WorkingClassHero and CastFullOfRichPeople

Working-Class Hero contains this paragraph explaining how the trope's popularity is relatively recent:

Historically, in the vast majority of literature and theater, the heroes and heroines tend to be from a high socioeconomic status group, either because of wealth, education, or aristocratic birth. Lower middle-class and working-class characters are either supporting characters or they are confined to comedies. For a long time, critics and artists regarded aristocratic issues such as fall of a ruling family seriously because it aristocrats were essential to the state as it existed then. Also, realistically speaking, they had better career opportunities to be captains, commanders, governors, and heroes, so artists should not be faulted for reflecting the confined and restricted worldview as it existed then. In authoritarian countries, artists didn't have much of a choice, due to censorship. In the wake of the revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, when working classes started uplifting themselves, working-class heroes and artistic modes to represent them gained increasing currency.

So this is referencing an older, more common type of Trope in Aggregate, where only the wealthy are considered worthy subjects of fiction. I was wondering if we had this trope, and I saw we do have Cast Full of Rich People, but oddly that trope's description doesn't seem to talk about how it was the norm until recently, and that in past times it might have been used due to wealthy people being considered more relevant to the fate of humanity as a whole or having more opportunities to have heroic roles. Not to mention most of the people with the spare time to write being wealthy until recently, so they wanted to Write What You Know. Instead it just talks about the trope being used as wish-fulfillment with the appeal of glitz and glamour or to mock the rich, which seems like more modern reasons why someone would make such a choice. I feel like Cast Full of Rich People should be updated to include some of the older reasons for making such a choice (or at least having rich main characters) rather than just the modern ones, since it was very much a trope for a long time, definitely at least Older Than Feudalism (like in The Iliad most of the main characters are kings, nobility or similar people of high standing), rather than solely being descriptive of the more modern uses. What does everyone think of this?

^If you want to update the definition of Cast Full of Rich People to include more of a discussion of its historical use, that's something for the Trope Description Improvement Drive.

But personally, I'd relegate that info to the trope's analysis page as it doesn't impact the content of the trope, but just the prevalence of the trope over time.

Edited by amathieu13 on Jun 3rd 2023 at 8:41:32 AM

I don't think Cast Full of Rich People was quite as omnipresent in olden times as you're making it out to be.

Oh, among professional writers, it was a pretty omnipresent trope, because only wealthy patrons were able to afford a full-time storyteller. Those writers made stories for the upper classes, who naturally preferred stories about the upper classes.

But if you look at Folklore, the Oral Tradition created by non-professional storytellers, whose tales were shared among just about everyone, they were quite often about simple, common-born people. So many tales that begin with "there was a poor farmer", or "a poor fisherman", or "a poor woodcutter", or etc.

Edited by RavenWilder on Jun 3rd 2023 at 11:32:05 AM

[Disclaimer: I was Cast Full of Rich People's sponsor in TLP]

I agree with this assessment. One might list stuff like The Iliad as old examples, but it's not as omnipresent as the OP is making it out to be. In addition to the great point about oral tradition and folklore (heck even The Canterbury Tales, one of the cornerstones of Western lit, is mostly from the POV of working class people), I'll also add:

1. "Most authors were upperclass" isn't the same as "all their works feature only rich people except for the occasional peasant".
2. Social class doesn't equate to economic class and the trope is about the latter (showing off glamour, status, etc.). Pride and Prejudice is a good example of this; the protagonists are landed gentry and thus upper-middle social class-wise but pointedly are not cash-rich.

If it is not Cast Full of Rich People, what would you call a work where everyone is in the top 5% or so economically at the time, maybe because Write What You Know but there isn't emphasis on glitz and glamour. Even though you are right that it was never universal, there were always certain genres/mediums that at certain times in history have almost been exclusively produced by the upper class, and as a result usually focused on upper-class characters.

I do think one could potentially make a trope about how, as alluded to in the Working-Class Hero page, that dramatic and tragic theatre was considered to preferably focus on upper social classes while working-class people were confined to comedy whether that be comedy plays that they starred in or minor comic roles in more dramatic plays. Or likewise the tendency for upper-class people to use poetic verse in plays while lower-class people used prose. Also, I've heard people talk about how it used to be the norm to portray only upper-class characters as having strong emotions, I remember reading about how Poor Liza by Karamzin was considered groundbreaking for having a peasant main character who was driven by passionate emotions. Does anyone think any of these things could be potential tropes?

wrong thread

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 4th 2023 at 2:10:38 PM