BEATRIX POTTER AND THE CONTEMPT FOR TRADE (COMMENT). Annalisa in a Comment expressed horror at de Tocqueville’s disdain for the middle classes. It’s hard for Americans to understand the depth of the scorn for “trade” in Europe. An article on Beatrix Potter in the New York Review of Books for March 15, 2007 says that Beatrix Potter’s father “wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the family’s origins in trade.” Apparently for this reason, her parents opposed a marriage between Beatrix and a junior partner in her publishers. (The marriage was delayed and the man died suddenly before it could take place).
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My medieval and epic romance professor made a point of how a less-than-polite lady in Perceval from the Chrétien de Troyes assumed Gawain was a merchant because he had seven horses with him (and what an insult this was to his honor). She said that the church didn’t quite know about likelihood of salvation for merchants, that they were closer to crooks and prostitutes than anyone else. Thank goodness we live in enlightened times.
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