Noblesse Oblige (The British Upper Class)

The British Upper Class is a presence which is at once familiar and unfamiliar for the British public. The Upper Class is a familiar presence in the sense that it has always featured in plays, novels, and from the 20th century onwards, in films and television drama. The great popularity of the British television series Downton Abbey is an indication of the interest in which the general public, both inside and outside the UK, take in the representation of the British Upper Class. The British Upper Class, consisting of the titled nobility and the landed gentry, has long held great political and economical power, and has played a central role in the history of the nation, although its power and presence began to lessen considerably in the latter half of the 19th century. Since the decline of the agricultural society, moreover, the actual presence of the Upper Class has become more remote for the majority of the population, for whom the Upper Class is now a set of people occasionally taken up in the media, but is more usually seen as belonging to the world of fiction. Noblesse Oblige: The British Upper Class deals with the image and representations of the British Upper Class as seen in British literature and culture. The book does not attempt to deliver a historical account of the British Upper Class, nor is it a treatise on the political or social importance of the British Upper Class. This is an attempt at showing how the various elements of the British Upper Class, such as titles, inheritance, primogeniture, education, marriage, language and accent, and the so-called stately home industry, are represented in novels, plays, films and on television. By tracing the image and representations of the British Upper Class in British literature and culture, the book also attempts to shed light on the relationship between the Upper Class and the Middle Classes, which can be quite complex and difficult to understand, and to examine the concept of class and class consciousness in British society and culture.
 

(Written by ARAI Megumi, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2023)