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  • Essay / Representations of upward mobility in 19th-century French and English literature

    Throughout human history, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to change social class. Those born into poverty tend to remain there as slaves or peasants, and wealth tends to remain concentrated in the hands of the hereditary social elite. Although there have always been exceptional individuals who rose from obscurity to prominence, most people lived and died in the same classes into which they, their parents, and their grandparents were born. . Large-scale social mobility only became possible with the Industrial Revolution, when technological innovations developed in the second half of the 18th century led to the creation of vast wealth from commercial and manufacturing enterprises. Suddenly, land – which had been the primary means of production since ancient times – no longer played such a vital role in the economy, and hereditary landowners – the aristocratic and noble class – lost much of their legal and economic. By the early 1800s, the old social order was in tatters across Europe as the “new money” threatened to dominate and even eclipse traditional forms of authority. Yet the way contemporary authors discussed and described upwardly mobile behavior was heavily influenced by the political climate in which these authors wrote. While England had always been ruled by a constitutional monarchy during the Industrial Revolution, so there was no significant disruption to the existence of wealthy, independent land-based "gentlemen", the economy and society were torn apart by a violent revolution in 1789, followed by a decade known as the Reign of Terror during which the French monarchy was destroyed and the hereditary aristocracy deliberately eradicated. Even years later, after Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, a sense of lingering social upheaval prevailed in France. Yet this upheaval was not seen as a negative thing by French authors, who presented individual ambition and upward mobility in a positive light, reserving much of their criticism and condemnation for social mores rigid and hierarchies which repressed the development of the individual. In contrast, English authors of the same period generally took the opposite approach, presenting their fictions of upward mobility in an almost uniformly negative light. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayThis essay will compare and contrast the treatment of upwardly mobile characters by English and French authors of the mid-19th century. On the English side, the social climbers will be represented by Jane Wilson from Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Becky Sharp from William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Rosamund Vincy from George Eliot's Middlemarch. On the French side, characters in search of social advancement will be represented by Eugène de Rastignac from Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac, Porthos from Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers, or even Jean Valjean and his sworn enemy Javert from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. usually assumed their husband's rank and social class upon marriage, had the opportunity to advance by marrying a wealthier man from a more prestigious family. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, one of the minor characters named Jane Wilson attempts to do just that. She is ashamed of her brother Robert, who is a simplefarmer, and she tries to trap the rich Frederick Lawrence. Overall, his character is mostly negative. Like her mother and best friend Eliza Millward, Jane is a vicious gossip who loves to start and spread rumors. She despises the novel's protagonist, a married woman fleeing an abusive alcoholic husband, and spreads negative rumors about him. It is this character flaw that distances Frederick from her: the newcomer that Jane despises happens to be Frederick's beloved sister. Jane has so little control over her destructive, rumor-mongering behavior that she can't contain it long enough to ensnare the rich, handsome bachelor of her dreams. It is Jane's irrational and immature social warfare campaign against her sister that alerts Frederick to the fact that Jane is not ready to marry. Jane never manages to escape her social class. Having rejected the company of people she considers inferior to her, like most members of her own family, she finds herself without a husband. This, in a society where men control most of the money and property, guarantees a very unhappy and uncomfortable life. His legal status now matches his character in terms of immaturity. Indeed, the author presents Jane's misfortune as the predictable result of her actions. Although this is not the cause-and-effect outcome favored by romantic writers, Bronte nevertheless ensures that the reader sees that Jane Wilson's attempts at upward mobility go unrewarded. Thackeray's antihero, Becky Sharp, is Vanity Fair's most dynamic and interesting character. Raised in poverty, pushed – the text strongly suggests – into a form of child prostitution, then orphaned after being thrown into an all-girls boarding school where she must work to earn her education and pension, Becky is almost completely without