Highbrow and Lowbrow

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Woolf would not have approved, because A. C. Godley’s macaronic is nothing if not middlebrow. I suppose highbrow would be the Aeneid, and lowbrow would be “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.”

Where do Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and To the Lighthouse fit in? What brow are they? Did Woolf set out to write something highbrow, and would it still be highbrow if a bus conductor read it?

Merriam Webster, but essential is, with meanings as follows:

inherent
2 a : of the utmost importance : basic, indispensable, necessary <an essential requirement for admission to college> b : being a substance that is not synthesized by the body in a quantity sufficient for normal — compare nonessential 2

scathing comments on Woolf’s “servant problem” for a more realistic view.) Winterson thinks Orlando is “sexy, provocative and tantalising”:

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