Bourgeois Values

I'm on a roll with this one as the time when I was a teenager is increasingly being scrutinised thanks to TV programmes like "Mad Men" or, more believably, "Panam".

In the 1960s people, it is claimed, loosened up. My generation started to yell loudly, which was unheard of. The decade started with ladies and ended with women. The linguistic codes of behaviour I still remember... just in case... but they are set in the aspic that was the favoured food additive of the time.

I had great sympathy for D H Lawrence's hatred of "The Bourgeois" for some time but Lawrence was finally a product of the class that would put him in his place and his aggression became increasingly painful to read. Anybody who is taken in by the received view that he wrote unsavory books should read "The White Peacock", his first novel. It is a beautiful, if sad, analysis of the typical marriages that he saw around him in the north of England and contains the seeds of all his later works, before he was ensnared by Freud and driven to exasperation by the Bloomsbury set. His work was finally assimilated after his death and it was a sign of being educated to be able to understand his intentions as an artist.

By the time I got to college the Lady Chatterly trials were a strange legal mistunderstanding between classes, or so we read the matter. Taking offense at written material is a long standing way of settling personal vendettas, which is why I write on the internet in as banal a style as possible. Words do not travel without the possibility of misunderstanding and can leave the writer compromised because somebody gets the wrong end of the stick.

Nobody needs enemies, though some writers seem to increase their power through confrontation. I have not read the book "The Help" on which the increasingly popular film is based. The most alarming part of the story, set in Mississippi, in the early 1960's was the name of the author which was printed on the book that was the collection of the maids' tales. "Anonymous" is the character who draws and writes on walls or who means mischief and it seemed a pity that the people concerned could put their names to the work only in private. The fact that breaking anonymity in the society of the time could mean death is well portrayed.

I have to admit that this film has frightened me even more than ever when it comes to American society. It has always been the case that writers tend to leave their home turf for the big city and the journalist in the story is no exception. Small town life is the same the world over and exposing its foibles is not advisable if one wants to fit in.

Thankfully things in the provinces seems to be changing... though I would not risk putting that theory to the test.
There are probably descendents of Emma Bovary in every village. It always puzzled me why she did not just move out.