Escaped Attention Earlier

http://ping.fm/K1f3N

Ping is being a spazz about including the music, but I imagine people blew off the original post as history alone.

The term "bourgeoisie" had many meanings in eighteenth–century France, from the most literal sense of "citizens of a city" to a more sociological meaning of talented and cultivated members of the Third Estate. Some eighteenth–century writers also used the term to refer to merchants. However, it did not yet connote upper–middle–class status or adherence to certain dominant social norms, as the term would suggest today. In this passage, from the newspaper Révolutions de Paris, the journalist distinguishes between the "bonne bourgeoisie," who he says are "aristocratic" and "monarchist by instinct" and who fear that any political change will cost money, and the "petite bourgeoisie," who are allied with "the people" and have shown themselves to be patriotic supporters of the Revolution.

http://ping.fm/LakI5

I also recall the reaction of the nobility in "The Red and The Black" by Stendahl.