But if you only have the money and don't get the behaviour right, like many football players, then you don't change class.
My thought exactly when I recently saw David Beckham in a print ad for a fancy, traditional British car (Daimler or something).
VinnyD #7, if a US presidential candidate can say "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me", then surely anything is possible.
There is definitely a range of classes in the British upper class, Debrett's peerage is still published so everyone can figure out exactly, precisely, what status any member of the upper (ie artistocratic) class has relative to all the others.
It's the same in most organizations I've ever been in, there's some sort of classification system, although instead of Dukes, Earls and Barons there's President, Executive Director, Manager, Supervisor, Clerk.
iviehoff:
>That's why those Victorian novels are all obsessed with money.
But it's not only about money in the novels. The idea of a respectable young man from a "good family" marrying a kitchenmaid is not only absurd, it's unthinkable. The classes were living on different planets as far as social mixing was concerned. But when on the last page the kitchenmaid is discovered to be the long-lost daughter of an earl, everyone is delighted, they get married and live happily ever after. So where does money come into that? It's "blood", in other words descent.
satchie:
>It's the same in most organizations I've ever been in, there's some sort of classification system, although instead of Dukes, Earls and Barons there's President, Executive Director, Manager, Supervisor, Clerk.
But a clerk can be promoted to supervisor, then to manager... and may end up as the president of the corporation one day. Barons are not promoted to earls. These fine gradations are either a matter of descent, you are a baron because you are the eldest son of a baron (something that's been in the family since the time of Charles II because your ancestor polished the king's shoes), and your eldest son will be a baron in his turn, or it's an honour that is granted by the monarch for merit, because of your achievements - a great scientific breakthrough perhaps - but that isn't hereditary.
But it's not only about money in the novels. The idea of a respectable young man from a "good family" marrying a kitchenmaid is not only absurd, it's unthinkable.
Indeed, but since it is so unthinkable it's rarely even mentioned. But marrying someone with no money is close to unthinkable. Thus, more often, they are balancing up whether they should marry someone of "good family" but no money, or someone from a manufacturer's family (or retailer, merchant, financier, etc) who has money. Indeed the wealthy daughters of manufacturers are particularly attractive to the impecunious sons of people of "good family" as they can help restore the finances of such a family without so obviously affecting the breeding, while allowing said manufacturer to get himself accepted by the proper social circles; wealthy daughters of good family tend to be in short supply. Of course , in Dickens or Trollope, the impecunious person of good family often then comes into money due to some secret arrangement, and it is all happy ever after, and they don't have to marry the manufacturer. Or, as you say, the chambermaid is the secret daughter of a lord.
Iviehoff: It has always seemed to me that women might sometimes be able to jump classes (particularly by marriage as their new status married to a higher class person might confer acceptability) but men probably not (or certainly it would always be very difficult because everyone wants to know where they came from and, having found out, would then not "accept" them as part of the higher class).I don't think money helps, really. Mrs T never really made it into upper middle because she was constantly referred to as a grocer's daughter from Grantham.
I'm not British, but wasn't Sir Denis Thatcher upper middle class? (School: Mill Hill.) And if so, doesn't that mean that either Lady Thatcher did make it into the upper middle classes or that you're wrong that women can join the class they marry into?
What class is Sir Mark Thatcher (Harrow)?
I would say that Mrs T even entered the upper classes, consorting with the powerful people of the planet, and patrician both in manner and speech. It doesn't matter how many times we were reminded she was a grocer's daughter from Grantham: she went to Oxford and became a lawyer, married a wealthy man, and quickly acquired the manners of the upper middle classes she had entered.
There was a lot of upward social mobility in mid-century Britain because of the selective grammar schools. My father, the son of a fitter in the industrial NW, like Mrs T, got into the local grammar school, then Manchester University and was well on his way to joining the educated middle classes, which he thoroughly embraced in nearly every aspect of his life.
What class is Sir Mark Thatcher (Harrow)?
He is a baronet, a hereditary title, albeit the most junior. His wife is the sister of a viscountess. He has serious money. Is there any doubt as to the answer to that question?
Having a criminal conviction for supporting an attempted coup; being suspected of being linked to corrupt Middle Eastern defence deals; showing amusing incompetence like getting lost in the Sahara desert in a car rally; spending most of his time hanging around bland resorts like Marbella: these things are not inconsistent with his upper class status. Indeed they are just the sort of stuff the upper classes have always got away with precisely because of their money and connections.
I thought I had read that now there was more intergenerational social mobility in the UK than in the US, but it appears I was wrong. It's nearly a tie, but the US, Italy, and the UK, in that order, are at the top (or bottom) of the table among developed countries.