Marxist Literary Criticism

Marxist criticism reads literature through the lens of class, economics, and power. It asks: how does literature reflect the economic conditions of the society that produced it? Whose interests does it serve? How does it reinforce — or challenge — the dominant ideology? For A-Level, Marxist criticism is particularly useful for analysing texts that deal with class, money, labour, and social inequality.

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Key Concepts

1. Base and Superstructure

Marx argued that society is structured in two layers:

Layer	Content
Base (economic)	The material conditions of production — who owns what, who works for whom, how wealth is created and distributed
Superstructure (cultural)	Everything built on the economic base — law, politics, religion, philosophy, art, literature

The base determines the superstructure. Literature, from a Marxist perspective, is not a free expression of individual genius but a product of specific economic and social conditions.

Application: Dickens's Great Expectations is a product of Victorian industrial capitalism. Pip's "great expectations" are funded by a convict's labour in the Australian penal colony — the gentleman's lifestyle is literally built on the exploitation of a transported criminal. The novel's economic base (the convict's wealth) shapes its superstructure (Pip's identity as a "gentleman").

2. Ideology

Definition: The set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that a society takes for granted — that seem "natural" and "obvious" but actually serve the interests of the ruling class.

Louis Althusser developed Marx's concept of ideology, arguing that institutions like the church, the education system, the family, and literature function as Ideological State Apparatuses — mechanisms that reproduce the dominant ideology by making it seem natural, inevitable, and unquestionable.

Application: In The Handmaid's Tale, the ideology of Gilead is enforced through the Aunts, the Ceremony, and the manipulation of biblical scripture. Atwood shows how ideology works: not through brute force alone but through the internalisation of beliefs — Offred catches herself thinking in Gilead's categories even as she resists them.

3. Class Struggle

Marx argued that history is driven by the conflict between classes — those who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and those who sell their labour (the proletariat). Literature both reflects and participates in this struggle.

Application: In Churchill's Top Girls, the conflict between Marlene and Joyce is fundamentally a class conflict. Marlene has escaped the working class through individual ambition; Joyce has been left behind. The play argues that Marlene's success is not a triumph of merit but a product of class betrayal — she has succeeded by abandoning her class, her daughter, and her sister.

4. Commodity Fetishism

Definition: Marx's term for the way capitalism obscures the human labour that produces commodities. We see the product but not the labour — the designer handbag but not the sweatshop worker.

Application: In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the lavish parties, the shirts, the green light — all are commodities fetishised by the characters and the narrative. The novel simultaneously celebrates and critiques the commodity culture of the Jazz Age: we are seduced by Gatsby's wealth even as we recognise its hollowness.

5. Hegemony

Definition: Antonio Gramsci's concept: the ruling class maintains power not primarily through force but through cultural leadership — by making its values, beliefs, and ways of life seem natural and desirable. Literature is one of the mechanisms through which hegemony is established and maintained.

Application: In Revolutionary Road, the suburban ideal — the detached house, the commute, the nuclear family — represents hegemonic culture. The Wheelers' inability to escape it demonstrates the power of hegemony: even those who recognise its hollowness cannot resist its pull.

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Key Thinkers