THE BLIGHT OF RESPECTABILITY.
UNIVERSITY PRESS.
AN ANATOMY OF THE DISEASE AND A THEORY OF CURATIVE TREATMENT
BY
GEOFFREY MORTIMER.
LONDON
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED,
16, JOHN STREET, BEDFORD ROW, W.C.
1897.
WHAT IS RESPECTABILITY?
Respectable is a word that has been wrestedfrom its true meaning of worthy of respect, andapplied to the most sordid characteristics andconditions of human life. Respectability, likevulgarity and prudery, is an Anglo-Saxon attributeappertinent chiefly to the huge middle-classpart of society. It is not the fetish of "theupper ten thousand," nor do the majority of theworking class bow down before it. Respectabilitystands for gentility, and the genteel folkare not often of the orders aristocratic and proletarian,but of the bourgeoisie. To call a decent,intelligent man respectable is to dub him genteel,and to label him so implies that he hasreached about the lowest level of mentaldegradation. Would it not be an act of sheerdefamation of character to describe Ben Jonson,