Blog 4: post due 5 pm, Sun., Mar. 2; comment due 5 pm, Mon., Mar. 3.

Choose one:

1. How do Bourdieu's ideas help us understand the class and status positions of characters in The Way We Live Now? Use any examples you want.

2. Free post -- anything that interests you about The Way We Live Now.

Booth Poverty Map Online

Booth Poverty Map

Blog #3: Is Felix a radical?

While it is quite obvious that Harold Transome is no “radical,” the question I have is what exactly makes Felix one. Such a question can only be answered if we know what political radicalism signified in nineteenth-century Britain. Leaving this aside for the moment, what is certain is that, contra Mr. John Johnson, Felix is not at all a “revolutionary” (334). He opposes universal suffrage because he does not believe that voting can accomplish real change. Since most of the workers seem to fall far short of his own ideals, he thinks that they would misuse the power that comes with suffrage or that it would do more harm than good. As he argues, “[i]gnorant power comes in the end to the same thing as wicked power; it makes misery” (288). It is not clear, however, whether Felix understands that the workers’ flaws are inextricably bound to their socio-economic oppression. Indeed, it seems that rather than seeing them liberated from such oppression, he wants to see them delivered from vice. For Felix, then, the problem in society is not necessarily class inequality but instead a general lack of moral-cultural refinement. 

To be sure, giving workers the right to vote does not guarantee their situation will improve or get worse. But I do not see how this justifies in the least Felix’s position that they should therefore not be given suffrage and the little autonomy that comes with it. Far from wanting to positively alter the status quo, it seems that his aim is to preserve its fundamental order. Thus, if Felix does desire social change (as Bossche maintains), this change implies a passive resignation to society’s established hierarchy rather than a “radical” re-organization of it. From this perspective, it is not surprising that he feels the need to silence the revolutionary sentiments of a nameless worker (see chapter 50) with his anti-revolutionary “cant” about the “nature of things” (305). 

Charisma, Rationality, and Organizing the Working Class

In Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical, the novel’s titular character is shown again and again as unable to persuade anyone, particularly members of the working class, to agree with him. His inability to gather and organize those he addresses would, at first blush, make him a rather strange choice for a protagonist. Why would one choose to center a narrative on a character that proves consistently ineffective? While the immediate thought would be to see this choice as the novel commenting on the figure of Felix alone, it is worth considering his failures as a (middle class) commentary on the ways in which one can realistically hope to organize the working class. In Felix’s character, the novel seems to be proposing a demagogic nature for charismatic leadership, and an ineffective one for the rational leadership.

Charisma, as defined by Max Weber, is a form of authority conferred upon an individual resulting from a “devotion to the specific and exceptional sanctity, heroism of exemplar character of an individual person, and of the normative pattern or order ordained by him (46).” The charismatic leader is not one who appeals to the reasoning abilities of his/her followers, but rather cultivates a sense of personal loyalty among them. The followers’ fealty leads to an agreement with the charismatic leader, rather than agreement leading to fealty. According to Weber, charismatic leadership is based on “the conception that it is the duty of those who have been called to a charismatic mission to recognize its quality and act accordingly (49),” wherein followers are expected to see as self-evident the presence of a divine or historic force, a “charismatic mission,” in the figure of a given individual. The charismatic leader is one whose personality warrants special attention and recognition from his/her followers, a special recognition which is connected with a greater truth about the universe.

It seems exactly this kind of charismatic authority which had been exercised by Felix’s father, a patent medicine salesman, in Felix Holt. According to Felix’s mother, “my husband’s tongue ‘ud have been a fortune to anybody, and there was many a one said it was as good as a dose of physic to hear him talk (55),” attributing a great deal of power to his personality, his very speech able to bring about relief from suffering. Located in his person is a gift for healing, a gift which is apparent even to those who merely hear him talk. This gift for healing is itself seen as the result of special privilege from divine will, with Felix’s mother saying of her husband’s Cancer Cure that, “he believed it was sent to him in answer to prayer; and nobody can deny it, for he prayed most regular, and read out of the green baize Bible (55).” Felix’s father was not only graced by divine power with the ability to heal, but the divine power’s choice of him is placed beyond reproach by the evidence provided by his pious personality. The fact that he was favored with the gift of healing by a divine force was seen as self-evident in his personality.

