Constructing Identity and Idealised Performativity

When we speak about English identity, let me first draw a distinction between political and cultural identities; while Meinecke emphasises that cultural nations “are based on jointly experienced cultural heritage” (Meinecke 10), and Smith identifies common myths, and historical memories in the construction of national identity, I will differentiate between national identity as a legal status and national identity as a cultural identity by suggesting that a person can have an English identity by way of their passport or other legal status, giving them a political national identity; but that their cultural identity is constructed through performance. This means that two people can have the same political identity, but one might be considered an outsider because of the way they look, sound, or act. The boundaries and definitions of a cultural identity are fluid but I will use Judith Butler’s theory of performativity as the basis from which to understand the mechanics of cultural identity, and I will use the construction of the English “Gentleman” as an example of the performativity of Englishness. This will also serve as a reference point for a desired performance of Englishness because the concept of a gentleman has historically had an elevated status and

can be contrasted by some of the English subcultures of the 20^th century which exposed rifts in cultural values by triggering cultural anxieties and moral panics. This will also help determine if representations of past English performativity are conveyed as outmoded, or if they are idealised and hence nostalgic. This should give us insight into the discourse of English performativity in Midsomer Murders and identify to what extent conservative notions of Englishness are challenged or upheld, or how conservative anxieties have been accommodated in a nostalgic construction of Englishness.

Let us firstly look at Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, which she develops as a means for conceptualising the construction of gender identity. Butler claims that gender identity is a “performative accomplishment” because the actions which carry gender identity have been socially constructed to carry those meanings (Butler 520). According to Butler, gender is not an essence within a person that can be expressed, but rather, through gender coded actions the gender identity is accomplished as a performative act (Butler 521).

Similarly, we might say that English identity is not an essence within a person, but rather, through culturally coded actions Englishness is accomplished as a performative act. At both the conscious and unconscious level, Englishness is a performative accomplishment because the active agent is the object receiving the identity, rather than the subject innately expressing Englishness. While a counterargument might be that Englishness is a description of the behaviour of English people, and therefore, whatever way an English person behaves is by definition a performance of Englishness. This is of course logically true, however, this argument doesn’t address important aspects such as whether a person’s behaviour is innate or a product of socialisation with their cultural peers, or the role of heritage, especially race, in constructing an “authentic” identity. This argument also does not account for people who might be born in England to English parents but grow up in a foreign country. Would they still be considered English if they look, sound, or act differently to their English peers?

The process of socialisation is an important distinction in this concept because when groups of people form social structures and hierarchies, certain expectations of behaviour develop which may encourage or restrict innate expressions of behaviour. Cynthia Weber might express this as the difference between performance and performativity, which can be understood by “their connection to normativity, understood as the ongoing citational processes whereby ‘regular subjects’ and ‘standards of normality’ are discursively constituted to give the effect that both are natural rather than cultural constructs” (Weber 81).

Timothy Edensor is less convinced by this distinction between performance and performativity, claiming that “This unfortunate dualism does not reflect the blurred boundaries between purposive and unreflexive actions” (Edensor 71). However, I do not see this distinction as being critical in characterising identity: whether performance is purposive, reflexive, or innate does not change it as a marker of identity if discourse labels it as English.

Therefore, I would argue that we can identify and label performative acts as English when they are commonly found within the discourse of English culture.

There is an additional aspect of performativity to consider; nothing can be considered

“English” without the illocutionary act of naming that thing or action as “English”. More importantly, however, it is a point of contention as to who has the authority or legitimacy to carry out such illocutions. In society for example, a government has the legitimacy to authorise a priest to announce a couple as husband and wife, and by these words two people can be officially declared as married. But for Englishness, as with any national identity, there is no single authority who has the legitimacy or monopoly of declaring something as English.

Consequently, there is unlikely to be a consensus over which performative acts are legitimately English. This does not mean that we cannot genuinely describe Englishness, but rather, that we need to be aware of whose Englishness we are describing and the possibility of competing discourse.

In 1947, the Oxford University Press published The Character of England with its aim being to “describe the spirit of England” (Barker v). In it, Barker names six “constants” of the English character: youthfulness, eccentricity, voluntary habit, amateur, social homogeneity, and gentleman. I will explore the concept of the English gentleman, firstly to illustrate the mechanics of performativity, and secondly for later analysis, to serve as a point of reference for the ideal performance of Englishness from which we can identify cultural anxieties that are relieved by nostalgic performances of Englishness.

The concept of a gentleman goes quite a long way back in English history. Barker suggests that the idea of a gentleman was ceasing to be a class idea as far back as the sixteenth century, and he describes the code of a gentleman as “a mixture of stoicism with medieval lay chivalry, and of both with unconscious ideals half Puritan and half secular” (Barker 566).

