Bourgeois Attitudes

In the early part of his career, Gilbert wrote regularly for the comic paper Fun. One of his regular pseudonyms was The Comic Physiognomist (the C.P.). In the issue for 9 March 1867 he wrote in one of these columns:

"Man was sent into the world to contend with man, and to get the advantage of him in every possible way. Whenever the C.P. happens to see a human being in the act of assisting, directly or indirectly, another human being, he pictures to himself a foot-race in which the candidates are constantly giving place to each other from motives of sheer politeness. The great object of life is to be first at the winning-post, and so that a man attains that end, and yet goes conscientiously over the whole course, it matters nothing how many of his fellow candidates he hustles on the way."

Of course Gilbert was being funny. But he was also, I am almost sure, being quite serious. This is how Gilbert saw life. He did not, I believe, want to see it this way; he was by nature a dreamy and withdrawn character, much the happiest in the illusory world of the theatre. But he learned as a teenager that not to keep your eye firmly on the main chance was to lose that chance and was to become a failure. And Gilbert learned his lesson.

His 1877 play Engaged is a bitter exposition of this view of life, in which everyone is motivated entirely by selfish and monetary motives. It is so keenly meant and so real that it is the funniest thing he ever wrote. It is a vision of Victorian society both as it saw itself--as unfailingly genteel--and as it was--unfailingly brutal.

Now here's a quotation from the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value.... In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.... The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."

My attention was drawn to this passage recently and it made me gasp. It is a complete explanation of Gilbert's attitudes to society and to the aristocracy (whom he despised). He was a Bourgeois in the sense meant by the Communists. It may be worth while to add that the Communist Manifesto praised the Bourgeoisie for these attitudes.