However, the novel implicitly critiques the authority held by Felix’s father in the way in which it characterizes Mrs. Holt. Prior to hearing anything from her, Mrs. Holt’s arrival is announced to Rufus Lyons, the pastor, he states aloud that “Mistress Holt is another who darkens counsel by words without knowledge, and angers the reason of the natural man (54).” Immediately, Mrs. Holt is set up as a character whose thoughts and notions are often outside the bounds of rationality, her speech seen as not guided by reason. Over the course of her conversation with Rufus, her irrationality is connected directly with her acceptance of her late husband’s charismatic authority, with her saying of the patent medicines that “to say that they’re not good medicines, when they’ve been taken for fifty miles around by high and low, by rich and poor, and nobody speaking against ‘em but Dr. Lukyn, it seems to me it’s flying in the face of Heaven (56).” Mrs. Holt is seen here as conflating fact with popularity, reasoning that the medicines must be sound because they are being widely taken. Her adherence to charismatic authority is seen as buttressed by a kind of conformity, accepting something as correct simply because others do. Charismatic authority, such as that held by the late Mr. Holt, is thus depicted by the novel as relying on a kind of herd mentality.

In addition to this, Mrs. Holt’s conversation with Rufus exposes another part of the novel’s attitude toward charismatic authority. When telling Rufus of her concerns about Felix besmirching the name of his father’s patent medicines, she states of her work with the medicines that “there’s few women would have gone through with it; and it’s reasonable to think it’ll be made up to me; for if there is promised and purchased blessings, I should think that this trouble is purchasing ‘em (58).” For Mrs. Holt, her adherence to her husband’s charismatic authority, which led to her work with the medicines, is to be repaid by some sort of reward. She has been living since her husband’s death on the proceeds from the sale of the medicines, thus giving her a vested interest in their consumption. The validity of her husband’s authority then is of material concern to her, going along with and propagating it a means of assuring herself a comfortable living. In this way, the charismatic authority of her husband is adhered to out of self-interest.

The two forces that, for the novel, seem to support charismatic authority, conformity and self-interest, would seem to make it inseparable from another kind of social force, that being demagoguery.

Felix, for his part, resists the allure of charismatic authority, relying instead on scientific rationality. Speaking to Rufus, Felix states plainly that “‘My father was ignorant… He knew neither the complication of the human system, nor the way in which drugs counteract each other (61).” For Felix, the effectiveness of the medicines is to be judged on scientific knowledge, not by the force of personality of their charismatic salesman. And yet, this commitment to rationality over charisma appears to harm Felix when he tries to rally the workers in Sproxton, he is unable to win their approval against Mr. Johnson’s promises of the miners’ growing prosperity through expanded trade. Here, his refusal of charismatic authority leaves him with rational argument, which the novel depicts as unable to organize like demagoguery can.

Thus, one can see Eliot’s choice in choosing a character like Felix, who tries and fails to organize through appeals to rationality as a means of remarking on both the dangers and seductions of charismatic leadership, and the ineffective ways in which rationality allows for alternatives of demagoguery.    

Differently Effectual Felix

For this blog, I would like to investigate the arguments concerning Felix Holt which our secondary sources for the week have made. It is my hope that this approach will allow me to reach some conclusion about the ineffectual nature of Felix's endeavors. According to Chris Vanden Bossche, Eliot's novel argues that "there is no possibility of meaningful change, no authentic agency, except through revolution" (9). For Vanden Bossche, this revolution is one of personal education; the individual must come to a place of responsibility for his or her own education and development into an informed citizen. Vanden Bossche argues that Eliot sees reform as a class-based movement that is inherently selfish and primarily concerned with the desires of the class supporting the reform; in this model, revolution would be the more valuable goal which could result in true and lasting improvement of the public good. Vanden Bossche asserts that Felix Holt treats "the election and education as opposed forms of agency" (4). If we hold with Vanden Bossche's argument, then we must recognize Felix's failure to make any true progress in educating the working classes as tragic. However, Vanden Bossche argues that Felix does make progress in that he educates Esther into achieving her best life now. Such an argument places importance upon the individual nature of disinterested citizenship. For Vanden Bossche, the small scale of Felix's success does not lessen its value. 

