Raymond Williams’ ‘The Country and the City’ (1973) & its Relevance Today
Raymond Williams’ ‘The Country and the City’ (1973) details that capitalism can negatively skew society’s understanding of their intrinsic identities and values. His notion significantly reveals that Western cityscapes’ “specific histories” have, and continue to be, rather negatively “determined by capitalism” (Williams, 1973, p.423). Although these themes are notable, it cannot be said that capitalism is entirely damaging, nor that an idealised, pastoral rejection of it is productive. Rather, concerning Williams’ geo-criticism and Baudrillard’s theories, capitalism has some significantly harmful effects on the human condition.
Williams’ iconic essay-like novel The Country and the City (1973) posits that literature reflects capitalism’s figurative and literal shaping of some Western environments. He contextualises this as a historical notion; analysing English literature’s prose on the influx of industrialisation in cityscapes and determining that it caused a deterrence from humane freedom, as symbolised through pastoral poetry. Though focusing on various interrelations of England’s urban and rural spaces, we interpret Williams’ essay through its identification of capitalism in cityscapes and its negation of socialist values (Konings, 2015, p.1)
Williams paints the image of the countryside through a soft lens to show the societal notions of it; inspired by and referencing romanticism literature that provided a painterly, attractive picture of the British countryside, particularly focusing on its surface level image, yet revealing its underlying work culture. This is again underscored by the mostly dogmatic influence of capitalism and consumerism in countryscapes that, while attractive, are becoming manipulated through constructs of power and control. Williams splits country and city into two opposing environments, contrasting them to showcase the societal notions surrounding each. Using mostly literary examples, he shows how, in history, the city (referencing London) is made up of:
“Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air”
And that it has been characterised by the following notions:
Social status
Financial power and prestige
Cosmopolitan and cultured
Fashionable and inventive
Modern and forward thinking
Individualistic and atomised
And the country as having
“Gathered the idea of a natural way of life: peace, innocence, and simple virtue. The city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation.”
Thus is associated as being:
Traditional and natural
Non-materialistic
Self-sufficient
Small minded and somewhat prejudiced
Family and community-oriented
This image, known to be the Pastoral is, as Williams quotes,
“The eventual structure of feeling is not based only on the idea of the happier past. It is based also on that other and associated idea of innocence: the rural innocence of the pastoral, neo-pastoral and reflective poems.”
Considering said pastoral, it is a mode of literature which romanticises the countryside as an equal, simple and self-giving plenty (Gifford, 1999, pp.1-10), usually to oppose and escape from the city’s ‘unnatural’ commodifying capitalist structures (Marx, 1932, p.9) (Odour, 2021). Williams states that it is “Not based only on the idea of the happier past. It is based also on that other and associated idea of innocence: the rural innocence of the pastoral, neo-pastoral and reflective poems…we must use some illusion to render a (/the) Pastoral delightful; and this consists in exposing the best side of only a shepherd’s life” (p.27, Williams)
Romanticised ‘cottage-core’ lifestyle and aesthetic
In today’s 21st century, perpetually online culture, many have transformed this notion of the pastoral into an ideal of comfort outside of the usual technological, urban, 9-5 day as a form of escapism. This has been coined as ‘cottage-core’, which, relating back to Williams, contextualises capitalism’s impact through pastoral aesthetics and poetics that capture the abundance of nature that was within ‘reach’ before Western society migrated to “capitalist cities of economy and society” (Williams, 1973, p.213).
Yet within this, the pastoral/cottage-core:
“Show(s) only its innocence…hiding its miseries”
Amongst these idealisations away from the working day, Williams analyses it as an escape from the ‘impact of capitalism’. This is seen through Williams’ depiction of the glorification of London’s capitalist sociocultural and economic structures in the city in opposition to the pastoral (Williams, 1973, pp.213-217). Where the city provides “a great bourgeois moment” (H.G Wells, cited in Williams, 1973, p.8), amongst its “overcrowded haunts…the human heart is sick” (Wordsworth, cited in Williams, 1973, p.217). By quoting Wordsworth’s romanticist prose concerning England’s Industrial Revolution (Williams, 1973, p.2), Williams details urban capitalism’s longstanding damage to one’s ‘heart’, and thus humanity overall (Konings, 2015, p.1) (Sayre, 2019, p.1), having the pastoral be a romantic return to humanity. Noting this and the notion from Baudrillard’s that socioeconomic systems create a hollow “life of signs within society” (Baudrillard, 1972, pp.123-125), we note that Williams posits environmental associations as historical truth. This reflection of said exploitation in Western cityscapes shows its detriment, as it dissociates from socialism’s ideals of egalitarianism; needed as they bolster intrinsic humanity, rather than capitalist ideals of performance.
