Middle-class Ways Research Articles

Cultural patterns in nonverbal collaboration between pairs of Indigenous children and pairs of urban middle-class children in México

This study examines cultural patterns in nonverbal collaboration between pairs of Mexican children with varying familiarity with Indigenous ways of Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) and school-like middle-class ways of learning. Two-hundred-fourteen 8 to10 year old Mexican children from either an Indigenous town or an urban middle-class community in a nearby city played Chinese checkers in same-gendered pairs against another team (90 girls and 124 boys). The pairs were “not allowed” to talk or risk having their pieces moved backwards. Coders identified how children worked together and communicated in 5-s segments. Results indicate Indigenous children from families that were likely familiar with LOPI more commonly engaged in collaboration where they worked together seamlessly relying heavily on joint activity. The urban middle-class children whose families indicated no recent Indigenous history were more likely to collaborate less fluidly with large movements and actions seemingly intended to draw attention.

Unmuted: The racial politics of silent classrooms

Instructional resources often assume that students learn best when they have access to a quiet environment. This article interrogates silence’s presumed objectivity and innocuousness as the sonic backdrop for schooling. I argue that norms and expectations around silence in schools in the United States (US) inscribe a sonic color line. Such standards codify white, middle-class ways of sounding as an indicator of rationality. Simultaneously, they construct other ways of being sonically, particularly those traditionally associated with Black cultural norms, as generally unfit for school. The sanctioning of silent comportment in schools likely affects the academic achievement and sense of belonging of students whose sonic cultures differ from the schools’. I illustrate my argument with examples from classroom management resources published between 2001 and 2021. While silence’s role in constructing raced, gendered, and classed subjectivities prevails across school subjects, I focus specifically on materials for music educators. This school subject emphasizes sound production and reception, which makes its resources particularly explicit about sound management. I conducted a close reading of the materials informed by Foucault’s (1980, 1978/1991) approach to the analysis of discourses, paying close attention to how silence-related norms and expectations shape students’ academic and ontological horizons. By mapping out silence’s role in producing a racial color line, this article underscores the central role that anti-Blackness continues to play in US schools nearly 70 years after school segregation was ruled unconstitutional.

Revisiting the Mirzanama: Class Consciousness and the Mughal Middle Classes

Drawing on earlier scholarship that argues for the existence of the middle classes in the Mughal Indian society, this article aims to render their sociocultural history more visible through a re-examination of the Mirzanama. The text, often associated with the elite, on the contrary, addresses the middling petty officialdom, advising them on micro-aspects of their sociocultural lives such as the etiquette of dining. Read imaginatively, the advisory reveals class consciousness—in terms of being distinct from both the nobility and the common populace—to be an important factor defining the middle-class way of life. Significantly, a micro-historical reflection, macro-historically helps us challenge the recently created dichotomy, in historical scholarship, between the elite and the non-elite, by reasserting the presence of sufficiently conscious middle strata.

Making “Womenly Women” or “Servants of Civilization”

This article investigates how white educators used American education in an effort to socially engineer Hawaiian acceptance of U.S. control over the islands. Examining school reports, journal articles, and official correspondence from the Kamehameha School for Girls, I explore the various strategies principal Ida M. Pope used to promote white middle-class ways of homemaking and mothering, in an effort to undermine her Native Hawaiian students’ Indigenous identities and convert them into docile Hawaiian Americans. Despite Pope’s language of female empowerment, she harbored racist attitudes toward Native Hawaiians and produced an institutional climate hostile to Indigenous identity. This article builds on previous work on white women’s maternalism in Native American boarding schools to highlight how themes of white feminity, U.S. empire, and settler colonialism manifested at the Kamehameha School for Girls. More broadly, it reveals the role of white women in Hawai‘i as agents of colonial control who actively labored toward normalizing U.S. occupation and empire.