For Carolyn Lesjak, Esther represents the working classes. Lesjak notes:

Torn between Felix and Harold, Esther's ultimate acceptance of Felix mirrors the transformation desired by the text for the working class. They, like Esther, should accept their proper function within the body politic: accommodation to current social conditions in the interests of the health of the nation as a whole. (76)

If we agree with these assertions, then Felix's education of Esther represents a successful education of the lower classes. Of course, Vanden Bossche would argue that educating the lower classes as classes is pointless; Felix's goal is to educate individuals, a desire that jives with Eliot's project. Now, since Matt has already astutely discussed the importance of the Gramsci reading to Felix's ineffectiveness I won't belabor the point. I will, however, point out that Felix does develop the entire spectrum of knowledge-understanding-feeling with Esther as the novel progresses, and this more complete connection to her allows him to be more effective in his educational efforts. I would therefore argue that Felix provides a model for individual education through close connection; therefore, he is not completely ineffectual.  

Blog #3: Ineffectual Reform, Successful Revolution

I found Chris Vanden Bossche’s analysis of Felix Holt useful for thinking through why Eliot made Felix such an ineffectual protagonist. Vanden Bossche writes, “When [Felix] refuses to rise above the working class, he is not arguing against social change but rejecting class as a way of defining that change” (7). With his radical political ideals, Felix ardently believes that social change is necessary, but he rejects that change at a larger national-political level. For him, small individual changes seem much more important. In Chapter XXVII, Felix explains to Esther why he will always remain poor: “it enables me to do what I most want to do on earth. Whatever the hopes for the world may be—whether great or small—I am a man of this generation; I will try to make life less bitter for a few within my reach” (263). Felix emphasizes here that he is aware how small his reach is; he can only change the lives of a few and he focuses specifically on the present. Whereas great political changes may bring about positive reforms for the entire working class somewhere in the future, Felix can touch a small number of people right now, which is arguably more useful. As a result, Felix remains ineffectual in converting workers to his point of view, but he continues to try to reach out to them in hopes of finding even one man who will listen.

In Chapter XI, when Felix is at the Sproxton pub, he shows the workers how much he values the individual. After Johnson asks, “Will it do any good to honest Tom, who is hungry at Sproxton, to hear that Jack at Newcastle has his bellyful of beef and pudding?” Felix responds, “It ought to do him good…If he knows it’s a bad thing to be hungry and not have enough to eat, he ought to be glad that another fellow, who is idle, is not suffering in the same way” (137). Felix views the improvement of even one working-class man’s life as a positive move forward and something to be happy about. Unfortunately, he cannot make the workers see this point of view because they are all too caught up in their own suffering and collectively, as a class, want widespread reforms. In “The Address to the Working Men, by Felix Holt,” Eliot writes, “So long as there is selfishness in men…so long Class Interest will be in danger of making itself felt injuriously” (489-90). As she does throughout Felix Holt, Eliot highlights the problematic selfishness of human nature in its connection to class interest. However, she also shows that selfishness is something that can be found everywhere regardless of one’s class, thus it has to be combatted on an individual level first.

Vanden Bossche argues that Felix Holt “inverts the conventional Victorian opposition between revolution and reform…Eliot’s novel treats reform as the action of a class that is always limited to its self-interest in contrast to revolution that involves a transformation of the self into disinterested citizen” (9). Although Felix is an ineffectual protagonist when it comes to mass reforms, he can bring about an even more important individual revolution in Esther after telling her, “I want you to change” (10.123). By the end of the novel, Esther is able to overcome her selfish desires for material wealth and a life of luxury. She is not a member of the working-class, but this individual revolution actually works best with her because she is the character with the most complicated class positioning, not fitting into any one specific category. Both selfishness and class interest are erased in Esther’s personal revolution, which is what Eliot argues is necessary for any greater nation-wide reform. From this point of view, Felix’s character is not as ineffectual as he may seem.

The Stigma of Radicalism

I think we can see failure, or ineffectualness, foreshadowed from the very beginning in the title of the novel. He's Felix Holt: The Radical, not Leader of Radicals, not One of Many Radicals. And radical acts and thoughts can hardly be called a movement when there is but one individual who espouses such beliefs and practices. For success to be achieved in radical movements, it's leaders require the charisma to connect with and stir the masses but, as Matt suggests, Felix is incapable of making personal connections to garner in a mass of followers made in his own ideological image. And Harold Transome is not as radical as his political candidacy would suggest.

