Upper Class Depiction in Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
The Upper Class in Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
This essay analyzes how the upper class is reflected in Restoration and 18th-century literature.
The upper class has always been a target or a motive for writing. Literary works mentioning this group range from poetry and fiction to drama.
Poetry and the Upper Class
Alexander Pope, a member of the Scriblerus Club, focused on the upper class in his literary production. The Scriblerus Club was known for satire and worried about the high level of corruption. They used their writings to attack Robert Walpole and the vanities of the high class. His poem, The Rape of the Lock, exemplifies 18th-century English literature. Inspired by classical models but in a satirical way, it represents the mock-epic tradition. It deflates epic themes, uses unusual divine machinery, and employs epic formulas and grandiose language to describe ordinary events.
The poem was commissioned by John Caryll, Pope’s friend, who wanted to reconcile two families after the incident of Miss Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre. In the Norton edition, Pope addresses the poem to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, known as Belinda. The poem attacks social conventions, superficiality, and vanity, concentrated in the character of Belinda. Belinda is based on Arabella Fermor, a member of Pope’s circle of prominent Roman Catholics. Socially involved, partying, dressing up, she compulsively needs to show her beauty, abandoning her intellectual or spiritual development. This character is the epitome of the superficiality and vanities of the upper class or aristocracy. The poem presents a trivial matter, the rape of Belinda’s lock, in a unique and magnificent way, prompting laughter.
Drama and the Upper Class
The upper class has also been an object of interest for playwrights who frequently based their plots around upper-class characters to mock their manners, both in the Restoration and 18th-century literature.
During the Restoration, the court frequented the theater, and much of the playwriting was done by courtiers or government employees. Restoration comedy is full of artifice, wit, clever wordplay, stock characters, and women on stage. The sophistication of the city is upheld over the innocence and backwardness of the country folk. Most of the characters belong to the upper class and live in the city, contrasted by silly or dumb characters from rural areas. As values and mores become more artificial, satire becomes the dominant tone, mocking the extravagance of society, especially the upper class.
In William Congreve’s The Way of the World, the focus is on the superficial manners of the upper-class characters, rather than on their deeper emotions or the moral implications of their conduct. This is seen in the representation of rakes (Mirabell and Fainall), fops (Witwoud and Petulant), country bumpkins (Sir Wilfull Witwoud), servants (Foible, Mincing, and Waitwell), widows (Lady Wishfort), and young women (Mrs. Fainall and Mrs. Marwood). His focus on the frivolity of upper classes as a source of entertainment evolved into immoral theatrical pieces.
The 1700s marked the beginning of a new era in English theater. Charles II had been long dead, and the drama became more moralistic and satirical, because the beginning of the 18th century is also known as the age of satire. There’s a lot to be satirized, like the upper class.
The Beggar’s Opera is a good expression of a vernacular opera because it tries to incorporate traditional tunes, so it became very successful for different reasons; people could join and sing along because they knew the tunes and because it was an expression of British identity. Also, the British empire was beginning to feel patriotism. The middle class was a way of representing the criticism of the upper class. All the characters are criminals or prostitutes. There are no stock characters. Although he is going to take all the characters from the street and he is going to use them to create his plays, he has a very clear purpose in mind., and that is refected at the end of the play when the Beggar states:
“Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the Road the fine Gentlemen.[…] Twould have shewn that the lower Sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish’d for them.” (Gay, 2656)
The Novel and Social Critique
Henry Fielding is well-known for writing plays, but also for writing Joseph Andrews, a novel that is a response to Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Fielding was very good at satirizing, making fun of things that he described as ludicrous (ridiculous). The thing that enraged him the most was hypocrisy, vanity, the obsession with appearance of the upper class in his novels and plays. That is why he is going to write Joseph Andrews. He is Pamela’s brother. It is based on the chaste Joseph from the Bible. He is a man, but he is as chased as Pamela, which serves Henry Fielding to create a parody of Pamela. He once said: “The highest life is much the dullest”, because the upper class is the one that has the most boring life. He criticized it, obviously.
Conclusion
Critique of the upper class has always been a topic for authors of the 18th century.