In Robinson Crusoe, the narrator's family falls into the middle class. This is evidently a matter of some importance to his father, who opposes the narrator's plan of going to sea on the basis that such a course must be either above or below him.

He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state...

The narrator's father tells him that the middle class is the easiest and most enviable station to which one can belong, since he is neither burdened with the hardships of the poor nor a prey to the pride and ambition of the great. He also points out that both kings and paupers often lament their state and it is to the middle class that both aspire. A middle class life, he tells his son, is not only the most comfortable and enjoyable type of existence, but also the most conducive to virtue. He concludes by insisting that "temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life."