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these papers, are generally of the "came the dawn" type: the heroine narrowly escapes losing her
"boy" to a designing rival, or the "boy" loses his job and has to postpone marriage, but presently gets
a better job. The changeling-fantasy (a girl brought up in a poor home is "really" the child of rich
parents) is another favourite. Where sensationalism comes in, usually in the serials, it arises out of the
more domestic type of crime, such as bigamy, forgery or sometimes murder; no Martians, death-rays
or international anarchist gangs. These papers are at any rate aiming at credibility, and they have a
link with real life in their correspondence columns, where genuine problems are being discussed.
Ruby M. Ayres's 9 column of advice in the Oracle, for instance, is 9° george orwell extremely
sensible and well written. And yet the world of the Oracle and Peg's Paper is a pure fantasy-world.
It is the same fantasy all the time: pretending to be richer than you are. The chief impression that one
carries away from almost every story in these papers is of a frightful, overwhelming "refinement."
Ostensibly the characters are working-class people, but their habits, the interiors of their houses, their
clothes, their outlook and, above all, their speech are entirely middle class. They are all living at
several pounds a week above their income. And needless to say, that is just the impression that is
intended. The idea is to give the bored factory-girl or worn-out mother of five a dream-life in which
she pictures herself—not actually as a duchess (that convention has gone out) but as, say, the wife of a
bank-manager. Not only is a five-to-six-pound-a-week standard of life set up as the ideal, but it is
tacitly assumed that that is how working-class people really do live. The major facts are simply not
faced. It is admitted, for instance, that people sometimes lose their jobs; but then the dark clouds roll
away and they get better jobs instead. No mention of unemployment as something permanent and
inevitable, no mention of the dole, no mention of trade unionism. No suggestion anywhere that there
can be anything wrong with the system as a system; there are only individual misfortunes, which are
generally due to somebody's wickedness and can in any case be put right in the last chapter. Always
the dark clouds roll away, the kind employer raises Alfred's wages, and there are jobs for everybody
except the drunks. It is still the world of the Wizard and the Gem, except that there are orangeblossoms
instead of machine-guns.
The outlook inculcated by all these papers is that of a rather exceptionally stupid member
of the Navy League 10 in the year 1910. Yes, it may be said, but what does it matter? And in any case,
what else do you expect?
Of course no one in his senses would want to turn the so-called penny dreadful into a
realistic novel or a Socialist tract. An adventure story must of its nature be more or less remote from
real life. But, as I have tried to make clear, the unreality of the Wizard and the Gem is not so artless as
it looks. These papers exist because of a specialised demand, because boys at certain ages find it
necessary to read about Martians, death-rays, grizzly bears and gangsters. They get what they are
looking for, but they get it wrapped up in the illusions which their future employers think suitable for
them. To what extent people draw their ideas from fiction is disputable. Personally I believe that most
people are influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels, serial stories, films and so
forth, and that from this point of view the worst books are often the most important, because they are
usually the ones that are read earliest in life. It is probable that many people who would consider
themselves extremely sophisticated and "advanced" are actually carrying through life an imaginative
background which they acquired in childhood from (for instance) Sapper and Ian Hay. 11 If that is so,
the boys' twopenny weeklies are of the deepest importance. Here is the stuff that is read somewhere
between the ages of twelve and eighteen by a very large proportion, perhaps an actual majority, of