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Unit 5: Are the Rich Happy? by Stephen Leacock

I left very quietly a little later, without going up to the drawing room. A few days afterwards I Notes
heard that Meadows had gone. The Ashcroft-Fowlers, I am told, are giving up in despair. They
are going to take a little suite of ten rooms and four baths in the Grand Palaver Hotel, and rough
it there for the winter.
Yet one must not draw a picture of the rich in colours altogether gloomy. There are cases among
them of genuine, light-hearted happiness.
I have observed that this is especially the case among those of the rich who have the good
fortune to get ruined, absolutely and completely ruined. They may do this on the Stock Exchange
or by banking or in a dozen other ways. The business side of getting ruined is not difficult. Once
the rich are ruined, they are—as far as my observation goes—all right. They can then have
anything they want.
I saw this point illustrated again just recently. I was walking with a friend of mine and a motor
passed bearing a neatly dressed young man, chatting gaily with a pretty woman. My friend
raised his hat and gave it a jaunty and cheery swing in the air as if to wave goodwill and
happiness.
“Poor old Edward Overjoy!” he said, as the motor moved out of sight.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“Hadn’t you heard?” said my friend. “He’s ruined—absolutely cleaned out—not a cent left.”
“Dear me!” I said. “That’s awfully hard. I suppose he’ll have to sell that beautiful motor?”
My friend shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “He’ll hardly do that. I don’t think his wife would
care to sell that.”
My friend was right. The Overjoys have not sold their motor. Neither have they sold their
magnificent sandstone residence. They are too much attached to it, I believe, to sell it. Some
people thought they would have given up their box at the opera. But it appears not. They are too
musical to care to do that. Meantime it is a matter of general notoriety that the Overjoys are
absolutely ruined; in fact, they haven’t a single cent. You could buy Overjoy—so I am informed—
for ten dollars.

But I observe that he still wears a seal-lined coat worth at least five hundred.

!
Caution Remember that in his essay Are the Rich Happy? Stephen Leacock only states the
problems of the rich people; he doesn’t say that the rich are always unhappy.

5.2.1 Analysis of Are the Rich Happy?

From 1908 until his retirement in 1936, Leacock was the head of the Department of Economics
and Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. In his free time, Leacock published
several best-selling collections of humorous tales and essays.
Written by Stephen Leacock, the satirical essay “Are You Happy?” initially appeared in the
collection Further Foolishness: Sketches and Satires on the Follies of the Day by Stephen Leacock
(John Lane Company, 1916). In this essay, Leacock anticipates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation
that the “very rich . . . are different from you and me” (“The Rich Boy”).
This essay Are You Happy? studies the rich and whether they are happy. Referring to personal
experience and things Leacock has perceived, he assesses and criticizes what the rich consider
problems. He mentions that when they lose a servant, it’s a tragedy, and examining their

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