The effectiveness of the invented symbolical grotesque as an argumentative device appears with particular clarity in Matthew Arnold's mocking division of the English into three groups or classes: Barbarian, Philistine, and Populace. In presenting his set of analogies, all of which are closely related to satiric definitions and descriptions, Arnold claims that the British aristocracy is most accurately designated as the Barbarians.
The Barbarians, to whom we all owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed our worn-out Europe, had, as is well known, eminent merits; and in this country, where we are for the most part sprung from the Barbarians, we have never had the prejudice against them which prevails among the races of Latin origin. The Barbarians brought with them that staunch individualism, as the modem phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central idea of English life, and of which we have, at any rate, a very rich supply.... The care of the Barbarians for the body, and for all manly exercises; the vigour, good looks, and fine complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their families by these means, — all this may be observed still in our aristocratic class. (5.140-41)
Unfortunately, whatever culture the Barbarians possessed was largely external and "consisted principally in outward gifts and graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess" (5.141). Even their inward gifts, claims Arnold, were chiefly those that ,' come nearest to outward ones — courage, a high spirit, and self-confidence. Having, like Carlyle, juxtaposed Past and Present, Arnold then points out the basic similarities of the aristocratic classes then and now, for, he claims, even making "allowances for the difference of the times, surely we can observe precisely the same thing now in our aristocratic class. In general its culture is exterior chiefly; all the exterior graces and accomplishments, and the more external of the inward virtues, seem to be principally its portion" (5.141).
Against the Barbarians, who stand for the aristocracy, Arnold places the Philistines, a term that for him incorporates both the middle and the working classes. As he explains, that part of the working classes
which gives all its energies to organising itself, through trades' unions and other means, so as to constitute, first, a great working-class power independent of the middle and aristocratic classes, and then, by dint of numbers, give the law to them and itself reign absolutely, — this lively and promising part must also, according to by our definition, go with the Philistines; because it is its class and its class instinct which it seeks to affirm — its ordinary self, not its best self; and it is a machinery, an industrial machinery, and power and pre-eminence and other external goods, which fill its thoughts, and not an inward perfection. (5.142-43)
Only that "raw and half-developed" part of the working classes that has long lain submerged in "poverty and squalor" (5.143) falls within the category designated as the Populace, and Arnold concentrates upon the first two groups.'
As Super points out in his annotations to Culture and Anarchy, Arnold first describes the English aristocracy as Barbarians in the closing section of the preface to Essays in Criticism, which quotes a line from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage that comments on the aristocracy at Oxford: "There are our young barbarians, all at play!" (3.290) The same passage mentions the Philistines, a mocking term Arnold borrowed from the German romantics and discussed at length in "Heinrich Heine" (3.111-13). The point here of course is not that Arnold drew upon others for his famous categories but that he made of them wonderfully effective satiric and analytic tools that propel his polemic against complacency and its corollary neglect of culture and true self-development. Arnold explained to his mother that "the merit of terms of this sort is that they fix in people's minds the things to which they refer" (5.415). Like Carlyle, whose attack upon middle-class complacency with the words gig and gigamanty Arnold mentions in "Heinrich Heine," he creates idiosyncratic terms that function as grotesque satirical emblems and then organizes his argument in terms of them.
Last modified 19 March 2008