u/zem

some of you might have seen this one in the learned league cryptics 1-day :)

NOTE: Since this was inspired by a plot twist I'll leave the name of the book that prompted this post behind a spoiler; the book itself is tangential to the discussion.

In >!Sheri Tepper's "Grass"!< the main characters are a family who have moved to a planet where there is a sort of European-inspired aristocracy that they go through the process of integrating into. They live on an estate near a town, which is basically depicted as the "peasantry" who serve and provide for the aristocrats. However, during an emergency one of the protagonists ends up going to the townfolk for help, and finds out the town is a thriving centre of civilisation, with things like a hospital and a university. The twist comes up when one of them says essentially "oh yeah, there are some idiots who play at aristocracy out in the countryside; we don't pay them much attention".

That made me wonder how much of older British fiction in particular was really set in a world where the "upper classes" the setting focused on were basically irrelevant to society. Jeeves and Wooster for sure, Mapp and Lucia likewise. I was also reminded of the Gardiners in Pride and Prejudice - the book presents them as a step below the Bennets because they are in "trade", but would they have thought of the "landed gentry" part of the family as idle layabouts who were treated with affection but not really looked up to?

Also am I missing any older fiction that does explicitly take this stance (i.e. set in a working-class urban environment where the characters do regard the "idle rich" gentry as clowns rather than look up to them or envy them)?