work
The concept of work is notoriously difficult to define.
The payment of wages cannot be the sole criterion
in determining whether an action counts as work,
since men and women throughout history have
often labored without compensation. The physical
efforts expended by a slave in ancient Greece, for
example, or by a homemaker today certainly qualify
as work even though neither worker would be paid.
Additionally, an individual can undertake many
demanding tasks with little or no hope of payment:
A would-be writer might spend weekends working
diligently on his novel, while a hobbyist could spend
evenings in her workshop making furniture that only
her family will use. These examples might suggest
that physical or mental exertion in pursuit of a goal,
whether paid or not, is sufficient to qualify an activ-
ity as work. But not all purposeful action—exercise
and recreational sports, for example—is considered
work. While it is true that we call vigorous exercise a
“workout,” a sense of fairness suggests that there is an
essential difference between lifting weights in a gym
and loading boxes onto the back of a truck.
Many people detest work and avoid it whenever
possible, but these subjective attitudes are useless in
forming a definition (such as “work is activity we find
unpleasant”) since just as many people find pleasure
in their work; “workaholics,” in fact, find labor more
attractive than leisure. Keith Thomas, editor of The
Oxford Book of Work, provides a definition that, while
necessarily limited, covers many activities that we
recognize as work: “Work has an end beyond itself,
being designed to produce or achieve something; it
involves a degree of obligation or necessity, being a
task that others set us or that we set ourselves; and
it is arduous, involving effort and persistence beyond
the point at which the task ceases to be wholly plea-
surable” (xiv). We might abbreviate this definition to
say that work is productive, necessary, and difficult.
Work, so broadly defined, has long been a theme
in literature, but rarely is it the main theme of litera-
ture written before the 18th century. The work done
by soldiers—who labor to achieve victory or exact
revenge, engage their tasks under obligation, and
persist under the most unpleasant conditions—is
one of the subjects of both Homer’s The iLiad and
Virgil’s The aeneid. Mythical heroes frequently
endure difficult tasks: Hercules accomplishes 12
labors to atone for killing his children and later joins
Jason in his arduous search for the golden fleece.
These battles, punishments, and quests, however,
differ from what we normally consider work, such
as toiling in fields and households. Ancient writers,
like their counterparts in philosophy, would have
considered such manual laborers unworthy of seri-
ous attention. In fact, the negative attitude toward
manual labor is echoed in Genesis 3:16–19, where
hard work is depicted as punishment for human-
ity’s sinfulness in the Garden. Adam’s transgression
earned men a lifetime of “painful toil,” while Eve’s
earned women “pains in childbearing.” After the
Fall, humanity would survive only through very
hard labor.
When laborers do show up in classical literature,
they are often little more than stock characters,
such as shepherds, used to idealize rural life, a liter-
ary custom continued in medieval literature, where
workers serve primarily as allegorical symbols meant
to encourage humility, patience and devotion to
Christian principles. In The canterbury taLes,
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Plowman, “a true worker...
living in peace and perfect charity,” exemplifies that
tradition, but unlike his predecessors and many of
his contemporaries, Chaucer describes his working
characters in highly realistic terms. His company
of pilgrims, all of them identified by their occupa-
tions (even the Wife is a professional of sorts), are
drawn in exquisite and differentiating detail. With
Chaucer, workers in literature have faces and per-
sonalities. Although the tales’ prologue includes
a number of themes regarding work (our words
should be matched by our actions; the most honor-
able labor is done in the service of humanity), the
poem is not about work. Work as a central subject in
literature was still very rare at this time, and while
writers after Chaucer were more inclined to portray
workers as individuals rather than as symbols, the
portraits were often dismissive and unflattering.
Writers, who tended to come from the educated and
moneyed classes, seldom looked with much empathy
on manual laborers.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, writers in En-
gland and America begin to devote more attention
to the lives and experience of workers (maids, shep-120 work