Revisiting Middlebrowness

Those who discuss the idea of the middlebrow commonly trace it back to a letter Virginia Woolf wrote to the New Statesman deriding it, posthumously published in the 1942 collection Death of the Moth. Woolf's explanation was far from tidy and straightforward--or for that matter, fair-minded. Her crashing snobbery (with which her ostentatiously "woke" fans are, of course, entirely comfortable) was extravagantly on display as she hailed the lowbrow--when in their proper place--and the highbrow in theirs, but thoroughly disliked those who were a bit of each and somewhere in between. And equally obvious was her determination to defend her prejudices above all.

Still, one can salvage something from the muddle of her words. Taking the works of William Shakespeare as a point of reference, one can characterize the lowbrow, the middlebrow and the highbrow as follows:

The lowbrow knows little or nothing of Shakespeare and does not care to find out more because all that "culture stuff" is not for the "likes of them."

The middlebrow reads Shakespeare, but cannot give an intelligent answer as to why they do so. They just know that cultured people are "supposed" to read Shakespeare, because they have been told it is important by people whose claim to cultural authority they have accepted for reasons they also cannot explain. When they actually do read Shakespeare for themselves they do not get much out of it, but they still repeat what they are told about Shakespeare being the greatest writer the English-speaking world ever produced because that is what everyone is supposed to say.

The highbrow likely, but not necessarily, knows something of Shakespeare. Perhaps they read him and perhaps they do not. Perhaps they say they like him and perhaps they say they do not like him. What is more important than their exact position on Shakespeare is their reason for that position. They are neither categorically dismissive of higher culture like the plays and poetry of Shakespeare in the manner of the lowbrow, nor uncomprehendingly pious about it in the manner of the middlebrow. Rather they are capable of forming a considered opinion of their own.

Considering the matter in these terms my suspicion is that there are very few true highbrows in the world--most supposed highbrows actually just middlebrows practicing imposture upon the gullible. Otherwise the purveyors of the "Midcult" would not enjoy the status that they do.