The Emerging Critical Pedagogies of Dance Educators in an Urban STEAM After-School Program for Black Girls

The preparation of urban educators has gained widespread attention across education policy, research, and practice. As US urban cities have become more diverse, the teacher workforce has not kept up, and the racial/ethnic demographics of students and teachers are disproportionately incongruent. In order to eradicate an education landscape that perpetuates white, middle-class ways of knowing and being, often at the expense of the cultural practices and cultural wealth of historically marginalized students of color, urban teacher education must be centered toward justice and rooted in critical pedagogies. The literature, albeit bleak, reveals that these perspectives must also be applied to urban dance education. Dance education programs have been significantly eliminated from urban schools over time, and although dance has historical roots in African and African diasporic cultures, dance education continues to be Eurocentric. This phenomenological case study examines the emerging critical pedagogies of undergraduate dance majors and minors who served as dance teachers in an urban Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) after-school program for 7-12-year-old Black girls. Findings reveal that (a) navigating race, place, and space; (b) mentorship and practice; and (c) critical reflection and self-efficacy were critical components of the urban dance educators’ emerging critical pedagogies. Implications for urban dance education and the broader field of urban education are provided.

Kirjandus kui vastupanu Nõukogude Eestis Teise maailmasõja järgsel perioodil

Kirjandus kui vastupanu Nõukogude Eestis Teise maailmasõja järgsel perioodil

‘This is a beautiful school.’ ‘This school is useless!!’ Explaining disengagement in a Greek vocational school through the examination of teacher ideologies

This multi-method case study of a Greek vocational school explored teachers’ culture (including beliefs about education, teachers’ role, and students’ nature) using the concept of pupil control ideology to explain problems of disengagement and low morale among staff and students, as well as tensions in relationships. A prominent custodial culture was identified in the school using a functional/apolitical pedagogy to transmit ‘legitimate’ knowledge to students whose working-class background did not produce desired outcomes. This generated deficit views of students, teachers’ sympathy, and a seemingly caring school ethos which was, nevertheless, oppressive. Students’ failings were naturalised and vocational education misinterpreted as merely a streaming device in a system honouring academic achievement and middle-class ways. Teachers were blind to these cultural subtleties, believing they acted ‘rationally’ and altruistically. A humanistic subculture emphasising student empowerment and social transformation consisted of a minority of teachers and was rather marginalised. This disallowed meaningful dialogue and the identification of an alternative rationale for the sector, generating strong feelings of futility. Positive change in this school necessitated the deconstruction and (subsequent) reconstruction of custodial teachers’ world views as embedded in their practice.

The Hungarian joke and its environs

Hungarian humour went through significant changes in the 20th century. Though the urban middle-class way of living and culture had developed by the early 20th century, they had to coexist all over the country as well as in ethnic Hungarian territories abroad with the traditions of rural culture and folklore until the middle of the century (and, in locked-up areas, till the end of the century). Consequently, Hungarian humour is made up of two important layers of folklore: popular funny stories that have been developing among the peasantry for centuries, and jokes, a genre that emerged from urban oral culture in the last third of the 20th century. The dualism of folk-based and urban culture has been a decisive feature of Hungarian culture during the entire 20th century. Thus the question arises: more than a hundred years later, are there still any fundamental differences between the two types of humour in terms of their ways of thinking or their subject matter, or can we regard Hungarian humour as a unity? In this paper, we compare the thematic categories of popular and urban humour based on the analysis of two large collections. Next, we examine the popularity of major joke categories in Internet sources. Finally, we offer a brief introduction to the contemporary stock of Hungarian jokes by thematic groups.

Social Class Culture Cycles: How Three Gateway Contexts Shape Selves and Fuel Inequality

America's unprecedented levels of inequality have far-reaching negative consequences for society as a whole. Although differential access to resources contributes to inequality, the current review illuminates how ongoing participation in different social class contexts also gives rise to culture-specific selves and patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. We integrate a growing body of interdisciplinary research to reveal how social class culture cycles operate over the course of the lifespan and through critical gateway contexts, including homes, schools, and workplaces. We first document how each of these contexts socializes social class cultural differences. Then, we demonstrate how these gateway institutions, which could provide access to upward social mobility, are structured according to middle-class ways of being a self and thus can fuel and perpetuate inequality. We conclude with a discussion of intervention opportunities that can reduce inequality by taking into account the contextual responsiveness of the self.

