3 Estates*
In the French Revolution, there was a system that was roughly equivalent to social or societal classes. This was known as the three estates. The three estates were a how a feudal society was divided. The first estate was the clergy, or the church. The second estate was the nobility. Even though they were nobility, it was common for aristocrats to enter the church and thus shift from the second estate to the first. The third estate was essentially everyone else. It was technically known as the peasantry. These categories were gender specific, meaning that only men were defined, and they were designed around what it was that a man did for a living.