ns were more interested in pleasure and appearances than in laboring towards productive property. Along these lines Megquier writes, ...there is quite a spirit of aristocracy prevailing here which in my opinion is composed by those that have been cramped in the states... 23 In other words, people who had been unable to succeed at self-making came to California in search of an easier route to improvement of their positions. Even the idea of having an aristocracy goes against Victorian values. Victorians wanted to be roughly equal, but this seems to have been forgotten at the opportunity to stand out in San Francisco. If California society allowed for so much freedom of class movement and loosening attitudes about a womans place, the social norms and habits must certainly have evolved. This can be seen quite clearly in the writings of women. More than men, women were expected to uphold social norms and morals, so naturally they felt quite conflicted. Some women took great pains to preserve the lifestyles they had known at home, while others were more receptive to the looser social structure. Few Victorian women could resist comment, as these aspects of life were their chief concern. Because of this, we are left with a dramatic picture of the California social world. For example, in her memoirs, Sarah Royce laments the decay of morals she observed in gold rush San Francisco. One passage of hers is a clear example of the hypocrisy that often occurred when people struggled with the Victorian moral code. She writes,[The miners] did not at all intend, at first, to sacrifice their habits of morality, or their religious conviction...[under] the pressure of unexpected temptation, they too often yielded, little by little, still they found themselves standing on a very low plane, side by side with those whose society they once would have avoided. It was very common to hear people who had started on this downward moral grade, deprecia...
