Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism

In Chapter 3, Arnold elaborates his three-part division of the English class system. He claims that each of the three main classes—the aristocracy, the middle class, and the working class—have some characteristic habits and defects, to which most members of each class are prone. Arnold believes that English society is undergoing rapid changes, with the middle class achieving great economic success and political influence and the working class becoming more numerous and rebellious in their demands. Arnold assigns a special category to each of these classes: He divides them into “Philistines,” “Barbarians,” and the “Populace”.

Arnold calls the middle class the “Philistines.” Arnold depicts the English middle class as obsessed primarily with economic success and materialism. Due to their pragmatic and unimaginative natures, the Philistines are unable to appreciate and nurture true culture. Arnold writes that the middle class “not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but [. . .] prefer to them that sort of machinery of business, chapels, [and] tea meetings [. . .] which make up [their] dismal and illiberal life” (265). The middle-class lifestyle is “dismal and illiberal” in spite of its creature comforts because industrialism has left them more preoccupied with money and social respectability than beauty and reason.

Arnold then discusses the aristocracy, whom he labels the “Barbarians.” Arnold is gentler in his assessment of the Barbarians than he is of the Philistines. He acknowledges that the Barbarians are seduced by “worldly splendor, security, power and pleasure” (265), but he defends this impulse as only natural since “These seducers are exterior goods, but they are goods, and he who is hindered by them from caring for light and ideas is not so much doing what is perverse as what is natural” (265). The aristocratic Barbarians enjoy lives of immense privilege and material comforts, which Arnold criticizes as being ultimately artificial since it is founded on “all the exterior graces and accomplishments” (268) instead of the “inward virtues” that are the marks of true culture. Arnold concludes that the emphasis on exterior goods instead of inward striving for perfection leaves the Barbarians lacking “soul” (269, emphasis Arnold’s).

The third and final class is the working class, whom Arnold refers to as the “Populace.” Arnold describes the working class as “raw and half-developed” (271), which “has long lain half-hidden amidst its poverty and squalor” (271) but which is now asserting itself more and more in English society. Most crucially, Arnold equates the Populace as being the class most closely associated with individualism and anarchic impulses: He describes the working class “now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman’s heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes” (271). The actions of the working class make Arnold uneasy, as he links them to the mass movements and popular unrest that disquiet him: “[The Populace] is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes” (271-271).

Although Arnold divides English society into these three classes, he argues that believers in true culture can be found in any one of these three classes. He claims that those who have a “bent” for pursuing sweetness and light become defined more by that “bent” than their class origins since “this bent always tends […] to take them out of their class, and to make their distinguishing characteristic not their Barbarism or their Philistinism, but their humanity” (278, emphasis Arnold’s). Arnold then goes on to explain that the widespread suspicion in English society against authority, establishments, and “any very strict standard of excellence” (280) makes it difficult for true culture to become widespread in any of these three classes. He laments the influence of popular newspapers and narrow-minded Protestant sects on the national psyche.

Arnold also discusses how the existence of this tripartite class division undermines the authority in the state in the sense that most politicians reflect the defects of their own class or that of their constituents because they wish to please the ones who vote for them. He argues that politicians too often flatter their constituents and embody their failings instead of criticizing them. He compares the English system to some politicians and systems on the European continent, suggesting that England could learn from some of the approaches of continental politicians and systems. Due to the many flaws in the English system and the dangers of domination by particular classes and their flaws, Arnold concludes, “We see, then, how indispensable to that human perfection which we seek is […] some public recognition and establishment of our best self, or right reason” (316). To improve, England will have to embrace true culture and the pursuit of perfection instead of clinging to individualism and the inherent flaws of each class.