What it means to be radical, or perhaps the right way to be radical, is often in contention by those who claim to be radical. Harold, the Radical candidate, is really not so radical in his campaigning practices (at least by today’s standards) because he allows his election agents to win him votes as “a man of the people” by purchasing beer for the workmen and rousing them into a frenzy, which will ultimately result into full blown mob riot. Though Felix condemns Harold's campaigning practices, Harold feels beholden to Jermyn for all the help he has given Mrs. Transome and the family estate. It is this indebtedness to one favor for another that creates and maintains the normal political system and prevents radical acts of change from occurring. 

Furthermore, the riotous mob marks the Radicals’ cause politically and demonstrates that the only change radicalism will bring is violence, death and destruction. The need for the status quo is reinforced and Debarry wins the election. Neither Harold nor Felix are seen to have calming influences over the working masses. As Marx suggests, it is not enough to be united as by economic class standing, there must be a common class interest and the drunken anger of a mob is fleeting and leads to no change at all because it is not an authentic desire for political change and is regarded as such in the novel.

Student-Teacher Relations

If we were to try to distill the plot of Felix Holt into some sort of Cliff’s Notes essence, I’d wager we might focus less on political reformation and more on the Harold-Esther-Felix love triangle.  In fact, despite his presence throughout much of the novel, I find it difficult to think of Felix Holt as the protagonist at all; instead, I would hazard that Esther Lyon is the real center of Eliot’s text.  With Esther as the focus, we may then think of Felix not as an ineffectual political radical but rather view him as a profoundly effectual personal radical.  I would connect this to Vanden Bossche’s assertion that “Felix Holt displaces [education] onto Esther Lyon and in turn onto Holt himself” (7).  While Felix’s intent to educate the working classes seems doomed from the outset, his effect on Esther, as Vanden Bossche notes, causes her own “inward revolution” (464; ch. 49; Vanden Bossche 7), a revolution that may occur because she already inhabits a class outside that which she ultimately chooses.  Again, drawing from Vanden Bossche, Felix Holt succeeds not as a political reformer but alternately he does succeed as an agent of personal change—an agent of the “revolution that involves a transformation of the self into disinterested citizen” (9).

So Eliot’s novel, then, might be read as a neoliberal push for lifelong education and the responsibility of the individual to self-betterment or as an insistence on changing the self without correcting preexisting social inequalities via either violent or political force.  What I find useful, though, is Esther’s insistence that “[she] mean[s] to go on teaching a great many things” (474; ch. 51).  I suggest that while Eliot does insist on personal revolution as necessary for societal change, this revolution must also be accompanied by a reciprocal willing self-positioning as both student and teacher. 

The Embarassment of Aging

The Embarrassment of Aging

In Felix Holt there are several aged character. Some are considered old by a number of years that today, I believe, we would not consider old. Mrs. Transome is the first character who introduces us to the aged. As an ‘old’ woman of about 60 (old? Are you kidding me? I’m glad we’ve moved away from dying this young) she is treated with dismissive kindness by her son Harold. Despite running the estates and being aware of how she was being cheated by an previous lover, Harold sees her as someone who should sit on prettily cushioned chairs and let the real men run the estate. Father (also, not the father of Harold) Transome is a doddering man who seems to need guidance in everything. He is an object to be forgotten and an object of play for Harold’s son, a depiction of the embarrassment of age.  In Esther and Felix’s case their parents are sources of embarrassment. Esther knows that Mr. Lyon will go off on long explications of anything theological without a real awareness of his audience, and she secretly resents his dissenting status. Felix’s mother is also a rambler that Felix puts up with patiently as she extols her own virtues and waxes (never wanes) about the tortures of her life. These speeches for both Esther and Felix are seen as things they must suffer through. In this way, all aged parents are embarrassments.  To be endured because they are your parents are supposedly incapable of seeing the reality. It’s interesting to see how Mrs. Transome in her age is set up as one of the few people who are fully aware. I’m not sure what to think of that. Is that due to position, wealth, education, class? It seems to me that age is a minor theme to the novel that Eliot is trying to get us to recognize.