A ‘Humanitarian Idea’: Using a Historical Lens to Reflect on Social Justice in Early Childhood Education and Care

The concept of early childhood education and care (ECEC) as ‘social justice’ is contested and complex. In this article, the author calls on a historical perspective to critically reflect on social justice in ECEC. The author does this by exploring the early history of free kindergartens in Sydney, Australia. The author demonstrates, through this example, that the idea of ‘social justice’ has long been at the core of ECEC work in Australia. The work of the pioneers of early childhood education in Australia has tended to be minimised as little more than middle-class ‘do-gooding’ that perpetuated middle-class ways of knowing. Revisiting this history, the author argues that these early advocates, operating within the confines of their time, constructed free kindergartens as contributing to social justice. Understanding of present constructions of ECEC has much to gain from revisiting and critiquing this early history. A critical and respectful understanding of the history of ECEC enables contemporary advocates to place themselves within a long, hard-fought, though sometimes misguided and often controversial, tradition.

Death, working-class culture and social distinction

Following Howarth (2007), this paper examines the relationship between class culture and social distinction in the empirical area of death and dying. For Howarth (2007), the sociological neglect of the end-of-life cultural practices of working-class people carries the danger ‘of privileging middle-class agendas for change, … [t]here is an urgent need for further studies … and a refinement of existing research to draw out social class distinctions’ (p. 433). Drawing on Howarth (2007), and Bourdieu (1984), it is argued below that the connection between death and class reflects and helps to reproduce class-based identities, advantages and conflicts. Whilst class culture can be a supportive resource for working-class people, for example, in ways which reflect solidarity, more typically the classed nature of death brings acute suffering. Relatedly, it is proposed that stereotypes of declining respectability are reflected in some middle-class conceptions of working-class practices and identity connected to death. Such thinking socially positions working-class tastes as objects of disgust, and working-class people as disgusting subjects. It is concluded that, whilst Howarth’s call is much warranted, the debate also needs to problematise the normalisation of middle-class ways to die and grieve.

Are “the Poor” Part of the Working Class or in a Class by Themselves?

Drawing on the work of political economist Michael Zweig and sociologist Michele Lamont, as well as other sociological work on working-class life, this reflective essay argues for eliminating “the poor” as a social category but explains why that will be difficult due to both working-class and middle-class ways of construing classes in the United States.

John Cheever's Shady Hill, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Suburbs

JOHN CHEEVER'S SHADY HILL, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE SUBURBS Keith Wilhite The University of Iowa There's been too much criticism of the middle-class way of life. Life can be as good and rich there as anyplace else. I am not out to be a social critic, however, nor a defender of suburbia. It goes without saying that the people in my stories and the things that happen to them could take place anywhere. —John Cheever, Saturday Review (1958) First published in the July 18, 1964, issue of The New Yorker, "The Swimmer" remains John Cheever's most distinctive short story. Neddy Merrill's famous journey across the swimming pools of affluent suburban homes wends through Sunday afternoon parties where caterers serve the gin ice-cold and everyone confesses they "drank too much" last night.1 Merrill embarks on his cross-country swim from the Westerhazy's pool. Acoustically, the name Westerhazy tunes the reader's ear for a bit of wordplay, the distinctive surname enfolding both Westchester and the haziness of inebriation and memory. As Merrill surveys the suburb "with a cartographer's eye" (Stories, 603), the narrator notes, "The only maps and charts he had to go by were remembered or imaginary but these were clear enough" (Stories, 604). Cheever introduces a dialectic relationship between physical spaces and their representations, and this interplay between the physical and the cartographic, the real and the imagined, ripples through the narrative . As the reader discovers early on, Merrill reads spaces and contexts rather poorly. He acknowledges the falling leaves, the smell of wood smoke in the air, and the early darkness, yet he clings to the idea that it is midsummer. He misinterprets comments about his financial and familial misfortunes, oscillating between denial and repression . The home he returns to in Bullet Park—dark, abandoned, and in disrepair—promises, perhaps, to break the spell: "He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw that the place was empty" (Stories, 612). The structure's physicality disrupts Merrill's imagined cartography . Lashing out against the house, Merrill confronts the divide between conceptual and physical spaces as a voyeur at his own window. 216Keith Wilhite "The Swimmer" typifies the ambiguous position Cheever occupied in relation to the suburbs and the "middle-class way of life" and offers a useful entrée into his "suburban oeuvre." As suggested in the 1958 interview in the Saturday Review marking the publication of TheHousebreakerofShadyHilland OtherStories, Cheever positioned himself somewhere between criticism and defense of suburbia.2 The perfect embodiment of this middle position is the image of Merrill peering in his window, essentially trespassing on his own property. Yet this image and, indeed, Merrill's entire journey also belie the notion that what occurs in a Cheever story could "take place anywhere." While archetypal literary themes may be endlessly portable, the private spaces of suburbia create an equivocal geography peculiar to the human trespasses and the tenuous nature of middle-class life in Cheever's suburban stories. In "The Swimmer," this relationship between trespass and equivocal spaces becomes apparent at the crucial mid-point ofthe story when Merrill's journey is interrupted by a roadway and a public swimming pool. Merrill's cross-country swim makes visible the premium placed on privacy in the physical and social spaces of suburbia, but most of the scholarly commentary on this story tends to downplay the suburban setting in favor of the narrative's allusive and symbolic nature. Scholars have provocatively interpreted the transitional uses of color as an indicator to Merrill's decline; water imagery and the return to the womb; biblical allusions to the Fall of Adam; classical allusions to Odysseus, Narcissus, and the Grail legend; literary parallels with Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare's King Lear, and Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle"; and historical references to Ponce de Leon's failed quest to discover the fountain of youth.3 Each of these readings contributes to our understanding of "The Swimmer," but an overriding attention to intertextuality risks obscuring the very specific relationship within the text between Merrill and...

