That elusive Golden Age

Preparing myself for a transatlantic flight, I've picked up a couple of Agatha Christie novels to keep me amused. First up is After the Funeral, originally published in the mid-1950s. What is fascinating about it is how Christie throughout the novel bemoans the cultural and moral decline of the nation. Pretty typical is this:

Ugh! This country's full of gangsters nowadays - thugs ... Nobody's got the guts to put these things down - to take a strong hand. What's the country coming to, I'd like to know.? What's the damned country coming to?

Sounds like classic Daily Mail circa 2005. Of course, a quote from a pulp detective novel proves very little. It only points to the fact that Golden Ages only ever exist in the past. In 2055 I have absolutely no doubt that people will be bemoaning the Golden Age of the first decade of the century. Twas ever thus.

Comments

[dearieme]

Yup, 410 AD, these bloody Anglo-Saxons are the limit, aren't they? Result: no central heating for a millenium-and-a-half.

[Shuggy]

Ah, nostalgia's not what it used to be, eh?

[Shuggy]

Actually, if I could make a serious(ish) point? It is true that you can pick absolutely any point in history and find people saying the same sort of Daily Mail things. On the other hand, ever since we've had any kind of social history, you can *also* find people saying that people have always said the country's going to the dogs (erm, if you know what I mean?). In other words, just because you've always had people bitching about the state of the country, that doesn't mean it isn't in a state now. Although of course it doesn't mean that it is either. Clear? It isn't to me either - but there's a point in there somewhere...

[laban]

Thanks Shuggy. The (implied) argument is :

"People have always complained about cultural decline and the behaviour of the young. Therefore, at no time, and in no society, have any of these complaints ever been justified".

[laban]

PS - I really wouldn't read too much into sentiments placed in the mouths of Christie's characters. While you can learn a lot about the societies about which she wrote from her (mostly unspoken) assumptions, not even her biggest fans would declare she was a great writer about people.

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional stereotypes - and therein lies much of the charm of her books.

But I guess it does reinforce your point that the guy moaning about the country going to the dogs was a stereotype even when she was writing. And probably before. Perhaps for thousands of years people have been noticing a tendency to bemoan declining standards.

[Third Avenue]

Laban -you're quite right that Christie lacks any real emotional insight. But that, as you imply, only emphasises the fact that her characters embody types and stereotypes that would have been immediately recognisable to her readers. Gilbert and Sullivan, writing at a time when Britain (viewed from today's standpoint) had never been more powerful, also have a number of characters who embody the 'country's going to the dogs, our glory days are over' mentality that still permeates the national culture.

Are things getting worse? In some ways they are, in some ways they're not. I have plenty of gripes about modern society - one of which is that aspect of the British character that seems to take positive delight in wallowing in examples of all that is bad and rotten, while dismissing anything good as a trick of the light or statistical witchdoctory.

[laban]

But there IS nothing good !

[Third Avenue]

Laban - you need to get out more. There's more to Britain, much, much more, than stories on the crime pages of the newspapers...

[Laban Tall]

No way. I'm staying in this ex-WW2 bunker, deep under the Wiltshire hills.