G.K. Chesterton’s A Defense of Penny-Dreadfuls

    G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, was an English writer. In 1901, he argued against a common view amongst the middle and upper-classes with his A Defense of Penny-Dreadfuls. The term penny dreadful is less often used today, replaced by terms like pulp fiction, trashy sensational page turners, guilty pleasure entertainment, or low brow fiction.  

     Yet Chesterton felt a need to defend penny dreadfuls amongst his peers. It was common amongst the higher class, particularly philosophers and other writers, to believe that what lower class boys were reading was causing an uptick in violence and debauchery. Though, they themselves were reading classics that questioned morality, justified crimes such as theft, or even murder, and calling it different because it was more classy and refined literature.

   It is easy to get a sense of identity out of being “sophisticated” by snubbing the simpler things like these guilty pleasures the lower class boys were reading, but it is not easy to actually remain sophisticated enough to hold an intellectual conversation. Many younger high class men were beginning to snub their noses at the simple works and jump straight to Shakespeare, then babble nonsensically about what they failed to understand and feel superior for having exclusively entertained themselves with Shakespeare. The danger of confusing sophistication with understanding sophisticated literature can be seen in Mein Kampf, which was treated as an intellectual symbol by many people who clearly did not understand the hypocrisy and contradictions within it. Hitler himself was another man acting sophisticated and passing the problem down to others through babbling nonsense.   

     Chesterton argues that it is ridiculous and hypocritical to blame the brutality or immaturity of simpler works for violence in the streets. He argued that it is more dangerous to scrap them altogether and focus only on intellectual, abstract entertainment. Although today, it is more likely true that no one person should choose only one form of entertainment, but enrich their palette with guilty pleasures and intellectual works that make you truly think.

     They failed to understand so frequently because they failed to start with the penny dreadfuls. Today, we might consider a penny dreadful to be adult cartoons, musicals, comic books, or video games. A man who wants to call himself sophisticated may make fun of someone for mentioning The Simpsons and tell him to skip the silly things and pick up The Odyssey. But, how could one understand something as complex as The Odyssey if he doesn’t first pick up an Elmo book as a four-year-old, then Harry Potter when he gets older? One of Chesterton’s strongest arguments is that these low class books are vital to a person’s imagination and creativity.  He’s not wrong; to develop enough ability to abstract a story like Macbeth and pick apart the right and wrong of it, one must first learn to grasp plain factual storylines and ideas, and that comes from simple entertainment rather than long, complicated works that feel like watching paint dry if you haven’t worked your way up.    

     In the musical Chicago, a lawyer from the 20s tries to get a woman off for murder, blaming her crimes on the culture peer pressuring her into indulging in drink and jazz music. Anyone can see that this is a horrible argument; you can’t blame what music a person listens to for their wrongdoings. Would this woman have been better off if she had been doing things with her life other than drink and obsess over jazz music? Yes, but does that excuse murder? Absolutely not.

     This argument truly speaks to the defense of penny dreadfuls, but it also somewhat debates it. A woman refusing to work even though her husband is barely making ends meet, spending his money to watch singers while longing to be one herself, using him while cheating on him, and blaming all her problems on the culture around her clearly should’ve indulged in better things that bring fruition to your life rather than only serving as guilty pleasures. Maybe things would’ve gone differently, and she wouldn’t have needed that lawyer if she had chosen to rise above and attempt to be a good person doing better things with her life. This is the majority view that the defense of penny dreadfuls argues against. At the same time, you can’t blame this woman’s past self-indulgent decisions for what led her to shoot a man. It’s that kind of lack of responsibility that aids this behavior, not what people are choosing to use as vices. It isn’t really a valid argument to call jazz, or in Chesterton’s case, lower class literature, a vice; what you read does not dictate your life decisions. Never blind yourself to the sides of life you have access to by calling Shakespeare a snob or Hazbin Hotel too unsophisticated; enjoy every part of life you have access to, and let it lead you toward a life of fruition, which is ultimately yours to reach for.