However, I realize this may also just be an area of hyper-awareness for me. One of the things that has fascinated me recently in life has been watching people that our culture has deemed ‘old.’ When they glance at us young ‘adults,’ I wonder if they are resentful of our youth, bitter of their own past, or sagely shaking their heads at what we do not know and the joys yet to be had in life. So when an ‘older’ person is portrayed in a novel, I am, likewise, fascinated by wondering what gives the younger the knowledge of the older. How do you have insight into age without going through the experience of becoming aged? Particularly, Felix Holt was published in 1866. That means that Eliot was writing this around 47. What in her life gives her the experience to feel that she can write well the thoughts of someone 20 or so years older than her? I wonder how this novel would have been different if she had written in her 60’s. Since she died at 61, she did not leave us too much evidence of how age might be rewritten from her new perspective. But she did marry someone 20years younger than her not long before her death and after the death of her longtime lover George Henry Lewes (which was perhaps was one of the greatest and saddest love stories). Maybe she had a young heart. However, just that phrase privileges youth in funky ways.

All this random thought to say, what does this novel show us about the Victorian conception of aging? Well, my guess, is that age was considered something of an embarrassment much like today.  But it shouldn’t be. Check out this 62 year old model. Her body has aged, and she is beautiful.

Blog #3: On Realizing One’s Limitations or: How To Not Be A Silly Lady Novelist

While I agree with my classmates in their discussions some of the particularities behind Felix Holt’s ineffectiveness, I also think it is helpful to note the likelihood that Felix’s limitations speak to George Eliot’s pragmatism and perhaps humility as a writer; in this blog post I want to look at why Felix is ineffective, rather than how. Particularly, I feel that there is a connection between Felix’s positioning as an “ineffectual protagonist” and Eliot’s own acknowledgement of the limited powers of novelists, or individuals in general, to solve vast societal problems. In 1856, Eliot composed an essay entitled “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” in which she mocks the droves of female-authored texts (those of “the oracular species”) that set out to resolve “the knottiest moral and speculative questions” (87). With Eliot’s essay in mind, having Felix as a perpetually or at least eventually successful protagonist would be troublesome for a couple of reasons. First, Felix’s perfection would be too convenient, and thus artistically suspect, an issue that Eliot points to by describing a too neatly drawn narrative in her before mentioned essay: “The vicious baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed requesting his wife, as a particular favour to him, to marry the man she loves best, and having already dispatched a note to the lover informing him of the comfortable arrangement" (86). Similarly, if Felix prohibits the men from performing violent acts during the riot (and does not kill poor Tucker himself), if he brilliantly argues for himself during the court scene and thus makes clear his innocence, and if he converts the men to his way of thinking on education and politics, then the verisimilitude of the text is depleted—all of the pieces would have fallen together too cleanly and with too heavy-handed an effort on the part of the novelist. Relatedly, we see in Felix Holt Eliot’s hesitancy to present solutions to systemic problems within the easily manipulated form of the novel, a restraint that other authors did not always place before themselves: “‘They [male authors who have written only about their own experiences] have solved no great questions’—and she [the lady novelist] is ready to remedy their omission by setting before you a complete theory of life and manual of divinity, in a love story” (88). Felix can marry Esther (and even convert her to his way of thinking), but to have his radical philosophies universally acknowledged and for him to offer salvation to the working class through his words and acts would make him a mythic figure rather than a man. Just as she undermines Felix’s ability and humanizes him in the process, Eliot refuses to play the function of oracle through her novel, rather limiting herself to the more prosaic role of writer.

Works Cited

Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.” Feminist Theory and Literary Criticism. Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: Norton, 2007. 85-92. Print.  

Felix Holt and the Family (Blog 3)

For this blog post, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to write about something that interests us in the readings rather than to answer one of the posted questions.

