were free to believe that because they were born in a well off family and had been well educated that the poor were of a lower level naturally.

Franklin, Miles. My Brilliant Career. Project Gutenberg Edition. Project Gutenberg. June 8th, 2012.