social connections or resources. She spends most of the book trying to achieve financial security, even though she does so in an almost completely amoral way. Along the way, she makes mistakes. Although she succeeds in marrying in terms of social class, the husband she chooses is the handsome but stupid Rawdon Crawley, who embodies every possible stereotype of the early 19th century cavalry officer. He is not only penniless, but deeply in debt, and by marrying Becky, he incurs the wrath of his previously supportive wealthy aunt. The young couple must rely on Rawdon's paltry salary as a cavalry officer, supplemented by his gambling winnings. However, by borrowing heavily and moving without repaying, Becky and Rawdon are constantly ahead of their creditors. Becky then advances Rawdon's career with manipulative flirtations which may or may not include romantic services. She is eventually caught by her husband, but only after bankrupting one of their creditors, the faithful Mr. Raggles, whose house they rented. Becky Sharp is not completely devoid of principles or positive traits. She helps her old friend Amelia Sedley near the end of the book, and she doesn't do it entirely in the hopes of trapping Amelia's well-off older brother. But it is also shown to degenerate into drunkenness, dishonesty, and friendship with swindlers and card players. Whether she murders Jos Sedley at the end of the book is left to the reader's interpretation. However, although she receives the money from the insurance policy, she never achieves the title of "Lady" Crawley that she covets so intensely: her husband dies before the title passes to her, so that her son becomes the new Lord Crawley. The little social climber therefore does not really succeed in achieving her goal. Thackeray presents reasons which explainBecky's engagement in intrigue and behavior that resembles what one might expect from a greedy cockroach: she seeks the social and financial security she was denied in her youth. . Indeed, to a modern audience, Becky is a sympathetic character, but the narrator's assertion that people often deserve their own mistreatment may have struck a chord with a contemporary audience. Although interesting and readable, Becky is not and never can be considered “good.” Middlemarch was written later in the 19th century, after the merchant class had become well established as possessing enough wealth to compete financially with wealthy, independent families. Overall, George Sand is more charitable toward his social-climbing characters than previous English realist authors were. It portrays the Vincy family, warts and all, in a much more positive light, but it doesn't allow them to achieve their goals. The Vincy family includes two young adults, Fred and Rosamund, who both aspire to a higher social position due to years of overindulgence from their financially overwhelmed parents. Mr. Vincy spends more than he can afford on Fred's education and Rosamund's thrift stores, attempting to compete with wealthier families such as the Casaubons and the Brookes and propel Vincy's children higher on the social scale. In this effort he does not succeed. He and his wife end up suffering the predictable consequences of their financial folly. Their children are depicted in a more positive light, but their ethical weaknesses are clear and George Sand clearly and explicitly describes the effects of their self-centered upward mobility behavior on others. Fred is depicted in a rather positive manner, with recognition of his moral and ethical weaknesses which only improve when he accepts the class he was born into. He studied alongside young gentlemen at university and adopted their spending and dress habits. He has no ambition other than to ride good horses, follow the dogs in fashionable riding attire, and be generally respected for doing so. To this end, he hopes to inherit significant property from an uncle who favors him, and in anticipation of this inheritance, he spends heavily. Unpleasantly surprised when his uncle leaves most of his possessions to someone else, Fred must either become a minister (a career he is not suited for) or go to work for Caleb Garth to pay off a crippling debt. financially the Garth family. He eventually discovers an aptitude for property management and gains the respect of Mary Garth, Caleb's daughter. So, instead of marrying "in class", Fred ends up sinking socially and becoming an artisan who works with his hands, loves it and earns an honest living. At the end of the book, he is generally happy. He is better off financially than he was at the beginning of the story, but he has slipped in social class. His sister, who is unhappy, did the opposite. Like her brother Fred, Rosamund Vincy grew up in a very comfortable standard of living. His idea of ​​running a home is simply ordering the best of everything and expecting someone else to foot the bill. She believes that Tertius Lydgate, whose titled relatives disapprove of her choice of medical profession, will help her financially. But she is wrong, and her wanton spending and systematic sabotage of her husband's savings attempts push the young couple into debt. Throwing cute little tantrums fails to resolve the Lydgates' financial problems, which only improve after a loan ofupperclassman Dorothea Casaubon. Lydgate, having