Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 18:53:27 -0500
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: Orwell


James:

>   Here Rahul seems to get a little carried away in trying to
>paint a picture of the "English people." First, I would say that
>Orwell was a radicalized middle-class writer who passionately
>defended the interests of the working class, as he understood
>them. He put his life on the line in Spain. He was honest in
>his political life, and in his writing.

Not me, James. That's the picture Orwell paints. I don't care so much for
the damn limeys, myself. The rest I agree with.

>   He was not really enamored of "bourgeois values," although
>I'll grant you that this is a murky point. He had a personality
>forged on the anvil of middle-class respectability, but then
>at a certain point he rebelled against the stuffiness and
>hypocrisy. You can see this in _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_
>and in _A Clergyman's Daughter_, among others.

I didn't mean all bourgeois values. But in addition to his very bourgeois,
very English view of honesty, there was his emphasis on physical courage
(strongly pushed on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow), on lack of
extremism more than having the correct principles, on "getting the job
done" first and foremost before wondering about the rights and wrongs of
it, and so on. He was very much an Englishman, which almost necessitates
being bourgeois, but he also hated the hypocrisy of the elite with a
passion.

>   But as I said before, he didn't radicalize completely,
>and he retained a bit of the bourgeois in him--in spite of
>himself.

Obviously. I frequently feel the need to act like a Punjabi landlord, as my
grandfather was. After I shake down a few kids for their lunch money, the
feeling passes. Seriously, you could say the same of anyone -- even Lenin.
In Orwell's case, he didn't try to hide how bourgeois he was -- nor how
emphatically he was on the side of the proletariat.

>   I don't know what Rahul is saying about the "inbred
>resistance to absolutism." You have that, or course, and
>you also have the tradition of sucking up to the monarchy.

Precisely, my dear fellow. It is a distaste for absolutism far more than a
drive for equality. "A place for every man and every man in his place" is a
quintessentially British idea, but, along with that, every place, no matter
how low, carries certain rights, and every place, no matter how high, has
certain restrictions. This has been the case since the signing of the Magna
Carta. The British suck up to the monarchy far more than the French would
ever have dreamed of, but the French people elected themselves a
dictator-for-life, then made him an emperor, something the English would
never have done. There's a reason that they're the people who first
shattered the divine right of kings, but did it in such a profoundly boring
manner.

>I don't think that Rahul has put his finger on the key
>characteristics of the historical British personality,
>but I believe that he could probably do so, given a bit
>more reflection on the topic.

I wasn't even trying. Everything I said was cribbed from Orwell and E.P.
Thompson. I have actually reflected on the topic a fair amount, having a
clear reason to think about the British, but I haven't divulged the results
as yet. I really hate having to admire them for anything, so I am always
happy to see anything by Hugh Rodwell.

Rahul




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