This description introduces us to the performative nature of a gentleman, that one was not simply born a gentleman by way of their social class, but rather it was determined by a person’s actions. Berberich also traces the history of the gentleman back to the mediaeval knight, with the first use of the term being as early as 1413, and having entered general use by the sixteenth century (Berberich 15). Berberich also examines some of the critical writing as far back as 1711, and highlights the discussion about who had the right to be called a gentleman, and the debate about whether it was birth or merit that mattered (Berberich 33).

I would therefore argue that the ideals and the performativity of a gentleman have been part of English discourse for centuries.

Gopinath claims that “the gentleman was mass-produced under the specific system of the Victorian public schools that had acquired unparalleled hegemonic status” (Gopinath 22), and Berberich describes the nineteenth century as “the heyday of the gentlemanly ideal, both in real life and in literature” (Berberich 34). This highlights two key elements: firstly, that gentlemanly ideals were systematically taught to a particular social group; and secondly, that

particular social group went on to reflect those gentlemanly ideals in literature and are therefore somewhat responsible for creating the enduring myths that have become the basis for a nostalgic representation of the English gentleman. Berberich claims that Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope are among countless others who “used their novels to impress upon society their notions of gentlemanliness” (Berberich 34).

Although the characteristics of a gentleman are somewhat malleable, and can be shaped to suit a particular context, there are some characteristics that feature regularly in people’s descriptions of a gentleman. Barker offers a few descriptions and suggests that it is a code of an elite rather than of the nation at large: a gentleman is “the apotheosis of the amateur”; a gentleman conducts himself with “good form” and “reserve”; a gentleman is

“shy, yet also self-confident”, and he is “the refinement of manliness” (Barker 566-7).

Collins draws upon a range of literature and describes a similar list of characteristics of a gentleman: they were amateurs, which “entailed a preference for ‘character’ over ‘brains’, a disdain for materialism and an anti-work ethic opposed to the more ruthless and competitive aspects of professionalism” (Collins 93); and related to their amateurism was a sporting spirit based on fair play, team spirit and “respect for the better man” (Collins 93); the gentleman was “a model of self-control” (Collins 93); and being “shy with women, the gentleman lived mainly in the ‘society of men’” (Collins 94), citing four main institutions: the public school;

the empire; the gentleman’s club; and the Conservative party (Collins 94). Undoubtedly, there is a close association with power embedded in these institutions, and Gopinath claims that the “public schools defined and articulated the ideals of Englishness and English manhood, ideals that crystallized through a sustained interaction between the industrial/capitalist exigencies (the merging of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy) and the theatre of empire (the conquest and administration of colonies)” (Gopinath 23). Viswanathan

describes it more succinctly, stating that the public schools had a curriculum that was

“entirely suited to the vocation of ruling” (Viswanathan 56).

However, it was perhaps this close association with power that explains the loss of reputation “as the exemplar of Englishness” (Collins 90), as Collins claims that “the gentleman suffered irreparable damage at the hands of a post-war generation seeking scapegoats for the country’s perceived economic, geopolitical and moral decline” (Collins 90). Collins notes the Suez debacle as the possible trigger for the downfall of the gentleman, as it “exposed the bankruptcy of gentlemanly rule” (Collins 102), and citing Mackenzie, suggests that the gentlemanly elite were then labelled as “a self-interested coterie, jealously guarding its privileges” (Collins 103). The decline of the gentlemanly ideal is more complex than I have noted here, but Collins suggests that the reasons are “a mixture of class relations, economics, party politics, and changing morality” (Collins 108); and that a significant consequence for the ideal of the gentleman was that a “loss of political power was closely connected to loss of moral authority” (Collins 108). I would argue that this post-war period, with its shifting moral values, created a lot of social anxiety that can be seen in the emergence of various subcultures, such as: mods; rockers; skinheads; hippies; punks; and goths; with varying degrees of moral panic ensuing.

However, despite the abandonment of the gentleman as a form of idealised Englishness, Miles and Savage suggest that the English gentleman still survives. They conclude that “the historical inheritance of the gentleman appears to be tied up with the visible world of the country house, the gentleman’s club, accent and dress” (Miles and Savage 610). This position demonstrates the performative nature that I describe, a gentleman has this identity inferred on him based on the performative accomplishment achieved by the clothes he wears, the accent he speaks with, and the places where he lives and socialises. Miles and Savage describe it as “a form of cultural capital” (Miles and Savage 610), and a repertoire that is “a

more flexible means of dealing with the insecurities of contemporary life and it allows the renewal of status” (Miles and Savage 610), which I would argue, lends the gentleman as a nostalgic trope for an idealised sense of Englishness, whereby enough history has distanced the gentlemanly motif from the disgrace of its downfall, but the ideal lives on, for example, in the many texts by Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope which are the texts for many contemporary students. But more importantly for this analysis, I will examine how the performativity of Inspector Barnaby carries many traces of the English gentleman to create a character of the modern world but with nostalgic appeal.