married a spendthrift, sacrifices her dream of serving the medical community, leaves Middlemarch and becomes an obscure doctor whose income never matches Rosamund's expectations. It was not until Lydgate's death that the irritable and immature Rosamond found a doctor wealthy enough to satisfy his material needs. Although she finds herself in a good financial situation later in life, Rosamond never becomes an attractive or positive character and is not ethically redeemed like her brother Fred is. Among English realist authors, attempts at upward mobility are seen as evidence of a moral, spiritual, or character flaw. Characters who eventually achieve happiness rarely do so through marriage, and characters who manage to improve their social status usually do not do so without great amoral complicity or self-centered disregard for the effects of their actions on others. The predominant message is that permanent class divisions are good and appropriate, and that human beings are happiest and most successful when they live, work, socialize, and marry within the class into which they were born. Those who attempt to rise above their station usually cause and incur misery even if they succeed, which many do not - in fact, some of them end up worse off than before. On the other hand, French realist authors have a more tolerant and benevolent vision. of social ascension. This may have been due to the social instability that devastated the French economy and culture in the late 18th century. By the 19th century, although Napoleon had been defeated and France's imperial ambitions had been temporarily curtailed, decades of national-level social engineering had produced an environment in which people could – for the first time in history of humanity - expect to be promoted to positions of responsibility. temporal authority based solely on their merit. Freed from the oppressive social structures of the Church and hereditary aristocracy thanks to Madame Guillotine, the French became accustomed to the idea that it was possible to accumulate not only wealth but also social status. The fact that an individual wanted to rise in the world was not heretical but noble. Even after the restoration of the French monarchy and the return to a society and economy containing a hereditary upper class, the French character was permanently altered to the point that things condemned elsewhere were, in France, considered reasonable and understandable. The desire to change social class was one such addition to the French national psyche. While English authors and readers still viewed social climbers with suspicion, in France this behavior was considered right and legitimate. It is now important to distinguish between social advancement and blatant overconsumption. Social climbing is an attempt to permanently change social class by being accepted into a clique of more elite associates. To do this, people acquire habits, preferences, and mannerisms appropriate to their desired situation in life. Sometimes this means spending more than they can afford. Eugène de Rastignac, in Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac, severely mistreats his family to equip himself with clothes adapted to the social life of the nobility in order to obtain a rich mistress who will be able to ensure profitable work appointments for him . Becky Sharp throws expensive parties on credit from merchants and salesmen, who give her credit only because they believe she is the mistress of the Marquess of Steyne. The festivals ofBecky has several goals: sparking reciprocal hospitality, tweaking military promotions for her husband, and allowing Rawdon to swindle guests at cards or pool. So Eugene and Becky spend with purpose. In contrast, Gustave Flaubert's eponymous heroine, Madame Bovary, ruins her family not in order to be accepted among provincial high society, but to fulfill her fantasies of wealth and privilege. Similarly, Mathilde Loisel in the short story La Parure by Guy de Maupassant imagines herself to have been born below her legitimate position in life, but her financial distress has only a distant connection with her desire to appear rich and beautiful at the ball. Mathilde's major error is due to pride. It is not her social ambitions that push her and her husband to bankrupt herself to replace the diamond necklace she loses: it is pride that prevents her from telling her friend about her loss, to confess everything to him and to include the other woman in his replacement project. the necklace. If she had admitted to losing the necklace, with its imitation diamonds, she and her husband would have experienced only a brief period of financial difficulty and would not have been ruined. Honoré de Balzac, in the body of novels sometimes described as his “human comedy”. », written several times about Eugène de Rastignac but presents him for the first time in Père Goriot. As a realistic writer, de Balzac has no trouble showing Rastignac's willingness to sacrifice others to achieve his own goals. The hardships endured by his family from whom he continues to extract money to prepare himself for a place in high society, his love for a woman who aggressively exploits his elderly father Goriot in a way that today would be considered mistreatment of the elderly, and his desire to move into an apartment with Goriot's