The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800 to 1861 (review)

Reviewed by: The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800 to 1861 J. William Harris The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800 to 1861. By Jonathan Daniel Wells. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. 237. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $22.50.) Jonathan Daniel Wells has written an important book on an important subject. The antebellum Southern middle class is a group neglected, if not quite ignored, by historians of the South. The South did, Wells shows, have a middle class; significant numbers of Southerners held middle-class occupations, and [End Page 99] they created a network of institutions that supported a middle-class way of life. By the 1850s, he believes, they had developed a consciousness of themselves as distinct from, and to some extent in conflict with, both planters and manual workers. Wells argues that middle-class Southerners were heavily influenced by the larger and better-established middle class of the Northeast. Travel and migration led to personal connections between Northerners and Southerners, and, in small towns as well as cities, Southerners subscribed to periodicals such as Harper's Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book. Furthermore, Southerners recognized and celebrated these intersectional connections and openly admired their Northern counterparts. In Charleston, Richmond, and other places, Southerners joined voluntary societies devoted to benevolent reform and patronized libraries and lyceums. Many middle-class women, notably editors such as Frances Webb Bumpas of Greensboro, North Carolina, "transgressed the blurred boundaries between the supposedly separate spheres and contributed to the economic life of the developing middle class" (111). With their cosmopolitan outlook, middle-class men and women gravitated naturally to the Whig Party and its support for policies such as public education. By the 1850s, Wells claims, middle-class Southerners had self-consciously distinguished themselves from both planters and urban working men. They denounced dueling as a remnant of "a dark and barbarous age" (81) and sharply criticized planters for their resistance to economic diversification. They also set themselves apart from the "mechanic" class. Wells's evidence for this comes primarily from the public reaction to two labor actions: the Norfolk Dry Dock Affair of the early 1830s, which Wells mischaracterizes as a "strike" (183), and a strike against Richmond's Tredegar Ironworks in 1847. In both cases, white artisans tried, but failed, to prevent employers from hiring skilled slave workers. Unlike these artisans, middle-class Southerners supported slavery unambiguously. Many urban middle-class families owned slaves, and businessmen purchased and hired slaves for their stores and factories. Middle-class Southerners argued that slavery was not incompatible with economic and social progress; on the contrary, by serving to discipline white as well as black workers, slavery could give the South a competitive edge in national markets for manufactures. J. Mills Thornton III, Steven Hahn, and others have argued that rapid Southern economic development in the 1850s led to internal tensions that found an outlet in sectional conflict. Wells adds a distinctive strand to this line of argument with his claim that Northern [End Page 100] middle-class resistance to the "Slave Power" was in part a fearful response to Southern development and to the possibility that slave labor might indeed give Southern manufacturers an unfair advantage. The argument is original and suggestive, though Wells provides little evidence in support—evidence that would have to come from Northern sources. Wells's study is stronger as cultural history than as social history. He pays close attention to theorists of class but little to questions of numbers or precise definitions. He essentially adopts the argument of Stuart Blumin in The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (1989) that the middle class can be largely identified with the families of the urban nonrich in nonmanual occupations, referring at one point to the "commercial and professional class" (xiii), and at another to "storekeepers, clerks, teachers, editors, ministers and their families who tended to reside in the small towns and larger cities" (8). Nor does Wells make full use of relevant quantitative research from historians of the urban South, such as David Goldfield or Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease. There are also questions about whether...

