page_title: Bourgeoisie
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Bourgeoisie / Satire and criticism in art / Literature
caption_attribution_description: Luis Buñuel
context_page_description: Bourgeoisie is a polysemous French term that can mean:
  a sociologically-defined social class, especially in contemporary times, referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital belonging to the middle or upper middle class: the upper, middle, and petty bourgeoisie; an affluent and often opulent stratum of the middle class who stand opposite the proletariat class.
  originally and generally, "those who live in the borough", that is to say, the people of the city, as opposed to those of rural areas; in this sense, the bourgeoisie began to grow in Europe from the 11th century and particularly during the Renaissance of the 12th century, with the first developments of rural exodus and urbanization.
  a legally defined class of the Middle Ages to the end of the Ancien Régime in French-speaking Europe, that of inhabitants' having the rights of citizenship and political rights in a city.
  The "bourgeoisie" in its original sense is intimately linked to the existence of cities recognized as such by their urban charters, so there was no bourgeoisie "outside the walls of the city" beyond which the people were "peasants" submitted to the stately courts and manorialism.
context_section_description: Buddenbrooks (1901), by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), chronicles the moral, intellectual, and physical decay of a rich family through its declines, material and spiritual, in the course of four generations, beginning with the patriarch Johann Buddenbrook Sr. and his son, Johann Buddenbrook Jr., who are typically successful German businessmen; each is a reasonable man of solid character.
  Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid, middle-class values elicits decadence: The fickle daughter, Toni, lacks and does not seek a purpose in life; son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life of a ne'er-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who assumes command of the Buddenbrook family fortune, occasionally falters from middle-class solidity by being interested in art and philosophy, the impractical life of the mind, which, to the bourgeoisie, is the epitome of social, moral, and material decadence.
  Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), satirizes the American bourgeois George Follansbee Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor, booster, and joiner in the Midwestern city of Zenith, who – despite being unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly conformist and middle-class – is aware that there must be more to life than money and the consumption of the best things that money can buy. Nevertheless, he fears being excluded from the mainstream of society more than he does living for himself, by being true to himself – his heart-felt flirtations with independence (dabbling in liberal politics and a love affair with a pretty widow) come to naught because he is existentially afraid.
  Yet, George F. Babbitt sublimates his desire for self-respect, and encourages his son to rebel against the conformity that results from bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself:
  Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been.
caption: The Spanish cinéast Luis Buñuel (1900–83) depicted the tortuous mentality and self-destructive hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie
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