Prologue
With the countdown of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games in London, England will attract the attention of the whole world this summer. In the eyes of a foreigner, England is featured by a cloudy sky, foggy towns, and red phone booths. The British mentality is notorious for its snobbery, hypocrisy, xenophobia and insularity. From the perspective of a perspicacious writer, George Orwell, we see something subtle and intriguing about the British culture. Let me summarize what Orwell highlights as the distinctive British flavor in the article, “England Your England”:
According to Orwell, national characteristics are continuous and persisting, stretching into the future and past. They have entered into the soul of the people. Despite the changing of the world, national characteristics can change only in certain directions because certain alternatives are possible and others are not, like a turnip seed never growing into a parsnip. For the British, their characteristics include the following:
First of all, the lack of artistic ability. The British are not as musical as the Germans or Italians; paintings and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France.
Second comes their horror of abstract thought. They feel no need for any philosophy or systematic “world-view.” Nor is this because they are practical, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency.
What easily escapes the public awareness is their addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations. The privateness of English life is highlighted by their love of flowers.
Despite the numerous churches in London, the common people are without definite religious belief for centuries; they are not puritanical at all. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws which are designed to interfere with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen.
Here comes the most stunning aspect about the English civilization—the literature. British literature, like other literatures, is full of battle-poems, but the kinds that win popularity are always the tales of disasters and retreats! Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its own language-group. Except for Shakespeare, the best English poets are barely known in Europe, even as names.
Despite the class hierarchy in society, the English feel and act in unison in moments of extreme crisis. The differences between north and south England fade away when two Britons are confronted by a European. The working class even considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly. During the war time, patriotism runs like a connecting thread through all classes, all of whom are just like a herd of cattle facing a wolf.
The most notable feature of British society is its class distinction. Snobbery and privilege permeate the whole society. Orwell compared it to a “stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons.” It has rich relations who have to be know-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon. And there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of the irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. In a word, the country during the mid twentieth century is the one with wrong members in control!
The rapidly technological progress in the nineteenth century causes the debunking of class distinctions. Aristocracy is replaced by middle-class, who, in turn, spread their ideas and habits among the working class. After 1832, the old land-owning aristocracy steadily lost power, but instead of disappearing or becoming a fossil they simply intermarried with the middle class, like merchants and manufacturers, and soon turned them into accurate copies of themselves. With the technical advances, certain goods are held in common. Although the class consciousness remains, the real differences diminish. People of indeterminate social class appear after WW1.
British culture is intriguing in its compromises of illusion/reality, democracy/privilege, humbug/decency. Such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions but they are very powerful illusions. Even hypocrisy is a powerful safeguard against evil. Here comes Orwell’s most enlightening remark: The illusion can become a half-truth; a mask can alter the expressions of a face. The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays there, corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. Take, for example, the English electoral system. Although it is manipulated in the interest of the moneyed class, it cannot become completely corrupt as long as the illusion of democracy and justice persist.
England will still be England, as Orwell concludes. Like all living things, it may change out of recognition but still, it is the same one with its gentleness, hypocrisy, and reverence for law, plus the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture.
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