Confidentiality versus public duty

In 1963 I joined a long established practice in London. About half our patients came from the top of the hill, the rest from Inner London; a good mix. In those days we did our own emergencies and had a flourishing domiciliary midwifery practice, so we were welcomed into peoples' homes at all times of the day and night. In addition, I was Medical Officer to an Infant Welfare Clinic and to an Assessment Home; appointments that caused me to realize that my conventional middle class way of life was not necessarily the norm. Now, looking back on my experiences from the tranquillity of retirement I am bothered by doubts. Ought I, ought anyone with the same sort of experience, to have spoken out more openly. If we had would some of the violence we increasingly see in our homes and on our streets have been prevented. Where does confidentiality end and public duty begin? This is, I suggest, a subject for debate.

A PERCEPÇÃO DE FAMÍLIAS DE CLASSE MÉDIA E POPULAR SOBRE PUNIÇÃO NAS PRÁTICAS EDUCATIVAS

As práticas educativas empregadas atualmente na sociedade brasileira enfatizam o valor do diálogo com a criança e a preocupação com o seu bem estar subjetivo. No que se refere às formas dos pais lidarem com o comportamento inadequado dos filhos eles fazem uso geralmente de explicações, porém as punições físicas e verbais ainda são usadas. O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar qual reação os pais dizem ter frente a um comportamento inadequado do filho, o que eles sentem quando punem as crianças e o que seria um sistema ideal de educação no que se refere à punição, considerando diferenças de classes sociais. Para tanto, foram entrevistados 48 pais de alunos, com idade entre sete e 10 anos, sendo 24 de escolas de camada média e 24 de escolas de camada popular. Os resultados mostraram que os pais vindos das duas classes sociais costumam prioritariamente conversar com os filhos frente ao mau comportamento; a maioria dos entrevistados de ambas as camadas sociais diz sentir-se mal quando pune os filhos, mas que punir moderadamente é o ideal. Assim, não se encontrou diferenças significativas entre os dois grupos, podendo-se afirmar que a sociedade brasileira do século XXI procura estabelecer formas de educar mais brandas, pelo menos no plano do discurso, em que punir severamente já não é considerada a primeira alternativa usada para corrigir o filho.

Barbara Kaltz (review)

