"artless fiction"
Photo Credit: Bianca Dorso

Over breakfast at IHOP with Adrienne, we discuss the phenomenon of Jersey Shore.  What is the appeal?  We decide that somehow it is related to the on-going class war in America.  The educated elite middle/upper-middle class viewer fascinated by the pointless madcap antics of the lower classes.  Except there is no middle class anymore and college degrees aren't paying off with good jobs either so what's so elite about that?  Then we wonder about the story arc.  All  reality shows have one created by  the producers, reality transformed into fiction.  Snooki the outcast gets punched by this guy so the group rallies round her because even the lower classes have a moral code they live by, which in this case is you never punch a girl, no matter how short she is.  Is that it?   

Finished The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  Decline of the English Country House told from the point of view of the son of one of the housemaids.  And a ghost story.  But more than that.  Have now begun Up and Down Stairs, The History of the Country House Servant (London: John Murray, 2009) by Jeremy Musson.
 
"You seem awfully interested in the lower classes," says my friend H disparagingly.  I wonder.  As opposed to what?  I mean, I know we aren't supposed to have a servant class anymore, but that just means we don't give them a place to live and pay them cash under the table, right?

And besides, what's so comforting about thinking you're middle class?  What does that even mean? I ask Adrienne.  Oh, it's code, she explains.  It's old-fashioned code for "At least I'm white."  Which is harder to get a buzz from when the President isn't.  Hence the feeling lost and threatened.  White trash when white doesn't count is -- well, not all that much to be proud of, is it?  No wonder folks are unhappy.

But this is the crazy part -- they're mad at the Educated Elite and the Middle Class who don't even really exist and have no power!  Martha Coakley doesn't have an accent and Scott Brown sounds like one of those guys in Good Will Hunting, and he drives a truck!  Up with truck-driving guy, down with boring educated woman.  Talk about a class war, except it makes no sense.  Except, okay, he's kind of hot and she actually was pretty boring, but still, really?  Meanwhile, the stars of Jersey Shore are happy and celebrities.  Where's your happiness, Miss Snarky Independent Brown Grad?  Why aren't you a celebrity, Mr. Out-of-Work Liberal Arts Degree?   

The point is, maybe it is all fiction, all of it, and so let's look at the fiction.  Let us, says Jeremy Musson of Up and Down Stairs, look at the struggles of the servant class in literature: 

Moll Flanders
Pamela
HumphreyClinker
The Adventures of Joseph Andrews
Vantiy Fair
Jane Eyre
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Remains of the Day

And then of course there's always Jeeves (Wodehouse) or Mrs.Danvers (du Maurier).  Maybe we could get some tips from them on how to handle the present situation. (Word of Advice: go with the butler who looks like Stephen Fry, not the mean scary lady telling you to jump).  Maybe we could get some ideas on how to win this war.