Did PG Wodehouse succeed in creating a world beyond class?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/14/pg-wodehouse-world-class-privileged

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Last week I opened by quoting contributor AlanWSkinner. This week I'm going to do the same again - not least because I slightly misrepresented him by cutting him off halfway through.

After he wrote: "I have been wondering where you would take this Reading group, for the book, although very enjoyable, isn't particularly nuanced or layered. What you read is all you get", he went on to say:

As usual, he has a point. There is plenty to say about PG Wodehouse without mentioning class – but it is a hard subject to avoid. I wonder, too, if there's some truth in the idea that because they are out of step with our world, his books aren't as popular as they should be (which is to say, read frequently by every man, woman and child capable of enjoying the English language).

Yet there are also objections to raise. It could just as easily be said that their affectionate evocation of a lost privileged world is part of their charm. What's more, plenty of people worried about the settings of Wodehouse's books when he was alive and at the peak of his popularity.

An excellent article in The Atlantic magazine quotes Wodehouse's introduction to Summer Lightning, in which he wrote:

The same piece also quotes a slightly defensive letter from Wodhouse, written to his friend Denis Mackail:

Of course, it wasn't that simple. You only have to look at the lovely descriptions of Blandings Castle in Leave It To Psmith, the affectionate portrayal of Lord Emsworth and the charm of Psmith himself to see that Wodehouse was doing more than exploiting the market. There is feeling there. There is meaning. Writing in 1929 in the Observer, a few years after the book came out, Gerald Gould went so far as to say:

OK, it's hard today to see what the "Wodehouse" school might have been. From this remove, he seems entirely inimitable. But you'll have to get through me first if you want to deny that he's a great artist, or that he made a language.

As for explaining "a generation", that's harder. Did Wodehouse's world ever really exist? And if so, did he do more than poke gentle fun at them? The aforementioned AlanWSkinner even suggests:

I suppose I could go along with that insofar as I wouldn't want Bertie Wooster running the country. But I would enjoy his company – and that's what makes it so difficult to get worked up about Wodehouse's portrayal of class. I know that this is the Guardian and that most of us probably do care about some of the inequalities and iniquities of the class system. But in Wodehouse's case, anger seems out of place.

For a start, his world is so gentle, and bathed in such lovely golden light, that I'm keen to avoid the shadow of those emotionally fraught, politically harsh class discussions.

I agree too with Reading group contributor Dylanwolf when he observes:

The fact that the word "gentle" has now been used three times in this article my points to a certain paucity of language on my part – but it's also a good word for a man who famously said "I haven't got any violent feelings about anything. I just love writing."

One of the things that makes that writing so appealing is Wodehouse's warmth towards his fellow man, whoever he may be. It may not be violent, but Psmith's bonhomie is touching. It's funny that someone so posh, wearing a monocle, should call everyone he meets "comrade". But it's also rather sweet. In Leave It To Psmith, the hero takes everyone as they come, be they Canadian poets, transatlantic jewel thieves, dyspeptic butlers or absent-minded earls. He judges people by their actions – and only really takes against them if it seems there is a danger they're going to start spouting bad poetry all over him.

Wodehouse, by all accounts, was similar. He didn't much like company, and did his utmost to avoid parties - but he was never rude. He seems to have been empty of snobbery and full of sympathy for those repressed by the English class system. There's a telling instance in the excellent Collected Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe, about a meeting with HG Wells. Wodehouse wrote:

Compare that to George Bernard Shaw, who wrote in his obituary of his erstwhile friend: "HG was not a gentleman." Shaw made sure it was painfully clear that Wells had broken into his rarefied world of letters from the outside. "No conventional social station fitted him. His father was a working gardener and professional cricketer. His mother was a housekeeper … Could anything be more petit bourgeois, as Lenin labelled HG?"

No wonder Wells had a chip on his shoulder. And how generous Wodehouse seems in comparison to the supposedly class-conscious Fabian society member Bernard Shaw.

Talking of class warriors, meanwhile, no appraisal of Wodehouse and class would be complete without a reference to George Orwell's superb essay in defence of PG Wodehouse. Although mainly writing about the witch hunt after Wodehouse made the mistake of agreeing to broadcast on German radio after he was interned during the second world war, Orwell also had plenty to say about class. His main contention is that Wodehouse was naive and indulgent:

Orwell does also suggest that Wodehouse had some feeling for the difficulties of class:

Curiously, Orwell doesn't mention Wodehouse's most defiantly political statement. This came in 1938's The Code of the Woosters and his creation of Roderick Spode to stand in for Oswald Mosley. Spode appears to Bertie "as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment". The man is so loathsome that he moves the genial Bertie to a rare burst of public anger:

It turns out Wodehouse could speak for the people after all! If only everybody were so able to see that the essential truth about the Mosleys of this world is that they are perishers – they should be laughed at rather than taken seriously. Indeed, I hope it isn't going to far to say that there's a curious sort of political wisdom in books like The Code Of The Woosters and Leave It To Psmith. They mock silliness. They encourage good humour and understanding. Wodehouse might not have done much to hasten on the glorious day. But he did enough to make anyone think twice about sticking fellow humans up against the wall.