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Tight Times and Poverty
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 11:15:14 -0400
Very interesting discussion. The historical catalogue of children's stories do tend to over-represent middle class (and by middle class I am referring not to those of a certain income but those of certain values, not easily catalogued but usually easily recognized) families because that was both the source and audience and until recently it was a small audience. Even today, who reads and particularly who reads enthusiastically (more than a couple of books a month)? It is heavily skewed towards members of the middle class and above. Same with writing. Who writes stories? Heavily skewed towards members of the middle class and above.
In our current abundance of prosperity (even in our present comparative economic difficulties) we tend to completely neglect how recent has been that prosperity and what actual life was like back then. You can pick your statistics but they all tell the same story, everybody is enormously better off today than even fifty years ago much less a hundred. In 1900 the average life span in the US was 48 (today 78). The illiteracy rate among non-white non-native born citizens was 30% or so. Mortgages were burned when paid off because it was indeed a magnificent celebration: mortgages were of short duration (7 years) and a single missed payment could result in foreclosure and economic ruin. Marriages on average ended after twelve years because of death, not divorce.
Physical and financial hardship was much more prevalent and comprehensive in children's stories, even for the middle class. Middle class status was much more precarious. Think of the Cratchits in Dickens' Christmas Carol. Father works in an office in a profession and yet they are on the very verge of poverty. How about the Marshes in Little Women. Father is an educated minister and while they are definitely middle class, their margin of comfort is tight and precarious. Then there is mother in The Railroad Children, desperately scribbling away to make ends meet. And that, I think is the unrecognized story. Who thinks of Tom Sawyer as an orphan taken in by his widowed aunt trying to make ends meet. Up until fifty or seventy years or so ago, the middle class was small, careful and precarious. Middle class behaviors and values did not guaranty middle class incomes (Atticus in to Kill a Mockingbird is often paid in kind not cash). If you wanted to write about the poor in a way that appealed to the reading (middle
class) public, you had a lot of credible middle class stories set in poverty or hardship.
Today the poorest quintile in America, the bottom 20%, have an income and durable goods ownership (cars, houses, TVs, computers, etc) which is the same as middle quintile Europeans and the same as that of middle quintile Americans in 1970. We've come a long way. We don't any longer have many of the old style concept of the "deserving poor", people who do the right things but are poor anyway (the Cratchits). Virtually everyone who practices even some modicum of what would be recognized as middle class values is comfortable or prosperous. For example, the poverty rate for those who have simply graduated high school and are married and have stayed married (middle class values of education and marriage) is less than 2%
I think what has happened is that if we are to tell stories based on poverty and enduring hardship, we can't easily tell stories of untainted poverty. Everyone is rich in material things. It used to be that you could tell stories of poverty and hardship that spoke to middle class values and people. If we are going to set stories in environments of true poverty today, we are now telling stories that entail pretty horrific levels of dysfunction and moral ambiguity.
So I think we have in past had many stories whose context might have included hardship and poverty (ex. Little House on the Prairie series, Ann of Green Gables, All-of-a-Kind, etc.) but the story was not about poverty and hardship, it was about aspiration and middle class values and usually had some uplifting resolution. Hardship was just an incidental but credible context. The story spoke to the same values as that of the reading public.
Now, if we write for a middle class audience about poverty and hardship, we are no longer writing about poverty as a context we are writing about poverty as a subject and that is much more challenging.
Poverty as a context has, I think, been common if not quite pervasive. Poverty as a subject is, I think, much more recent. And poverty as a subject is not, I would argue, likely to be pervasive or enduring because it is not central to the values of the reading (middle class) public. I can't think of a children's book in the past twenty years whose focus was on poverty (rather than a context) which has broken into any sustained popular affection. There are some that are commonly assigned reading but are not otherwise chosen to be read.
Charles
Received on Fri 13 May 2011 11:15:14 AM CDT
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 11:15:14 -0400
Very interesting discussion. The historical catalogue of children's stories do tend to over-represent middle class (and by middle class I am referring not to those of a certain income but those of certain values, not easily catalogued but usually easily recognized) families because that was both the source and audience and until recently it was a small audience. Even today, who reads and particularly who reads enthusiastically (more than a couple of books a month)? It is heavily skewed towards members of the middle class and above. Same with writing. Who writes stories? Heavily skewed towards members of the middle class and above.
In our current abundance of prosperity (even in our present comparative economic difficulties) we tend to completely neglect how recent has been that prosperity and what actual life was like back then. You can pick your statistics but they all tell the same story, everybody is enormously better off today than even fifty years ago much less a hundred. In 1900 the average life span in the US was 48 (today 78). The illiteracy rate among non-white non-native born citizens was 30% or so. Mortgages were burned when paid off because it was indeed a magnificent celebration: mortgages were of short duration (7 years) and a single missed payment could result in foreclosure and economic ruin. Marriages on average ended after twelve years because of death, not divorce.
Physical and financial hardship was much more prevalent and comprehensive in children's stories, even for the middle class. Middle class status was much more precarious. Think of the Cratchits in Dickens' Christmas Carol. Father works in an office in a profession and yet they are on the very verge of poverty. How about the Marshes in Little Women. Father is an educated minister and while they are definitely middle class, their margin of comfort is tight and precarious. Then there is mother in The Railroad Children, desperately scribbling away to make ends meet. And that, I think is the unrecognized story. Who thinks of Tom Sawyer as an orphan taken in by his widowed aunt trying to make ends meet. Up until fifty or seventy years or so ago, the middle class was small, careful and precarious. Middle class behaviors and values did not guaranty middle class incomes (Atticus in to Kill a Mockingbird is often paid in kind not cash). If you wanted to write about the poor in a way that appealed to the reading (middle
class) public, you had a lot of credible middle class stories set in poverty or hardship.
Today the poorest quintile in America, the bottom 20%, have an income and durable goods ownership (cars, houses, TVs, computers, etc) which is the same as middle quintile Europeans and the same as that of middle quintile Americans in 1970. We've come a long way. We don't any longer have many of the old style concept of the "deserving poor", people who do the right things but are poor anyway (the Cratchits). Virtually everyone who practices even some modicum of what would be recognized as middle class values is comfortable or prosperous. For example, the poverty rate for those who have simply graduated high school and are married and have stayed married (middle class values of education and marriage) is less than 2%
I think what has happened is that if we are to tell stories based on poverty and enduring hardship, we can't easily tell stories of untainted poverty. Everyone is rich in material things. It used to be that you could tell stories of poverty and hardship that spoke to middle class values and people. If we are going to set stories in environments of true poverty today, we are now telling stories that entail pretty horrific levels of dysfunction and moral ambiguity.
So I think we have in past had many stories whose context might have included hardship and poverty (ex. Little House on the Prairie series, Ann of Green Gables, All-of-a-Kind, etc.) but the story was not about poverty and hardship, it was about aspiration and middle class values and usually had some uplifting resolution. Hardship was just an incidental but credible context. The story spoke to the same values as that of the reading public.
Now, if we write for a middle class audience about poverty and hardship, we are no longer writing about poverty as a context we are writing about poverty as a subject and that is much more challenging.
Poverty as a context has, I think, been common if not quite pervasive. Poverty as a subject is, I think, much more recent. And poverty as a subject is not, I would argue, likely to be pervasive or enduring because it is not central to the values of the reading (middle class) public. I can't think of a children's book in the past twenty years whose focus was on poverty (rather than a context) which has broken into any sustained popular affection. There are some that are commonly assigned reading but are not otherwise chosen to be read.
Charles
Received on Fri 13 May 2011 11:15:14 AM CDT
