4 ideas
Charles Pooter, a clerk, is thrilled when he and his wife Carrie are invited to a Lord Mayor's reception at the Mansion House for tradesmen and representatives. He then spends days checking the newspapers for his name in the guest list, and finds it left out or misprinted. The invitation he treated as proof of rising status only exposes how precarious that status is.
A narrator who records his own life in earnest shows the reader the gap between how he sees himself and how others treat him. The comedy works because the diarist lovingly records his puns, his grievances and the slights he takes as proof of his importance, while the reader sees snubs, condescension and absurdity. Read any self-authored record for what the author finds significant, not only for what happened.
For the respectable lower middle class, the greatest threat to status is being confused with the people just below, such as tradesmen, servants and shopkeepers. Pooter's energy goes into rows with his butcher, his laundress and the grocer's boy, and into keeping his distance from those people, far more than into rising above his real superiors. The narrower the margin separating you from those beneath you, the more fiercely you police that border.
Pooter argues that his diary is worth publishing even though he is not a 'Somebody', because the record's value does not depend on the writer's fame. The book tests this claim: the small matters of the diary, such as tradesmen, dinner guests, a son's debts and loyalty to a firm, add up to a full picture of a social world and a decent man. His long service is finally rewarded when his employer, Mr Perkupp, buys the freehold of the house and gives it to him. The claim is that the trivial and the mocked can also carry real worth.