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**How Beastly the Bourgeois Is** By D.H. Lawrence

How beastly the bourgeois is especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable-- shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen? Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside? Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day after partridges, or a little rubber ball? wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the thing?

Oh, but wait! Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another man's need, let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life face him with a new demand on his understanding and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue. Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully. Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new demand on his intelligence, a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is especially the male of the species--

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable-- and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life than his own.

And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long. Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings rather nasty-- How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp England what a pity they can't all be kicked over like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly into the soil of England.


 * Summary**

The poem mocks the bourgeois, which would not be so different if it were not for the fact that Lawrence himself was part of the middle class. Lawrence compares the persona that people tend to display in public and what men really act like when it comes down to it. He highlights man's positive outer traits, "Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?". But then Lawrence goes on to also recognize man's inner faults, "Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully."

When it comes down to what is important in life such as a "emotion" or "another man's need", man is simply a mushroom. Meaning that a mushroom might seem like it is simple and stands tall, but it merely leeches off the nutrients of the larget trees and life that surrounds it.

Lawrence's view of the bourgeois gives the middle class a negative connotation. But what makes the bourgeois different than the poor or the upper class? Although there are many bad seeds in all classes, why did Lawrence target the bourgeois? During his early childhood, his mother fought during her married life to get her children out of the working class. Around that time, his parents were always fighting, for his father was very aggressive towards his family. This may be spurred Lawrence's distaste for the middle class.

During the early 1900s, there was also a change in societal norms. This was not a generation in which people respected family as much as they did in the end of the 1800s. During this era, [|World War I] just ended and much of the world was in shambles. People were fighting for their own survival. Then the [|Great Depression], which devastated many countries, was also just starting to affect the economies and morals of the world. Lawrence writes:

"let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life face him with a new demand on his understanding and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue."

Survival is the the main objective to anyone. To survive during this time period, many people had to decide what is moral, which has different meanings for different people. Is stealing food immoral? It is, but what if it is to survive, is it still immoral? Lawrence believes that no matter the situation, man presents a moral and honest person on the outside as a facade and that man is really just a fungus not worthy of living. It seems that Lawrence believed that morals are greater than life itself. Even in his poem "The Ship of Death" he mentions that a strong heart at peace is better than death.

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 * References**

Poem taken from: Abrams, M. H., ed. "How Beastly The Bourgeois Is" The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993. 2127.

Contributors Kristian Quiroz