MLR,96.3,200I 825 butthebulkofthestudy dealswiththeperiodin fourchronological blocks (beginning notin I750, butin I738). Although thishelpsto givea senseof development, italsomakes for a narrative which toooften reads like a catalogue of titles, plot-summaries andcontemporary critical responses, with thesamenames and playsoften recurring. Thereis also an occasionaltendency to become sidetracked bytangential issues. Perhaps this aspect ofthestudy couldhavebeen dealt with more concisely, leaving spacefor a more analytical, in-depth account of thedeveloping approaches to someofthemorepopular and significant works, which might havehelped flesh outtherather baldly factual approach. Thereis, though, a lotofinformation here, andthedetailed bibliography oftranslations and adaptations reveals a vast array ofmaterial that will behelpful tofuture researchers . . lnt]1S area. UNIVERSITY OFWALES, SWANSEA DEREK F.CONNON Jeanne Marae LePrince deBeaumont: Contes etautres ecrits. Ed. byBARBARA KALTZ. Oxford: TheVoltaire Foundation. 2000.xxiii + I92PP. £I4.90;I49F. From a modest Rouennais background, theremarkable Mmede Beaumont shed twohusbands and madeherownwayas a respectable governess and a very successful author. Today sheisknown mainly for her version of'La Belleetlabete', butherhistorical significance liesinhermajorcontribution tofemale education. Following Fenelon andinfluenced bySarahFielding, butgoing farbeyond both, shesetoutina series ofbooksconcrete teaching programmes centred ongroup discussion and (initially at least)Enlightenment ambitions. The conjunction of French andEnglish seems indeed tobethe key toher. Shecombines anincreasingly devout Catholicism, anaristocratic biasandEurope's dominant language with the energetic middle-class ways that shefound inLondon. Herfirst publication (from NancyandtheLuneville court) wasa playful proclamation ofthesuperiority of women. TheEnglish model (shewasinLondon from December I748until I763) underlies hersubstantial periodical andpedagogical output. Botharereflected in herinvariable insistence thatshewishes to form 'le cceurautant que l'esprit'. Education iscentrally moral and,toourtastes, moralizing. Allthis I draw from Barbara Kaltz'svaluable book.Chiefly this bookoffiers selfcontained extracts from a range ofBeaumont's works (excluding hernovels). The feminist Lettre (but notitsmore ambiguously ironic continuation) isfollowed bythe 'Histoire deMolly, Paysanne poete' from Beaumont's eclectic London monthly, the Aouveau Magasin Franfais (I750-I752).From her first pedagogical work, the Education complete:, ouAbrege del'histoire universelle, we aregiven paratexts strongly critical of parents andgovernesses, andaffirming education as a high vocation. 'Belle'and another fairytale aretaken from herMagasin des Enfants, ouDialogues entre une sage Gouvernante et plusieurs deses eleves delapremiere distinction (I756).TheMagasin des enfants becamea hugeEuropean success, translated overthenext fifty years intotwelve languages. From theensuing Magasin des adolescentes (I760)wearegiven a range of material anddiscussion: MissFrivole's sentimental conversion tothelawandlove ofher father; a contemporary taleinwhich a wife's innocent secrecy hasfatal results (the moral being that wives should notfib, notthat menshould notkill); Cartesian physiology; stories from ancient history and theOld Testament; a verywellinformed account ofCanada(anawkward topic atthat moment), comparing native andEuropean customs. Thework's declared aimistoform 'uneepouseaimable, unemere tendre' (p. I22).Thisgendered conservatism presumably reflects thefact Revaews 826 that thefictional pupils, therealauthor andtheeighteenth century areallgetting older. Kaltz'spresentation offiers a goodbiographical overview, andseventy pagesof introductions (regrettably without running heads todistinguish them). Theprovenanceofthetexts usedishidden inrandom footnotes (for example, 28,IO5,306). Theintroductions canbe surprisingly shaky oncultural history, seeming tothink thatWelemaque was'destine auxgarSons' (p. 33),orthat'ideesgeometriques' are aboutgeometry (p.60; comparep.36). However, theyprovidea wealthof information oncontemporary editions, translations andcritical reception, constitutinga considerable (andongoing) scholarly contribution toourknowledge ofawhole dimension oftheEnlightenment. Thereare alsogoodprimary and secondary bibliographies, illustrations ofseveral title-pages, andan index tothewhole. The presentation isaneducation too. BIRKBECK COLLEGE, LONDON ROBIN HOWELLS ean-acquesRousseau: Imagination, illusions, chimeres. By PAOLA SOSSO. Paris: Champion. I999. 269PP. Thisisanimportant topic. InRousseau thedesire for theideal(love, fictions, the goodpolitical order, original plenitude, 'l'autre monde') iscentral. Inthe period his refusal ofreality and demandfor'ce qui n'estpas' marks theshift from the circumscribed wisdom oftheclassical view totheabsolute aspirations ofRomanticism . Thisbookhowever doesnomore than gesture towards theperiod shift, and makes apoor jobofits explicit topic. Chapter I,'PO1YSemie d'imagination, chimeres, illusions', sketches thefamiliar classical distrust ofimagination (butignores the preceding baroquefascination withillusion), and thenblandly callsthis'la conception traditionnelle' (p. 29)which Rousseau will modify. Subsequent chapters go through Rousseau's writings, mostly work byworkand section bysection. Successively considered are 'L'Origine de l'imagination' (absent in thestateof nature, yet perhaps related to'pitie') (p.45);LaAouvelle Heloise (saidtobe'leroman del'illusion') (p.8I); Emile (saidtorepresent 'despositions totalement diffierentes' (PP.II0,2I9),despite thediscovery within this chapter ofanimportant similarity (PP.I28-3I)); andRousseau's views on theatre (which begins quiteirrelevantly with 'Alltheworld's a stage', andendswith Starobinski's 'fete'). Thereisa more perceptive...