What struck me during Felix Holt and the “Address” which follows is the undercurrent question of family planning/contraception. Throughout the novel, the question of marriage and children is addressed a couple of times by Felix, such as in chapters V and XXII. In chapter V, he says “I’ll never marry, though I should have to live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I’ll never look back and say…‘but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children—I must lie and simper a little, else they’ll starve’” (74). Initially, I did not think much of this statement beyond the fact that it further characterized Felix’s need for an honest living and independence, something he found incompatible with married life. The point is brought up again by Mrs. Holt in Esther’s presence in chapter XXII: “here’s Felix made a common man of himself, and says he’ll never be married—which is the most unreasonable thing, and him never easy but when he’s got a child on his lap” (226). Felix points out that liking children is no reason on its own to get married and procreate, particularly because once children are born they can “do mischief, brag and cant for gain or vanity,” once again linking children to a life lower than that which Felix aspires to (226).

During the “Address” however, “Felix” points out to the workers that many people of all classes “seem to think it a light think to beget children, to bring human beings with all their tremendous possibilities into this difficult world, and then take little heed how they are disciplines and furnished for the perilous journey they are sent on without any asking of their own” (496). This turns the question children away from the incompatibility of their existence with that of their parents leading a virtuous life to a question of the responsibility parents have for brining another human being into the world. “Felix” goes on to say that “This is a sin…which, like taxation, fall[s] heaviest on the poorest” (496). “Felix” goes on to make an argument for the necessity of educating the children of the poor “so as not to go on recklessly breeding a moral pestilence among us” (497). While the need for education is returned to by “Felix,” it is only after a steady focus on the question of how the poor care for their children and it is always the collective noun “children” rather than “child.” In the novel, we learn that Felix is the only surviving child, but that his mother had several other children. Little Job is an only child, but he is also an orphan. Otherwise, the only families we see in detail are those of middle and upper class families, each of which have one to three children. In this, I find Eliot drawing attention to family size in relation to class, however unintentionally that may be.

A quick search of JSTOR and the MLA International Bibliography did not pull up any articles that seemed to bring Eliot/Felix Holt and questions of family size/family planning/contraceptives together. I have only the barest knowledge of family planning/family size control options available during this era and I am completely unaware if Eliot ever commented on questions of family planning. As such cannot comment much further except to say that any opinions/thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. 

Matt's Blog the Third: Why no friends for Felix?

I do not know why Eliot wrote Felix Holt as an “ineffectual protagonist,” but I think the brief Gramsci reading points to some important reasons why Felix never gains any footing with his working class compatriots.   The three scenes that come to mind take place with the public house and Johnson (1.11), his public speech where he lampoons Johnson and is taken as more funny than a serious political agent (2.30), and finally the riot (2.33), where he is ultimately unable to sway the mass away from the Transome estate and carry out his half-thought plan of protection.  Felix never lacks in intellectual and political fervor, but he simply finds no "personal" connection with anyone other than Lyon or Esther.

When reading these scenes, I remember thinking repeatedly, “The other liberals and the workers are just not his people,” and Gramsci seems to know why:

“Only if the relationship between intellectuals and people-masses, between the leaders and the led, between the rulers and the ruled is based on an organic attachment in which impassioned sentiment becomes understanding and hence knowledge (not mechanically but in a living manner), only then is the relationship one of representation.” 

Felix holds such a strong sense of his personal philosophical commitments—“against privilege, monopoly, and oppression” (182)—that he does not have the capability to see the workers as equals; he puts the kart before the horse in his quest of class solidarity and ideological integrity. As Gramsci warns, Felix’s “impassioned sentiment” never makes the leap to “understanding” or the production of knowledge “in a living manner.” But I have to admit that given his pains—grabbing a weekly beer with workers, taking in the orphan boy, becoming a tradesmen—I was surprised that he does not find any working class friends, or even real acquaintances.  Of course, the working class does not owe Felix any respect for doing what he has done, and I wonder if in the end some recognition from the lower classes is what he wanted.  There seems something fundamentally right about what Gramsci says, but it seems to that in order to achieve what he is talking about, the Italian Marxist assumes a certain level of humility in the successful “organic attachment” Eliot does not afford our hero in the novel.  In other words, Felix suffers from a personal failing that restricts political success, and for Gramsci, the political act must flow from a sense of personal solidarity with other people that only comes through a long process of a sort of social attunement.  Felix's attempts to converge with the working class do not render him any ipso facto attachment or belonging with them, which points to an interesting aspect of class movement in the novel: while one might be able to willingly move up (over time and with much effort or a bit of legal luck), it is somehow more difficult for someone to willingly move down in status and remain unscathed.