Romanticism and Bourgeois Values

Romanticism should be distinguished from Romance, which is an earlier form, arising in the medieval period - fanciful stories which usually involve marvelous events.  Romanticism, as opposed to Romance, developed during the bourgeois era.

Romanticism has a tangled, complex relation to bourgeois values.  Perhaps strangely, romanticism is used to justify bourgeois values, but at the same time, it transcends bourgeois values, and indeed can be defined by way of that transcendence.  Romanticism is best understood as the sublation of bourgeois values, or, as it is said in German, the Aufhebung (from the verb Aufheben) of bourgeois values.  Aufheben is sometimes translated as "abolition," but it literally means "to lift up," and this paradoxical ambiguity is the essence of the relation we are attempting to understand here.  We can sum it up by saying that romanticism upholds bourgeois values precisely by violating them, or even by rejecting them altogether.  To coin a phrase, romanticism often means the "bad sublation" of bourgeois values - is there, perhaps within romanticism, a "good sublation" of bourgeois values?  I'll leave that as an open question.

What are bourgeois values?  As John Locke put it, life, liberty, and property.  Thomas Jefferson, with an assist from Benjamin Franklin, expressed it much better, by saying "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but the bourgeois tendency within American history has been to interpret the right to property back into this phrase.  Of course we can contest that, but let's go with it for present purposes.  In short, the bourgeois citizen (the term "bourgeois" comes from Dutch, Belgian, and Swiss law codes, such as that of the Republic of Geneva, where the "bourgeoisie" was understood to be a specific, patrician class with their own distinctive civic laws that applied only to them) was conceived as an individual, generally if not totally independent, self-sufficient, and capable of making decisions for oneself.  But with these rights come responsibilities, and the bourgeois individual was also expected to have "a good head on one's shoulders" - to be pragmatic and sensible, to get a good job and secure a good income, work hard, make some wise investments, get married, live in a house, and raise a family.  This usually, though perhaps not necessarily, involved other things, such as going to church, perhaps seeking some bourgeois entertainment, and possibly participating in government in a sensible and constitutional way.  Family, especially the nuclear family, is also central to bourgeois values, though not as central as the individual themself.  It is fine if a person also has a few hobbies, so long as they don't get out of hand.  Much later in the history of the bourgeoisie, there will be purchases that are expected of the bourgeoisie: not only a house, but also a car, a television, a refrigerator, perhaps a washer and dryer, toys for the kids, insurance, a bank account, etc., etc., etc..  Gradually an entire way of life is developed, and a system of government to protect that way of life, and it is precisely this state, the bourgeois state, that renders what might otherwise be a vague, nebulous, somewhat self-contradictory blob of values into something precise and definitive.

Incidentally, it should be noted that one must distinguish between "bourgeois values," on the one hand, and "the bourgeois class," or "the bourgeois mode of production," on the other.  For the bourgeois class has imposed bourgeois values on the rest of the populace, without always exhibiting bourgeois values themselves.  For instance, although hard work, industriousness, and thrift are all bourgeois values, the bourgeois class are precisely those who, by way of income from their investments, do not need to work.

Romanticism transcends each and every one of these points of the set of bourgeois values.  The romantic is an individual, yes, but romanticism in its essence transcends individualism.  We love our romantic stories, and we love our romantic heroes, even if these stories are often tragic, or comic.  The romantic hero's journey will sometimes end in painful destruction, and will sometimes end in hilarious, absurd  humiliation.  (Sometimes, at the "happy ending" of our stories, the romantic learns to get married, raise a family, and live happily ever after - as a bourgeois.)  Sometimes, a romantic story is not exactly tragic - it may involve terrible violence, deprivation, and destruction, and yet the emotion evoked for the audience is not sorrow but deep, inner affirmation, resolve, and admiration.  In these cases, the losses incurred by the romantic do not constitute tragedy but rather sacrifice.  The romantic hero is willing to sacrifice anything and everything for their romanticism, including their life, their liberty, their property, and even their pursuit of happiness.  

Thus romanticism has a paradoxical, twofold aspect.  The journey of the romantic hero may seem to have a voluntaristic aspect, and this may seem essential.  On the other hand, there often seem to be a kind of fatalism associated with romanticism.  It is not easy to resolve this apparent contradiction.

Shakespeare is not generally regarded as a romantic - he came too early, from a time when "Romance" still meant something quite different.  Nonetheless, "Romeo and Juliet," for instance, certainly has certain aspects that became very influential among the romantics, and so it's hard not to see it as a kind of transitional text.  And there are many figures with, you might say, one foot in romanticism and one foot out of it.  Consider Goethe, who undoubtedly was a massive influence on the romantic movement, yet who denounced romanticism.  Or, better yet, consider "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen.  Elinor largely represents pragmatic bourgeois "sense," while her younger sister Marianne represents romantic "sensibility."  (Unfortunately, and confusingly, these words have changed their meaning in English since 1811, so that nowadays, being "sensible" means the opposite of what it did then, that is, being guided purely by emotion.)  Jane Austen represents a dichotomy, emphasizing bourgeois propriety and conscientious good behavior while subtly also beginning to empathize with and understand the romantic temperament.