Another reason for the discrimination against working-class fiction is because it is measured by middle-class literary conventions: The novel as a literary genre has an intimate relationship with the middle-class, both in terms of its historical emergence and its continuing sociology, its readership and conditions of production. In the classic bourgeois realist novel, the narrative structure is purposive and progressive, beginning with the individual moving out into the social world and finally into individual consciousness. This linear narrative, together with the plot and action, is directed towards an affirmation of conventional values. The novel moves inevitably towards a resolution, where there is a transformation and progression ordered through the making of marriages and fortunes. In contrast, working-class life is less ordered and more precarious: Working-class life shifts uneasily between the static and the lurching, endless calamity. Its beginnings and end are arbitrary and brutal; over and over again, working-class novels end with death, that class’s only reliable inheritance. In this respect, working-class experience is incompatible with the traditional bourgeois novel form. Comments are closed.
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May 2022
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