Kodansha Gakujutsu Bunko Eikokushinshi no seitaigaku (The Life and Habits of the ‘English Gentleman’)

This book is an attempt to analyze the representations of ‘class’ in British literature and culture, focusing especially on the lower middle class. In Britain, the term ‘lower middle class’ has always been associated with certain images and stereotypes (most of them pejorative), and especially from the latter half of the 19th century, been depicted in novels , plays and other media, mostly as comical or pathetic. At the same time, the rapid increase in size and influence of this class in the late 19th century caused the lower middle class to be regarded as a threat by the upper middle and upper classes, who, it may be argued, tried to meet this threat with patronizing laughter and derision. The development of cheap suburban dwellings for lower middle clerks commuting to their work in the city in the late 19^th century, furthermore, led to the suburbs being regarded in association with the lower middle class. The suburbs became the subject matter for comic essays, novels, plays, and poetry, and was also criticized and condemned for their vulgarity and lack of taste. The writer H. G. Wells, for instance, himself a product of the suburbs, made the suburbs of London a target for the ferocious attack by Martians in his science fiction novel The War of the Worlds (1898).
 
From the late 19^th century to the 20^th century, the lower middle class became a presence which was no longer marginal, its importance especially as consumers being felt in various areas. Newspapers such as the Daily Mail was founded with this class as the target readers, and periodicals such as the Strand Magazine, which was where Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were serialized, were founded for the entertainment of this social class.
 
Although the image and representation of the lower middle class are thus important for the understanding of British culture, few studies so far have focused specifically on this particular class. This book is an attempt at tracing and analyzing the development of the image and stereotypes of the lower middle class in British culture, in order to gain a deeper understanding of British culture today.

 

(Written by ARAI Megumi, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2020)