Is there a finite number of subjects that can form the plot line of humorous fiction? Very few subjects are out of bounds when it comes to humour but not all of them will attract the same level of readership. There are certainly some subjects that are used more often than others, and focusing on a few of the more domestic subjects, love and romance are possibly the top two contenders, or top one if taken together, with families another firm favourite.
Four subjects have proven to be enduringly popular in humorous writing: romance, families, social tension, and social or cultural groups. Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding is a prime example of romance, Gerald Durrell’s My Family and other Animals (1956)deals with family, Queen Lucia (1920) as the first of E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series is based on social competition, and The Darling Buds of May (1958) by H.E. Bates is a classic of working-class humour.
Often aimed at women readers, the romance category has several subcategories, including romantic comedy, that are all popular. The main character Bridget in the best-selling novel Bridget Jones’s Diary initially engages in her romantic pursuits with adventure rather than love in mind, but the thoughts she confides to her diary soon reveal her primary concern: how does she, a single thirty-something career woman, find herself a partner.
Encompassing the getting-to-know-yourself aspect of this process, the humour in the fictional diary is found in the way the worries, inadequacies, plans and eventualities of the daily routine of a woman juggling work, private life and friendship are expressed. Bridget’s family appears as an irregular backdrop to the story and is integrated through the mechanism of a family party being the scene in which Bridget meets one of the romantic-lead characters.
In My Family and other Animals, family forms more than just a backdrop.Part biography/part fiction, naturalist Durrell writes about the portion of his childhood, beginning when he was aged ten and just before World War II, that was spent on the island of Corfu his mother and siblings.
There is more to the book than family to keep the story moving along though, and it is possibly his connection with animals that sparks more interest in the reader. Durrell himself said that he had begun the book with three themes in mind: ‘namely, the spellbinding landscape of a Greek island before tourism succeeded in spoiling it for tourists; his discovery of and friendship with the wild denizens, both animal and Greek, of that island; and the eccentric conduct of all members of his family.’
The interactions between people, related or not, form a particular kind of humour in books and writing when the element of competition is added. Social competitiveness is a broad source of comedy, and its agonies can be portrayed independently of love and family themes. Queen Lucia is a prime example of how it can be encompassed in fiction, with the main character Mrs Emmeline Lucas (Lucia) epitomizing small-town snobbery when combined with social ambition and artistic ignorance.
The Mapp and Lucia series, of which Queen Lucia is the first book, forms a comedy of manners embedded in its time of the 1920s and ‘30s. In the later books Benson extended the character line-up to include the equally ambitious Miss Elizabeth Mapp who becomes Lucia’s rival for social dominance, creating a very effective environment for the exercise of his characters’ activities in social one-upmanship.
Social relations do not necessarily have to be competitive, and in The Darling Buds of May, the daily goings-on of main character Pop Larkins and his family are firmly grounded in an easy-going rural life of the 1950s, where everyone enjoys each other’s company. Language and dialect form a part of the humour, and with his main interest embedded in his family, Pop Larkins speaks such sentences as, ‘Home looks nice. Allus does though, don’t it? Perfick.’
Other forms of humour in the book include Pop Larkins’ trading enterprises and his determination to avoid paying tax. A romantic subplot is incorporated into the story with the oldest daughter Mariette planning to marry Charley, a tax inspector investigating the family finances, which has the added bonus of obviating any difficulties the family could be facing in relation to what he might find.
There is of course subject overlap in humorous stories that have a domestic setting, and the subjects of most books fall into more than one of the four categories. Bridget Jones’s Diary, as just one example, fits into all of them with romance, family, social competitiveness and social class taking prominent roles in the novel. All of the four books here offer more than their humour. Their subject matters hold much of the interest for readers, and are part of the reason they read them.
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Authors
Helen Fielding; Gerald Durrell; E.F. Benson; H.E. Bates
Titles
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding; My Family and other AnimalsbyGerald Durrell; Queen Lucia and the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson; The Darling Buds of MaybyH.E. Bates
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