The Interesting Case of the Petite Bourgeoisie
24 min readMar 30, 2018
The well-to-do hate to see them come; the proletarians loathe them for having vamoosed to greener pastures. The Artists deride them, the Intellectuals despise them. The petite bourgeoisie has been the butt of derision for over 200 years. Ambiguity and fluidity are the main characteristics of this conflicted social class. Now, however, the species seems to be dying out. Why does everybody love to hate them? And where have they gone to?
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La petite bourgeoise — she has a little bit of capital, she owns a small business, maybe she buys labour on a tiny scale. She has some bits of education.
She might be a London flower-shop owner named Eliza, she might be a young writer by the name of Jo, governessing it in New York while peddling her sensationalist Gothic stories — these girls own (at least partly) their means of production. The successful petite bourgeoise owns a bit of a house, employs two boys, has enough money in the bank to weather the bad times. But it can go either way. Jo inherits Aunt March’s house and starts a…
