Critical Reading: Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold

Arnold starts his arguement by revealing instantly what he intends to prove in the rest of his essay. He intends to shed fresh light on the way we follow culture, the way we long to understand the best that has ever been 'thought and said in the world'. By this he means that we want to know about the best books, the best films, plays etc because that is what society believes to be culture. However this reading sets out that no matter how much culture we have according to what society believes, we are all cultured.
The reading discusses how we follow notions and habits belieiveing there is a virtue in following them staunchly but mechanicly. This shows us to share the same view as others just because that is whatothers think. We will belive something is a cultured activity because someone tells us it is. We do not agrue but simply follow it without question, robotically fallin into line. I dont believe this is really the case, people believe going to the theatre and reading Shakespeare to be high culture only because this is what we are told is cultured from an early age.

Arnold views culture as almost a quantity: 'If a man without books or reading, or reading nothnig but his letters and the newspapers, gets fresh and freeplay of the best thoughts upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture.' This is showing his belief that everyone has culture, the amount we have varies on what we do each day. I believe that this is where the whole high brow, lowbrow arguement comes into it. Some view one thing as a high brow thing to do, this will go towards an individual being cultured, while low brow entertainments do not broaden your mind. In my opinion this is due to the class divide in the UK. The upper middle classes view their interests to be cultured while interests of the lower classes to be uncultured.


I found this reading quite hard to get my head around, the writers arguements are valid butthe way he puts them across is really unclear. The sentences lose you easilyand he argues against his argument so sometimes you are not really sure where he stands on the issue. His idea that culture is a quantity is a very interesting one, which I believe could be true. We all are cultured to an extent some some than others, some people will only get there culture through television, while others get it through many other forms so obviously they will be more cultured than others.