Hello!. For this week’s blog, I am going to talk about the estates, how they compare to the caste system, and possibly a few other things. To start, something I find very interesting was the bourgeoisie. I found this particular group of people interesting because of their placement in the estates. After doing some googling,  found out that the bourgeoisie made up around 8% of the people in France back then. Now this 8%, around 2.3 million people, may seem small compared to the other members of the estate, around 30 million people, but if you compare it to what percentage of people were clergy (o.5%) and nobility (2%), it makes you think, maybe the bourgeoisie deserve their own estate. From what I’ve gathered, there seemed to be pretty concrete divides between the different estates. Like you couldn’t be sort of nobility and also sort of everybodyelse. If you had noble blood, you were noble. If you did your training and became a priest, you could be a clergy. If you weren’t these things, you were a part of everybodyelse. So, if there are such rigid fine lines between the estates, why is it that there were members of the bourgeoisie far richer than nobility and clergy, and then also people who spent their life as servants and beggars? This kind of seems like it is becoming an argumentative essay as to why there should be a separate estate between the 3rd and 2nd just for the bourgeoisie, so I’ll reel it in here, but my point stands. To look on the other side, the whole third estate paid taxes where the 1st and 2nd didn’t, so that could be a reason as to why they are all grouped together. I believe you can honestly argue both sides. Now, to switch gears, I want to talk about the similarities and differences between the caste system in India and the estates in France. One major difference is that the caste system still exists today, whereas the estates in France do not. Maybe the reason the caste system still exists is because to my knowledge, India has not had a major revolution and a shift in government. A similarity between the two is the way that people rank themselves and treat others how they believe they should be treated due to their social status. Finally, one last difference is the moving between social statuses. In the caste system, there really is zero moving. You are born into a family, and live your life in your caste. In the estates, there was plenty of moving. You could start out as a peasant and slowly work your way up to priest, or you could start as a member of the bourgeoisie and marry into a noble family looking for money. That, in my eyes, is the biggest difference between these two socially constructed rankings. With that, I will end my post. Thanks!