Aldous Huxley’s Hyperion to a Satyr talks about how cleanliness came about.
People used to be very filthy creatures. There were no means of getting clean. Since
no one was able to get clean, filth was accepted by society. By the fifteenth century
soap was becoming more readily available, so people who could afford the soap
became cleaner. As time went by it was socially unacceptable to be unclean. In
western civilization most people are able to wash themselves at least once a day. What
about the people who are unable to get clean? According to Huxley, what social
connotations are associated with being filthy?
In his non-fiction article, Huxley makes claims about filth and social class.
Hyperion to a Satyr was published in 1986 by Houghton Miffin Company. It was
published as part of the book The Dolphin Reader by Douglas Hunt. The Dolphin
Reader is 1,127 pages long, but Hyperion to a Satyr is fifteen pages long.
To write a critical narrative analysis, I need to understand the narrative as a
whole. I am going to do a comprehensive examination of the narrative by identifying the
characters, causal relations, and audience. By doing this I will develop a
comprehensive picture of the narrative that will give me insight to the connotations
associated with being filthy. I am not going to examine the narrator, in fact, there is no
narrator. Then I am going to examine the setting, events, temporal relations, and the
theme of the artifact. These are the significant elements that provide clear, insightful
views to the social connotations associated with being filthy.
First, there weren’t many characters in the reading. In fact, there weren’t any
that played a major role throughout the whole reading. Huxley does mention two men
who had ideas about gaining equality. Tolstoy recognized the cleanliness in high places
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and the dirt among the poor. His solution to this class distinction was for the upper
class not to bathe. By having everyone being equal in terms of dirt, there could be a
genuine and unforced fraternity. In other words, if everyone was dirty, there would be
no class distinction. This would lead to a brotherhood of man. Mahatma Gandhi’s
views on this subject were completely opposite. He believed that there should be a way
for the non-bathers to keep clean. Brotherhood could be achieved by making everyone
clean. Edwin Chadwick, Bishop Bloomfield, Charles Kingsley, the seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury, and Dr. Southwood Smith played an instrumental role in cleaning up
England. They fought a hard fight, but disease helped win the battle. By the end of the
nineteenth century, the worst part of the mess had been cleared up, even in the slums.
With this mess cleaned up, some of the class distinction associated with dirty people
could be eliminated.
The causal relations of the events of the narrative reveal the connections
between the causes and events of the narrative. Humans caused most of the events in
the reading. The use of soap led to most of the class distinction between the clean and
the filthy. Before soap, everyone was dirty. Soap could only be afforded by the
wealthy, so they were the only ones that could get clean. This led to the separation of
rich and poor. The poor couldn’t afford soap, and therefore, they weren’t clean.
I think the audience is mostly upper class citizens. The narrative talks a lot about
how the poor are dirty and therefore of a lower class. Upper class citizens would tend
to agree with this, so I think the narrative is guided more towards their frame of mind.
The narrative tends to lean on the aristocratic side of the fence by continually saying
that because a person is dirty, they are from a lower class.
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Now, I will analyze the significant elements of the narrative. The setting spans a
long time period. The earliest date mentioned is the third millennium B.C. It mentions
that some cities in this era had already developed a water-borne sewage system.
These were only for the rich, and the poor were left to live in the scum of the slums.
The time span continues up until the modern day. In the fourteenth century soap was
being made commercially.
The events of the narrative show how cleanliness has come about in the present
day. In medieval Europe, dirt was acceptable because there were no means to get
clean. Huxley says, “The first modern sewage systems . . . were reserved for the rich
and had the effect of widening still further the gulf between rulers and ruled.” With the
coming of sewage systems brought on even further class distinction because only the
rich could afford to use the systems. Portable plumbing shows this class distinction
even better. Members of the lower orders had the duty of picking up the unactivated
sludge and depositing it outside the city limits. “’The Poor’ were written and spoken
about as though they were creatures of an entirely different species,” says Huxley.
Then there was the long campaign to clean up Europe. Most of the slums were cleaned
up, and this helped to eliminate some class distinction. The use of cotton garments
have “largely abolished the ragged and greasy symbols of earlier class distinctions.”
Cotton was easier to wash than wool, and for the first time in history all but the poorest
of people could wash their garments. There have been many technological advances
that have led to the disappearance of some symbols of class distinction. Some of these
advances are the development of some medicines to keep people healthy, dry cleaning,
sewage systems, and washable fabrics. The temporal relations of these events happen
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over a long period of time. The narrative speedily covers a long time span. Some eras
have been emphasized by talking about them in greater detail. By going into greater
detail of some eras, Huxley gives clues to the most important events. He talks mostly
about the Middle Ages, and this was an important time. During the Middle Ages, upper
class people were starting to become clean. By going over such a long period of time,
Huxley was able to show us the progress of civilization from being that of people where
filth was acceptable to a time where people think filth is disgusting. People now think
that the “human beings who produce the filth are disgusting.” Even today there are
many ways in which the word “filth” has a negative connotation. If a man is clean, but
say he belongs to the wrong political party, he figuratively stinks and must be treated as
a lower person.
The theme of the narrative is that symbols can be fatal. The symbol of being
unclean represented that you were of a lower class. The poor were the dirty people and
must be treated and an inferior person. The theme is clearly shown through the events
of the narrative. With the use of sewer systems in the ancient cities, the poor were
exploited because they were the ones who had to get rid of the waste. Even today men
who can be “clean” may still be referred to as filth for their political status. The filth is a
symbol for an inferior person.
The poor, who were filthy, were treated as inferior people just because they didn’t
have the means to get clean. The social connotations associated with being filthy were
that you are a poor person, who isn’t worth much and should be treated as an inferior
person. They were scum just like the scum that got them into their class division.
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