Victorian England: The Emergence of Earnest's Middle Class

from Dramaturg Kelli Marino

Power. Life Style. Wealth. Living Conditions. Religion. Education. Culture.

In a period distinguished by etiquette and social customs, Oscar Wilde wrote his masterful The Importance of Being Earnest. Playing upon the rigid strictures of Victorian classes, Wilde’s Earnest exposes the superficiality of Victorian society, making fun of its people and their customs. He reveals the hypocrisy of the leisured classes, especially scrutinizing those who shunned him.

The Victorian Era (1837-1901) saw the mercantile blossoming of the British Empire. England’s consequent wealth and population boom (a near doubling) precipitated changes within its class system. Class was the chief societal divisor. In a literal sense, London’s wealthy lived on the West End or perhaps in the suburbs, and its working classes lived on the proletarian East End. It is estimated that the aristocracy and the upper classes accounted for two percent of the population, while the working classes accounted for 79%. The remaining 19% was a rather amorphous “middle class” (a term that appeared with increasing frequency), newly invigorated by enterprises associated with the empire’s growth and occupying a less defined space within the English social body. The activities of that middle class, therefore, revolved around self-definition in an attempt to clarify where exactly one fit into the society, domestically and professionally. Because self-definition often involved establishing who one is not, this middle-class surge resulted in manufactured social clashes and the urge to stubbornly display the life that was available to us and not to them.

Love it or hate it, this middle class has been cast as the heart of Victorian society. In the middle class, one can find the full spectrum of dominant social movements. It pushed for reforming the class system (out of disdain either for the depraved aristocracy or the depraved proletariat) as well as enshrining the prestige of their own class. In its ambition to thrive, it created more opportunities for itself in work, ornamented its surroundings with parks, facilities for mental enhancement, and clubs for leisure activities.

The middle class contained a gradation of prosperity within itself. The upper-middle class (the group of Lady Bracknell, Algernon, and Jack) consisted of industrialists, lawyers, doctors, clergy, headmasters, and some theater managers/owners (Arthur Sullivan and William Schwenk Gilbert made fortunes from their shows and received knighthoods). Many members of this class bought their way into their positions through memberships to clubs, land ownership and political affiliations.

As a member of the upper-middle class, much of one’s activity followed from the desire to elevate oneself as high as possible and to establish a social network that disallowed the entry of the lesser middle-class peoples. Social lists like Who’s Who (first published in 1849) and Burkes Landed Gentry (first published in 1836) informed the social elite of whom it was important to identify and associate.

This elitism and emphasis on social strictures has become especially associated with England’s upper-middle class women (perhaps in no small part because of Earnest’s and more particularly Bracknell’s popularity). Strict guidelines from women of manners like Mrs. Humphry and Lady Collin Campbell dictated the moral etiquette of the Victorian Age. Women took very seriously, the art of being a proper lady, playing the part of the Victorian woman and helping those around her adhere to the guidelines that she, and the etiquette journals, deemed appropriate.

Maintaining the supposedly “determined order”—which was actually being fashioned and re-fashioned as time went on—fueled England’s upper-middle class to perform at its highest caliber. This group, whose lifestyle and reputations were constantly on display, was forced to conceal their private lives (if they had one) in hopes that there might be no consequences. For Wilde, whose private life, once made public, caused him great grief, Earnest was a way to express his frustration with the people of his class, safely and publicly. Earnest, then, attacks—both lovingly and viciously—the obsession with the public presentation of the self that formed the core of middle-class Victorian England.

Share your thoughts on Night and Day

Our 2010 / 2011 Season is underway with Night and Day, the inaugural play that began the company 14 seasons ago.

We've already heard that "this multifaceted drama poses questions that easily might be asked at any point in the current 24/7 news cycle" (Chicago Sun-Times) and that the "production is not only shrewdly timed but very adroit, smart and accomplished." (Chicago Tribune)


Now we wanted to give you the opportunity to share your own reviews, questions and comments about this play and production.

Consider these questions raised by the play:
• What risks and responsibilities should journalists to take today?
• How do you choose which news sources are trustworthy?
• Is "fluff" news crucial to keeping papers around or does it undermine the credibility of the "real" stories?

Stoppard's Night and Day features a young journalist caught in a very dangerous and politically charged story. He puts his life at risk, perhaps unknowingly, to get his hands on the best story. Stoppard's work feels as timely as ever in the light of news from Mexico.

As reported by huffingtonpost.com, on 9/17/10:

On September 16th, two newspaper photographers were killed by gunmen in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog group cited in our previous post, said in a recent report that at least 22 Mexican journalists have been killed since December 2006, due to violence by drug cartels.

As reported by CNN.com on 9/20/10:

In response to the murder of their young photographers, the paper for which they worked took bold action, publishing an open letter to the drug cartels operating in their city.