(review)

Reviews 824 movement offree thinking. Itistheir intellectual independence from the prejudices oftheChristian religion that allows them toseedeath as a logical endtothelifecycle that canbe faced inthesamewayas theother events inlife, free from the solemnsuperstitions withwhichreligion surrounds it. This was, of course, inflammatory stuff atthetime ofitspublication, andFranck Salaun's introduction dealswell with theimportance ofthis aspect both for thecontent ofthetext andits success. Deslandes's initial inspiration, ashetells ushimself, camefrom Montaigne, butheisnottheonly influence, andanother strength oftheedition isthedetailed treatment given tosources inthefootnotes. The editor's study ofcontemporary responses tothework is supported byan appendix containing reviews from the jrournal deWrevoux andthe jroarnal litteraire, andthearticle onDeslandes inSabatier deCastres's LesErois Siecles denotre litte'rature. Thewitty writing andclarity ofstyle andexpression maketheReJifexions a joy to read;theselected poemsthatwere appended toitinlater editions aremore pedestrian, although many ofthem have interesting links with theprose work, particularly poignantly inthelast, inwhich thepoetaspires to makethesamegooddeathas hisheroes.One oddity of presentation, which aXects verse quotations intheReflexions as wellas thetoe'sies diverses, isthehabit inpoems with varying line-lengths ofaligning alllinestothe sameleft margin, rather thanfollowing thenormal practice ofindenting shorter lines, a characteristic that makes appreciation ofthe rhythmic subtleties ofthe verse difficult. Thatapart, though, this is a welcome edition ofa text which, with its controversial content, isaninteresting social document, butalsomakes pleasurable . . . . reac mglnlts ownrlg zt. UNIVERSITY OFWALES, SWANSEA DEREK F.CONNON 'DesBeaute's plushardies...': le theatre allemand dansla France de l'Ancien Re'gime (I750-I789). BYFRANSOIS GENTON. (Seriedetudes germaniques, 4) SaintDenis :EditionsSuger. I999. 3s8pp. gsF. The importance oftheinfluence of Diderot's dramatic theories on Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie isreadily acknowledged, as areother eighteenth-century French cultural exports totheGerman-speaking countries. FranSois Genton's study gives a timely reminder that this wasnot, however, quite theone-way traffic that it isoften assumed tobe,andthat MmedeStael's Del'Allemagne, important asitmay havebeen,didnot,infact, bring toan endan erainwhich France wastotally ignorant ofthetheatre ofitsneighbour. Of course, there wereanti-German prejudices, prejudices shared bymany Germans themselves, which Genton sets out atlength atthe beginning ofthis study: itwastoocoldinthe north toproduce great art; the political divisions oftheGerman peoples meant that there wasnocentre to encourage artistic production inthewaythatParisdidfortheFrench, and,of course, thelanguage wasbarbaric. The subsequent chapters showthegrowing interest ofthe French for German theatre, even ifthe French influence inGermany remained strong enough for French adaptations ofGerman works tofind their way backtotheir native land.Inmuch the same way aswith English theatre inFrance at this period, faithful translations ofplays areconfined topublished editions, while it isGallicized adaptations, inwhich theoriginal isoften barely recognizable, that find their wayontothepublicstage, although Lessing's Mtif SaraSampson was performed privately. The sheerscaleofactivity revealed bythisstudy is most impressive: theanthologies ofGerman theatre that appeared during the period are examined indetail, as arejournals that discuss German artandculture. Genton provides a chapter ontranslation andanother onchildren's literature andthe drame, MLR,96.3,200I 825 butthebulkofthestudy dealswiththeperiodin fourchronological blocks (beginning notin I750, butin I738). Although thishelpsto givea senseof development, italsomakes for a narrative which toooften reads like a catalogue of titles, plot-summaries andcontemporary critical responses, with thesamenames and playsoften recurring. Thereis also an occasionaltendency to become sidetracked bytangential issues. Perhaps this aspect ofthestudy couldhavebeen dealt with more concisely, leaving spacefor a more analytical, in-depth account of thedeveloping approaches to someofthemorepopular and significant works, which might havehelped flesh outtherather baldly factual approach. Thereis, though, a lotofinformation here, andthedetailed bibliography oftranslations and adaptations reveals a vast array ofmaterial that will behelpful tofuture researchers . . lnt]1S area. UNIVERSITY OFWALES, SWANSEA DEREK F.CONNON Jeanne Marae LePrince deBeaumont: Contes etautres ecrits. Ed. byBARBARA KALTZ. Oxford: TheVoltaire Foundation. 2000.xxiii + I92PP. £I4.90;I49F. From a modest Rouennais background, theremarkable Mmede Beaumont shed twohusbands and madeherownwayas a respectable governess and a very successful author. Today sheisknown mainly for her version of'La Belleetlabete', butherhistorical significance liesinhermajorcontribution tofemale education. Following Fenelon andinfluenced bySarahFielding, butgoing farbeyond both, shesetoutina series ofbooksconcrete teaching programmes centred ongroup discussion and (initially at least)Enlightenment ambitions. The conjunction of French andEnglish seems indeed tobethe key toher. Shecombines anincreasingly devout Catholicism, anaristocratic biasandEurope's dominant language with the energetic middle-class ways that shefound inLondon. Herfirst publication (from NancyandtheLuneville court) wasa playful proclamation ofthesuperiority of women. TheEnglish model (shewasinLondon from December I748until I763) underlies hersubstantial periodical andpedagogical output. Botharereflected in herinvariable insistence thatshewishes to form 'le cceurautant que l'esprit'. Education iscentrally moral and...