daughter with the already poor old man. spending shows a willingness to financially abuse others. Yet Rastignac has standards. He does not participate in the assassination plot proposed by Vautrin, even if he stands to gain a fortune from it. Not only did he attend Goriot's funeral, but he helped pay for it alongside a student even poorer than Rastignac. Although Rastignac is ready to exploit others for financial gain, he only exploits them in the service of his social advancement. He doesn't manipulate people for fun or spread gossip like Jane Wilson, and he doesn't unnecessarily look down on or blatantly reject people he believes to be his social inferiors like Becky Sharp does. He is not stupidly short-sighted, lazy, or selfish like the Vincy siblings, and unlike Rosamund, he is capable of changing strategies. Overall, Rastignac is an intelligent and likeable young man. In terms of character, he is well developed, unlike most English upwardly mobile characters. Alexandre Dumas (Father) is not considered as a realistic author but as a romantic author. His series of novels around the character of d'Artagnan are historical fictions that he uses to criticize different aspects of the Ancien Régime before the French Revolution. The first novel, The Three Musketeers, takes place in the late 1620s, during the Huguenot rebellion. The musketeer characters uphold their ideals of honor and service to a just and competent monarchy, in an increasingly ambiguous and dishonorable world. His character Porthos, who appears in The Three Musketeers and its two sequels, is a kind man. Big, strong, loyal, but not too bright, Porthos is a musketeer with champagne tastes and a water budget. He was not born nobly like Athos, nor educated and refined like Aramis. However, he has a taste for beautythings of life. To do this, he first hopes to marry a rich widow. In the first sequel, Twenty Years Later, Porthos is a very wealthy man whose assets have grown considerably thanks to one lucky coincidence after another. He then desires a noble title: he wishes to be a baron. By the end of the second book, he achieves his goal. Yet Porthos, unlike Rastignac or any other English social climber, never pretends to be anything other than what he is. He does not seek to harm others, except by participating in escapades with Athos, Aramis and d'Artagnan. Interestingly, Porthos's desire for social advancement is not seen as somehow contrary to the natural social order. His fellow soldiers, even the aristocratic Athos, support not only his quest for wealth but also his desire to rise to rank. This view is radically different from that of the English aristocrats and peers profiled in Vanity Fair, who avoid the upstart Becky and her comically brooding husband unless it is in their interests to do otherwise. At no time do English realist authors introduce democratic motivations into their characters. Dorothea Brooke visits Rosamund for a business run at Lydgate's home, but it never occurs to her to mingle socially with her or Mary Garth. Although she designs new houses for her uncle's tenants, Dorothea does not socialize with them, and when her name is romantically linked to that of Ladislaw in a codicil to her husband's will, her friends and relatives are shocked. When she later marries Ladislaw, without assets but somewhat liberal, sacrificing all of her husband's inheritance and living solely on her own property inherited from her mother, her decision is not presented as good or intelligent. Indeed, Ladislaw's attraction to Dorothea is something he himself considers inappropriate. Yet in Dumas's book, no one suggests that Porthos's courtship and marriage to a wealthy widow is in any way inappropriate despite their large age difference and a considerable class difference between an enlisted musketeer (not even an officer) and the wife of a well-educated lawyer. One point to remember is that Dumas wrote in the Romantic tradition and not the Realist tradition, so the lack of opposition to Porthos' financial and social advancement was neither plausible nor realistic. However, Dumas's treatment of Porthos is not solely a product of the Romantic perspective. In Les Misérables, the romantic writer Victor Hugo devotes several chapters to tracing the various rises and falls of Jean Valjean. Valjean begins as a convicted thief and escapee, and first reoffends by stealing from a child and a priest. But after being shown mercy by one of his victims, Valjean changes his mind. He changes his behavior, becomes an honest man and effectively becomes mayor of a town, emerging from obscurity to become one of the most powerful, richest and most influential men in the region. However, Valjean is not allowed to continue to succeed. He is recognized and recaptured after heroically saving a man from being crushed under a cart. When he escapes again to save Cosette, he seeks a life of quiet anonymity as a private citizen, but by the end of the novel he has been found. Valjean does indeed learn to live a moral life – he is among the noblest and most dedicated of literary characters – but apart from his brief stint as mayor and factory owner, the author does not allow him to retain any of his gains. no matter how well earned they are. This exaggeration of fortune can also be attributed to the romantic perspective. THE,