"We do not want more deaths," the newspaper's letter to the cartels said Sunday. "We do not want more injuries or even more intimidation. It is impossible to exercise our role in these conditions. Tell us, then, what do you expect of us as a medium?"

However, the deaths may not have been a result of the photographers' work, but rather a personal matter. A Chihuahua state attorney's office spokesman stated, "His murder is not related to his work as a journalist."

************

Faced with great risk and great responsibility, this paper took bold action, directly addressing very subject of the news which they actively report. What does their appeal say about evolving roles of journalists in today's world? Do we consider the risks these reporters are taking to be crucial to good news?

Journalists on the Front Lines

Stoppard's Night and Day raises complex questions about the need for risk in pursuit of headline news. When an investigative journalist's life is in endangered, is it needless, or crucial to the system of the free press getting the truth back home?

In October, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released an updated version of its guide to reporting on war and in other situations in which journalists’ lives can be threatened. The handbook is called “On Assignment: A Guide to Reporting in Dangerous Situations,” and what follows are excerpts taken from its various sections.

From Part II: Who is at Risk?
"Even all the risks of reporting in a conflict zone comprise only a small part of the risks journalists face worldwide. In fact, for every journalist killed in crossfire, three are targeted for murder. Between 1993 and 2002, CPJ research indicates that 366 journalists have been killed while conducting their work; of that total, 60 journalists, or 16 percent, died in crossfire, while 277 journalists, or 76 percent, were murdered in reprisal for their reporting. The remaining journalists were killed on the job in other situations, such as violent street demonstrations.”

From Part IV: Reporting in Hostile Areas: Minimizing Risks
"In some particularly dangerous conflicts, journalists have hired armed guards. The practice first became widespread among television crews and reporters covering Somalia in the early 1990’s after journalists traveling without armed guards were robbed at gunpoint. Journalists who use armed guards, however, should recognize that they may be jeopardizing their status as neutral observers."

From Part IV: Reporting in Hostile Areas: Battlefield Choices


"From at least the U.S. Civil War through the first two world wars, journalists who accompanied combatants were only able to file reports through military censors."

“Journalists briefly enjoyed more autonomy during the Korean War, although it was not until the Vietnam War that many correspondents were able to file without censorship."

Read more excerpts at

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100972

My Love Affair With Newspapers: an interview with Tom Stoppard

This article uses excerpts of a taped interview with Tom Stoppard conducted by BJR editor Bill Hagerty. British Journalism Review Vol. 16, No. 4, 2005, pages 19-29; http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2005/no4_stoppard.

"Until I was 16 or 17 I had no idea what I wanted to do. Then, when the idea of journalism came up, I thought: 'That's it!' It was instant and final."

Tom Stoppard’s journalism career began when he was just finishing his A-Levels. He took a job as a junior reporter in Bristol and in 1954 took a position at the Western Daily Press covering the local government and city council. "I was in heaven — I loved everything about it."

After writing for the Western Daily Press, Stoppard moved to the Bristol Evening World. But his stay in full time journalism was short lived when he "got turned on by what was happening in the theatre." After six years at the Western Daily Press, Stoppard gave his notice and began writing plays. Continuing to freelance as a journalist to supplement his theatrical income, Stoppard contributed to an Arts page, something he claims turned out to be a "crash-course in culture, because I was writing pieces about things I knew nothing about on Tuesday, but knew enough about by Friday to do 800 magisterial words."

When the Bristol Evening World closed its doors, Stoppard was interviewed by London’s Scene magazine and offered the job as a theatre critic. Using his own name and the pen name William Boot (when there were multiple articles in the magazine), Stoppard continued critiquing theatre while simultaneously writing for stage, screen and radio. During the 1960s and 1970s, Stoppard wrote successes like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1964/1967), Albert’s Bridge (1967), Enter a Free Man (1968), The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Jumpers (1972), and Travesties (1974). His passion for theatre escalated, and his journalism contributions gradually ceased, but his love of newspapers and news did not.

"In the 70s and 80s, when I was involved in dissident stories in Russia and Czechoslovakia, my refrain was that a free press made all the other freedoms possible, and by that I didn't just mean an uncensored press. I meant an untrammeled press.

This is what got me into writing a play about journalism in 1978. I knew I'd have to write one one day. There's a line in Night and Day that people are always quoting or misquoting – 'I'm with you on the free press, it's the newspapers I can't stand,' and because it's the only line people remember, they assume it's my entire view of newspapers. But, as I said, the good stuff is still good. I admire huge amounts of it, mostly people who go out there and file a story. From the very beginning I've admired foreign and war correspondents, all the way back to Sefton Delmer and Noel Barber, all the way forward to Robert Fisk. I don't give a damn about Fisk's so-called bias, I'm a thinking animal, I can deal with it, I can read round him – the point is it takes courage to be out there and get the story."

Today Stoppard reads many newspapers. "I take only three morning papers now, but I'm thinking of going back to four. [...] On Sundays it's The Observer, Times, Telegraph and Independent. I also take the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, New York Review, Spectator, New Statesman, The Week... sometimes I think I'll cancel the whole damned lot. My papers are on my doormat, five floors up, before seven o'clock."