The opposition of commercialism and exploitation of environment is attached to the “country ways and feelings, the literature and the lore…the point of decision, within any such feelings, is on the nature of the capitalist transition.” -R. Williams
As said, Williams’ essay not only observes, but determines that the pastoral lifestyle is a historical opposition to capitalism, observing English literature’s reflections on the prominence of said capitalism from the dawn of agriculture, to the Victorian era, and thus modern society (Hartley, 2023). Examining Augustan poetry, Williams notes how Western society’s democratic virtuosity is found away from the influence of capitalism, as represented through poetry on the countryside’s natural ‘ways of life’ (Williams, 1973, p.1, p.5). Referring to Andrew Marvell’s Thoughts in a Garden (1681), Williams quotes:
“The nectarine, and curious peach
Into my hands themselves I’d reach
Stumbling on Melons as I pass
Insnar’d with flowers, I fall on grass” - Marvell, cited in Williams, 1973, p.45
Referencing Robert Herrick’s Harvest Home (estimated 1648, Oxford Dictionary), he writes:
“Come sons of summer…whose tough labours, and rough hands
We rip up first, then reap our lands” - Herrick, cited in Williams, 1973, p.47
Considering this, Marvell’s illustration of the pastoral and Herrick’s commentary on industrialisation’s overtaking of said pastoral environments serve as a representative of capitalism’s devaluing of socialist, human nature (Löwy, 2024), Williams’ study on Western spaces as historically “determined by capitalism” and Baudrillard’s theory on capitalism as neglectful to humanity’s fundamental ways of life; revealing the hollowness of cityscapes’ socioeconomic hierarchies’. These images thus hold many attributes to understand the role of the Western/British countryside and cosmopolitan cityscape, yet simultaneously show the implications these roles and ideals come with. The spaces as noted by Baudrillard as influential to one’s understanding of society and culture, yet honing on capitalism and economy, is what makes up this argument.
Williams’ romantic study provides a nuanced critique of literature’s reflections on capitalism’s detriment throughout Western society. We romanticise these notions of abundant nature and fruitfulness amongst rigid structure and urban lifestyle, having it as an escape, as quoted by Robert Bloomfield in Williams’ essay:
“Who could resist the call?
That Giles has done
Not heard the birds, nor seen the rising sun,
Had not benevolence, with cheering ray,
And greatness stooped, indulgent to display praise
Which does surely not to Giles belong
But to the objects that inspired his song.”
Though capitalism in cityscapes proves to be considerably detrimental, it also cannot be said that this pastoral image is the answer. Its highly romanticised imagining of the countryside (Gifford, 1999, pp.1-10) represents a life away from and/or before the reign of modern industrialisation; informing a negation of the positive elements of capitalist systems which allow for progressive modernity beyond rurality (United Nations, 2020). ‘Capitalism’ additionally cannot be simply overlooked, as its presence prevails in both country and city. While the pastoral is an attractive idealisation to reject capitalism’s strife, we note that it isn’t entirely productive, nor is the system wholly detrimental.
Overall, these are beautiful ideals to console and rebirth the soul and warmth of nature and a humanity often forgotten behind the height of office complexes in our day to day. If we are to move toward a more egalitarian system for the sake of society’s professional, personal identities, and general quality of life, then the issues underlying the current systems must be critiqued. And though capitalism can be effective to modernity, the notion that peace and equality are needed against its alienating hierarchal system does reign prominent; moreover evident against today’s critiques of ‘hustle culture’ (Jennings, 2023) (The Take, 2021).