An "Uncommon Tranquility of Mind": Emotional Self-Control and the Construction of a Middle-Class Identity in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia

Like many eighteenth-century Americans, Philadelphia Quaker Caleb Cresson kept a diary. According the common practice of the age, his diary was meant be read by others and, in Cresson's case, his children were the intended audience. Cresson said that he wanted give his sons some little account of our family, and my passage through the wilderness of this world. The diary, however, was much more than just a personal narrative or a literary representation of the Cresson family tree. Cresson also used this forum provide his children with a clear understanding of their place in the community, reminding them at one point that there was no basis for his sons to apprehend themselves above the middk class1 Throughout this piece of personal literature, Cresson delineated in specific detail the kinds of values, sensibilities, and behaviors that he considered appropriate for those who either aspired to, or defined themselves as part of, the class. In particular, like many of his nineteenth-century middle-class descendants, Cresson extolled the virtues of moderating one's passions as a means of maintaining one's spiritual, physical, and mental health, an ideal that will be the focus of this essay. In recent years, Stuart Blumin has become the most vocal champion of studies that focus on middle Americans as a class unto themselves.3 Relying on data from the city of Philadelphia, Blumin's tendency define class along somewhat arbitrary occupational lines led him the conclusion that a middle-class way of life was the product of antebellum urbanization and industrialization. It is Blumin's belief, an assumption that is implicit in the work of most scholars of American middle-class formation, that an identifiable class did not emerge in America until the nineteenth-century.4 Caleb Cresson's diary, along with the writings of many other eighteenth-century Philadelphians, challenges that assumption and provides us an entree into a world that deserves our historical attention/

Dividends Are Not Royalties: The SAT and Surplus Value

It has been frequently noted that I.Q. examinations, while professing to measure innate intelligence, are riddled with racial, gender, and class biases. Thus a low-income, inner-city youth, confronting a seemingly innocuous phrase like "behind the sofa" on an I.Q. test, may find it unfathomable, not realizing that it is just a middle-class way of saying "in back of the couch."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.