Last week, I wrote about the idea that some grammar rules are made to be broken- and how the real artistry of language lies not in rigid obedience to convention, but in knowing when to bend the rules to make something sound right.
This week, I want to look at another kind of rule-breaking: the invisible hierarchy that still clings to the world of storytelling (ie) where some writing is considered ‘proper literature’ and the rest dismissed as ‘lowbrow entertainment’.
There’s a certain kind of person, usually armed with a Louis Vuitton tote bag and the obligatory accompanying upturned air (fitting, as that is what mostly resides in their heads) of superiority, who likes to sneer at what they consider low culture.
You know the type: they can quote The Waste Land but wouldn’t be seen dead watching Emmerdale. They shortcut the word literature into italics, sigh over ‘Ulysses’, speak reverently of Chaucer, and treat the entire Mills & Boon catalogue as if it were a fateful tropical illness.
They’re the same people who claim that television drama reached its peak with Brideshead Revisited and has been in decline ever since, or that reality television is a sign of the world’s moral collapse ( as if humanity only discovered vulgarity in 2001, when Big Brother hit Channel 4) and imminent destruction.
The Helen Lovejoys of this world ('Please, won't someone think of the intelligentsia')
But let’s look at this idea of so-called ‘proper’ writing for a moment.
Because the truth is, those much-maligned soap operas and mass-market romances are the direct descendants of the very works these self-styled connoisseurs like to worship.
Take Shakespeare. Yes, the Shakespeare, the one quoted by academics, studied by sixth formers, and plastered all over theatre posters with brooding faces and misty lighting.
His plays weren’t written for scholars or literary purists. They were written for everyone-merchants, apprentices, labourers, noblemen, all of whom crammed, reddened cheek by stinking jowl into the Globe Theatre together.
They were stories of jealousy, lust, betrayal, revenge, and mistaken identity. Sound familiar? Remove the ruffs and the soliloquies, and Othello is essentially an episode of EastEnders.
Chaucer, too, was writing what we’d now call populist fiction. The Canterbury Tales are full of bawdy humour, gossip, and sharply drawn caricatures of ordinary people.
His stories are linked by a simple framing device (travellers swapping tales on a pilgrimage), that is, the medieval equivalent of a pub setting or a train carriage in Coronation Street.
In other words, the so-called high and oh-so-mighty classics were the soaps of their day.
King Lear?
An ageing patriarch, Lear, decides to divide his empire among his three daughters-but only after they publicly declare how much they love him. Two of them, Goneril and Regan, pour on the flattery, while the youngest, Cordelia, refuses to play along and is dramatically disowned.
Soon after, Lear realises he’s been duped-but too late as his two ‘loving’ daughters seize control, strip him of his power, and drive him into madness and exile. Meanwhile, another family drama now unfolds as Gloucester is betrayed by his scheming illegitimate son, Edmund, who turns father and brother against each other in order to climb the social ladder.
It all spirals into jealousy, deceit, and revenge, ending with multiple deaths, reconciliations that come too late, and a once-great family utterly destroyed by pride and lies.
So yes. King Lear is pure soap opera; a storm of inheritance drama, sibling rivalry, toxic parenting, betrayal, and tragic downfall, all of which is fuelled by love gone wrong and power that has gone to the head.
These were, as now, traditional stories with moral or social themes, told in the language of the people, about the people, for the people.
And as for Mills & Boon-the critics may scoff, but those books sell millions because they understand something essential about human nature: the craving for connection, hope, and happy endings.
The idea that such stories are somehow beneath serious literature says more about the reader’s prejudices than the writing itself.
Every age has its storytellers, and every storyteller adapts to the medium of their time.
If Shakespeare were alive today, I doubt he’d be sitting in an ivory tower penning iambic pentameter. He’d be in a BBC writers’ room, hammering out a Christmas special. Chaucer, meanwhile, would probably be running a blog, ‘Tales from the M25’ perhaps, which steamily chronicles the loves, lies, and lives of everyday commuters.
So yes. The line between ‘popular’ and ‘proper’ storytelling is an illusion.
Great writing doesn’t depend on form, fashion, or academic approval. It depends on truth-emotional truth, social truth, human truth.
Whether that truth is expressed through a sonnet, a soap opera, or a romance novel hardly matters.
So the next time someone looks down their nose at EastEnders or clutches their pearls over Mills & Boon, remember this: the stories they dismiss are built from the same raw material that produced our greatest works- love, loss, envy, ambition, redemption.
Or, to put it in terms they might understand:
‘There are more things in Walford and Weatherfield, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.
So perhaps it’s time to stop pretending that storytelling needs polishing before it’s worthy of praise.
The best tales have always been messy, human, and a little unruly – in other words, just like life itself.
And speaking of messiness, next week I’ll be tackling another great illusion: the myth of the ‘perfect’ writer (hint-there’s no such thing), and why chasing perfection can strangle creativity faster than a bad metaphor.
In the meantime, I’d love to know: what ‘lowbrow’ stories do you secretly (or proudly) adore?
Go on-confess in the comments. The best one gets a free book...