In the end, Stoppard says that "in all the newsprint I've read there isn't a sentence I'd rather have written."

Welcome Chelsea Keenan!

Chelsea Keenan joins Remy Bumppo as the new Director of Marketing and Audience Development after seven seasons with Evanston's Next Theatre Company where she served as the Marketing Director and Artistic Administrator. During her tenure, Next marked six straight seasons of growth, more than doubling attendance for the theater's progressive programming.

She came to Chicago after having completed the two-year Actor Training program at the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts and the BFA degree in Theatre at the University of California Santa Barbara. While in Santa Barbara, she worked as the Box Office Manager for Center Stage Theater, a busy community rental space, and as the Assistant Director for Speaking of Stories, a literary arts organization with theatrical and educational arms. She is a founding member of and serves on the Board of Directors for Sandbox Theatre Project, and is a Company Member with The Building Stage. In addition to her roles in arts administration, Chelsea also contributes to Chicago-area theater as a performer.

Make sure to introduce yourself to Chelsea and welcome her when you speak to her on the phone or see her at the theater this fall! Reach her anytime at ckeenan@remybumppo.org.

Remy Bumppo's Beach Blanket Reading Recommendations

Remy Bumppo wants to know...what are you reading this summer? Here is a look at what company members are currently reading. Tell us your summer reading list and we'll publish the titles in next month's newsletter.

Artistic Associate Linda Gillum is reading Young Kate by Christopher Andersen. Young Kate is an authorized biography of Katharine Hepburn that touches very little on her career and later life and gives more detail about her parent's influence on her and their lives and how her brother's suicide affected the family. I read it in one day."

Artistic Director James Bohnen has two recommendations to get you in the mood for Night and Day, Tom Stoppard's great romantic play about the power and importance of reporters getting the story out. The first is Evelyn Waugh's fascinating novel about reporters following a war in Africa, Scoop. Written in 1937 after Waugh returned from Africa and covering the war in Ethiopia, the novel is about classes and the ways the press can massage the message. Stoppard was inspired to write Night and Day when he re-read it in the middle 1970s., and he uses a famous line from the novel in the play. Keep your ears peeled. The second book is brand new. It is a wonderful first novel by a foreign correspondent named Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists. This book is about an English language paper published in Rome. It is told in individual chapters about various figures on the paper, so you get both a personal story of these vivid or sad or fragile or funny, or all of the above, characters, and a view into various jobs on a paper. If that weren't enough, at the end of each chapter is a two or three page piece that chronologically traces the history of the paper from its founding in the Sixties until 2007. Wonderful story telling and a glimpse into a world few of us have experienced.

Artistic Associate Nick Sandys recommends The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte, a thriller about an ex-photojournalist-turned-artist, haunted by memories and by a mysterious stranger, a novel that raises some very interesting moral dilemmas about journalism's role and responsibilities in the theatre of war, and possibly a good counterpoint to Night and Day which starts our season in the fall.

Marketing Chair and Founding Board President, Nancy McDaniel: ANY of the series of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. even if you are not passionate about Africa (and especially Botswana) as I am the vivid descriptions and engaging stories are sure to win you over. A quick read and wonderful for the pool beach or backyard this summer

Director of Development Kate Oczkowski is reading The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner. Weiner is a former foreign correspondent for NPR who traveled around the globe, visiting countries whose residents claim to be the “happiest” (eg. Iceland, Bhutan, Switzerland) and the “least happy” (eg. Moldova) to try to figure out what’s making them so blissful (or miserable – sorry, Moldovans). It’s a unique sort of travelogue – thought-provoking, inspiring and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

Business and Operations Manager Amy Schultz recommends The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. Riordan, who used Greek mythology to capture our imaginations in his Percy Jackson series, now tackles the myths of Ancient Egypt in The Red Pyramid. This first book in a new series of adventures follows 14-year-old Carter Kane and his 12-year-old sister Sadie as they learn how to harness their “godling” powers in order to save the world from chaos and destruction. An entertaining and educational read for both children and adults!

Subscription Manager Charles Riffenburg highly recommends City of Truth by James Morrow. Morrow is one of the top religious and cultural satire authors in the country, and City of Truth is one of his most touching works, and a delightfully short read. It tells the story of Jack Sperry, who lives in a future dystopian world in which everyone has been conditioned to only speak the truth, regardless of the consequences. Jack's job is to destroy the lies of the old world, incinerating objects like art, novels, magazines, and all works of fiction. When his son is stricken with a fatal disease, he recalls having read about the power of hope and positive thinking in one of the artifacts he has destroyed, and decides to lie to his son by telling him he'll be alright. This leads Jack down a dangerous path, in which he must find the balance between lies and truth, and how an extreme in either direction is a bad thing.