In “The Classics in the Slums,” Jonathan Rose writes a fascinating essay about the power great books have to transform lives. He argues that Matthew Arnold was right: the best that has been said and thought can make lives better. That’s an argument contrary to most of the last thirty years or more of literary theory in the West, which insists that “great books” are a) great only for the ruling classes, principally rich men, and b) great for those ruling classes in large part because of the power of “great books” to spread white male hegemony and keep the marginalized safely on the circumference or perimeter.

Rose, whose 2001 The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Yale UP) won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, understands that his argument will seem conservative to some readers. That’s perhaps one reason he emphasizes the radically transformative power of great art, and backs up his argument with evidence taken from his research into British working-class lives in the twentieth century:

Even more impressive is a 1940 survey of reading among pupils at nonacademic [British] high schools, where education terminated at age 14. This sample represented something less than the working-class norm: the best students had already been skimmed off and sent to academic secondary schools on scholarship. Those who remained behind were asked which books they had read over the past month, excluding required texts. Even in this below-average group, 62 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls had read some poetry: their favorites included Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth. Sixty-seven percent of girls and 31 percent of boys had read plays, often something by Shakespeare. All told, these students averaged six or seven books per month. Compare that with the recent NEA study Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which found that in 2002, 43.4 percent of American adults had not read any books at all, other than those required for work or school. Only 12.1 percent had read any poetry, and only 3.6 percent any plays.

To hear Rose tell it, a passion for radical economic transformation can be awakened even by a Thomas Carlyle. Apparently it has something to do with an intellectual awakening that may lead to political action, but is not itself primarily a political action. His article is also a timely cautionary tale, warning against assuming too quickly what the poorly-educated laborer has inside his or her head.

Interestingly, a similar piece appeared today in the Washington Post: “The Great Books’ Greatest Lesson.”