The English Gentleman: Images and Ideals in Literature and Society by David Castronovo (review)

240Rocky Mountain Review DAVID CASTRONOVO. The English Gentleman: Images and Ideals in Literature and Society. New York: Ungar, 1987. 171 p. Gentleman is a word which has suffered an interesting but not uncommon fate: the longer and more frequently it is used, the less precise its meaning becomes. In the world of the Yuppie and what Wallace Stegner has called the Now-Wow generation, it has become indeed almost pejorative. David Castronovo's stated purpose is "to piece together the fragments of a way of living, to reassemble the components of a socioeconomic function that formed a once intelligible and meaningful design on the face of English literature and social life" (3). Drawing upon such diverse sources as novelists from Defoe to Waugh, poets from Chaucer to Larkin, and essayists from Addison onward, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary and English law, he attempts to "construct a series of models, to set down theory and practice, and to evolve ideal types that describe the word 'gentleman' in literature and life" (4). In nine chapters Castronovo traces the evolving concept of the gentleman from the late thirteenth century to the late twentieth, showing how the word has meant different things to different generations of English readers, often "evoking laughter rather than hostility or approbation" (3), but at the same time serving as an image ofwhat the best of English society could be. The word had its origins in the Latin genere, suggesting a man who was well born. It first appears in English as gentile man in 1275 and shortly afterward as gentil men in 1297. Thenceforward it was used in a variety of denotations and connotations, aptly summarized in the titles Castronovo uses for the headings of six chapters: Gentlemen of Birth, Gentlemen of Wealth, Gentlemen of Honor, Gentlemen of Breeding, Gentlemen of Religion, and Gentlemen of Education. Gentleman originally denoted simply a man of good birth and ancestry, but over the centuries it came to have other meanings: a man who demonstrated the ability to amass wealth and property, who was characterized by reputation and integrity, who was deeply feeling and instinctively chivalrous, who showed devout religious inclinations, or who was highly educated. At times the distinct meanings might blur, but the word always suggested something elegant or refined, although in numerous instances the public saw an ironic disparity between the real and the ideal. The gentleman was often accorded respect by his peers and held in awe by his subordinates, but just as often he became the object of humor and satire because of his dress, his manners, or his attitudes. The word began to lose something of its glamour after the French Revolution , when the "brightest and the best—writers, intellectuals, reformers— . . . found the ideal and the reality of gentry life sorely wanting in sense and human value" (117). Reflecting the decline of the gentlemanly ideal in literature, for example, Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley was to degenerate over two centuries into D.H. Lawrence's brutish and impotent Sir Clifford Chatterley. Between these two extremes, gentleman was used to characterize Christ, Satan, Beau Brummell, the Duke of Wellington, and Oliver Twist. In the late twentieth century, Castronovo concludes, we are reluctant to tip our caps to people who in former times symbolized some kind of social stability and hierarchy, but we still have to face the hard reality of subordination : we may no longer fulfill our obligations to the gentleman, but "we fill out forms, correspond with agencies, read their instructions and Book Reviews241 brochures, and try to tell ourselves that we are less misused and mystified than people in a gentlemanly society" (134). David Castronovo has given us an enlightening piece of social and literary history, a book written with grace and scholarly precision. To suggest that his excellent work might be further enhanced by a more comprehensive index would be, well, ungentlemanly. ROBERT C. STEENSMA University ofUtah THERESA ENOS, ed. A Sourcebook for Basic Writing Teachers. New York: Random House, 1987. 691 p. It seems that the usual pattern for book reviews is a threefold one: point out the good features of a work, lament the features with which one takes issue...