A matter of class

That perennial British topic, what class are you. Not actually a survey, so don't feel obliged to answer that part directly! More does the class you consider yourself to be depend on your current circumstances or where your roots are?

I was having a long (slightly drunken) discussion which I won't bore you with, during which I was told that I was "clearly middle class". Well, no, actually, I don't think I am. I accept that I have a what looks like a middle class life; I have a university education, professional job, my own house, husband, two cars, but I don't feel middle class. My background is much more menial than that, my upbringing based on achieving by merit and I think my mindset still reflects that. I think of myself as a working class girl done good - which isn't quite the same as being middle class.

Any thoughts? Or is that just another example of my twisted little mind tying itself into unnecessary knots.

Having a university education, professional job, own house, etc. makes you middle class whether you identify with it or not. Being a working class girl done good does not exclude you from being middle class.

I also come from a working class background. I lived in a council house. My dad was a builder, my mother a textile worker. I had the good fortune to be bright enough to attend a grammar school where for the first time I came into contact with middle class kids. My best friend's father had a music room with a white grand piano. The family ate salad served from a salad bowl and drank wine. I quickly aspired to leave behind my working class roots. I was successful and I am now most definitely middle class.

>1 Helenliz:
I think there is a halfway house between working class and middle-class which is inhabited by those of us who escaped via education, but who have never really come to terms with a middle class lifestyle. I've never got used to having wine with meals, or eating three courses, and I still refer to the meal in the middle of the day as dinner.

I worked for many years in an independent school; most of the staff had a middle class childhood, and whenever I described my childhood in a terraced house with no bathroom or hot water they would regard me in horror, as if I was an alien. Yet several of them were addicted to watching Corrie and other soaps. It was as if poverty-stricken working class life existed elsewhere, for their amusement. Living in a bubble taken to the extreme.

Margaret

>3 mlfhlibrarian:: Like you I worked for quite a time in an independent school (girls' boarding) but I came from a fairly comfortable background so not really 'working class' although in the 1950s (my teenage years) my grandma who lived less than a mile away lived in a row of mill cottages which all had outside 'lavvies' But at the school it was my Lancashire accent which sometimes made the girls laugh - obviously I hadn't had the benefit of elocution lessons. For some at least it probably placed me as lower class.

>4 PossMan:,
I did my best to retain my accent when I moved down the London, but I've acquired an overlay of Sarf Lunnon over the years. I'm from St Helens, or Sintellins as we say it - which part of Lancashire are you from?

>5 mlfhlibrarian:: Ramsbottom. Just a few miles north of Bury and about 12 from Manchester but departed south in mid-60s. My wife is Scottish and since 1995 we've been in Inverness. I'm not sure what my current accent is but down south people pick it up as Scottish and here I'm clearly English. I used to know someone who could identify an English accent to within a small area, but nowadays increased mobility must make it much harder to do that.

>3 mlfhlibrarian: I think I agree, Margaret - I may be middle class, but I'm not sure I poses a middle class mentality.

>6 PossMan: Ah, Ramsbottom, that well-known snake in Sooty and Sweep ;) Yes, your accent would be more authentic Lanky than mine, people from St Helens are infected with a pseudo-Scouse accent. True Scousers refer to us as 'wooliebacks' - because we act like sheep, supposedly :)

>7 Helenliz: I was brought up by my grandparents, who were what you might call 'genteel working-class'...they were teetotal, were avid churchgoers and very keen on 'booklearning', which was why I was allowed to go to uni. So I fitted in quite well at grammar school, in fact some of the staff seemed unaware of my background. Like darrow, I took to it like a duck to water. But when I got to uni, and even more so when I began working, I felt somewhat out of my depth, almost like a fraud, or does that sound daft? It's a lack of confidence I suppose. One thing I do envy people who went to private school, is their confidence and air of social ease in any situation, I've never managed to acquire that.