The Victorian era began in 1837, the year Queen Victoria was crowned. The industrial revolution also began in this era. Cities began to form and become densely populated. In the novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens had the main character, Pip, live in two different lifestyles in the Victorian era. Pip lived with both the poor and the rich population. Both lifestyles are very different, and placing Pip in both societies helped show that while the rich benefited from the industrial revolution, the poor often paid the price. The abominable living conditions of the Victorian era caused many youth deaths. The country was so dirty and disorganized; they literally had an open sewer system running through the streets. Pip describes a scene of filth as: “A confused mourning of soot and smoke clothed this desolate creation of Barnard, and had shown ashes on his head, and was suffering penances and humiliations like a mere dust-hole. So far my sense of sight; while the dry rot and the wet rot and all the silent rots…” (Dickens, 186). Victorian children were at high risk of contracting a wide variety of diseases that can be easily treated and controlled in the 21st century. Now treatable diseases that were deadly in the Victorian era were smallpox, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and dysentery. Death was prevalent in Victorian families. The younger the children, the more vulnerable they were to disease. This was evident in the book when Pip begins to describe his family. In the novel Pip says, “…they [his brothers] were all born on their backs with their hands in their trouser pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence” (Dickens). When Pip mentions this, Dickens is trying to explain the... medium of paper... known as primogeniture. The rich had a great advantage over the poor during the Industrial Revolution. Even though poor families did most of the work, they still got the short end of the stick. Making their young children work in factories, coal mines and mills. By having their wives take care of the rich children and clean their homes, the men themselves worked for the rich. Without the natural human instinct to fight for survival the industrial revolution would never have happened. Money was the central point in class separation. The richer you were, the less work you had to do and in their eyes I also had a better lifestyle, even if they had a boring childhood. Pip has lived both lifestyles, that of the rich and that of the poor. The rich in the Victorian era enjoyed a huge advantage, leaving the poor in the worst living conditions.