Not that our less predictable behaviour at intimate celebrations is in any way 'ungrammatical'. Such events are a bit like irregular verbs: they have their own rules, which allow a much greater degree of warmth, spontaneity and openness than we usually permit ourselves. We are not 'breaking the rules' at these intimate rites. In private, among people we know and trust, the rules of Englishness specifically allow us to behave much more like normal human beings.
CLASS RULES
But rather than end on that touching, encouraging note, I'm now going to talk about class. Again. Surely you didn't think we'd get through a whole chapter with just a couple of passing references to the class system?
You can probably do this bit yourself by now. C'mon, have a go: what are the main differences between a working-class funeral and a middle-class one? Or the indicators of a middle-middle versus an upper-middle wedding? Discuss with special reference to material-culture class indicators, sartorial class indicators and class-anxiety signals. Oh, all right, I'll do it - but don't expect anything very surprising: you can see, from what Jane Austen called 'the tell-tale compression of the pages', that we're nearly done here, and if we haven't got the hang of English class indicators and anxieties by now, we never will.
As you might expect, there is no such thing as a classless rite of passage among the English. Every detail of a wedding, Christmas, house-warming or funeral, from the vocabulary and dress of the participants to the number of peas on their forks, is determined, at least to some extent, by their social class.
Working-class Rites
As a general rule, working-class rites of passage are the most lavish (in terms of expenditure relative to income). A working-class wedding, for example, will nearly always be a big 'do', with a sit-down meal in a restaurant, pub 'function room' or hotel; a big fancy car to take the bride to the church; the full complement of matching bridesmaids in tight, revealing dresses; a huge, three-tiered cake; guests in glamorous, brand-new, Sunday-best outfits and matching accessories; a specialist wedding-photographer and a professional wedding-video firm; a big, noisy evening party with dancing and free-flowing booze; a honeymoon somewhere hot. No expense spared. 'Nothing but the best for our princess.'
Working-class funerals (huge, elaborate wreaths; top-of-the-range coffin), Christmases (expensive gifts; copious quantities of food and drink), children's birthdays (the latest high-tech toys, high-priced football strip and top-brand-name trainers) and other rites operate on much the same principles. Even if one is struggling financially, it is important to look as though one has spent money and 'pushed the boat out'. A day trip to Calais to buy large quantities of cheap drink (known as a 'booze cruise') is a favoured means of achieving this.
Lower-middle and Middle-middle Rites
Lower-middle and middle-middle rites of passage tend to be smaller and somewhat more prudent. To stick with the wedding example: lower- and middle-middle parents will be anxious to help the couple with a mortgage down-payment rather than irresponsibly 'blowing it all on a big wedding'. There is still great concern, however, that everything should be done 'properly' and 'tastefully' (these are the classes for whom wedding-etiquette books are written), and considerable stress and anxiety over relatives who might lower the tone or bring disgrace by getting drunk and 'making an exhibition of themselves'.
If the working-class ideal is the glamorous celebrity wedding, like Posh and Becks's, the lower-middle and middle-middle aspirational benchmark is the royal wedding - no themes or gimmicks, everything 'traditional' and every detail dainty and effortfully elegant. These bourgeois or wannabe-bourgeois weddings are very contrived, carefully coordinated affairs. The 'serviettes' match the flowers, which 'tone with' the place-cards, which in turn 'pick up' the dominant colour of the mother-of-the-bride's pastel two-piece suit. But no-one notices all this attention to detail until she draws their attention to it. The food is bland and safe, with hotel-style menus of the kind that call mash 'creamed potatoes'. The portions are not as generous as those at the working-class wedding, although they are more neatly presented, and 'garnished' with parsley and radishes carved into flower-shapes. The 'fine wines' run out too soon, calculations of glasses-per-head having been somewhat miserly, but the Best Man still manages to get drunk and break his promise to keep his speech 'clean'. The bride is mortified, her mother furious. Neither reprimands the offender, as they don't want to spoil the day with an unseemly row, but they hiss indignantly to each other and to some aunts, and treat the Best Man with frosty, tight-lipped disapproval for the rest of the afternoon.
Upper-middle Rites
Upper-middle rites of passage are usually less anxiously contrived and overdone - at least among those upper-middles who feel secure about their class status. Even among the anxious, an upper-middle wedding aims for an air of effortless elegance, quite different from the middle-middles, who want you to notice how much hard work and thought has gone into it. Like 'natural-look' make-up, the upper-middle wedding's appearance of casual, un-fussy stylishness can take a great deal of thought, effort and expense to achieve.
For class-anxious upper-middles, especially the urban, educated, 'chattering' class, concern is focused not so much on doing things correctly as on doing them distinctively. Desperate to distinguish and distance themselves from the middle-middles, they strive not only to avoid twee fussiness, but also to escape from the 'traditional'. They can't have the 'same old conventional Wedding March' or the 'same old boring hymns' as the mock-Tudor middle-middles or, God forbid, the inhabitants of semi-detached Pardonia. They choose obscure music for the bride's entrance, which no-one recognizes, so the guests are still chattering as the bride makes her way up the aisle - and little-known, difficult hymns that nobody can sing. The same principle often extends to the food, which is 'different' and imaginative but not necessarily easy or pleasant to eat, and the clothes, which may be the latest quirky, avantgarde fashions, but are not always easy to wear or to look at.
Older couples - and the upper-middles tend to marry later - will often have a register-office wedding (in some cases under the misapprehension that belief in God is required for a church ceremony) or even an 'alternative' secular ceremony at which they exchange vows they have written themselves. Curiously, the gist of these is usually much the same as the traditional church marriage-vows, only rather more long-winded and less well expressed.
Upper-class Rites
Upper-class weddings tend to be more traditional, although not in the studied, textbook-traditional manner of the lower- and middle-middles. The upper classes are accustomed to big parties - charity balls, hunt balls, large private parties and the big events of The Season are a normal part of their social round - so they don't get as flustered about weddings and other rites of passage as the rest of us. An upper-class wedding is often a quite muted, simple affair. They do not all rush out to buy special new 'outfits' as they have plenty of suitable clothes already. The men all have their own morning suits and, as far as the women are concerned, Ascot may require something a bit special but, 'One goes to so many weddings - can't be expected to keep ringing the changes every time,' as one very grand lady told me.
The Sour-grapes Rule
If they cannot afford a big wedding (or funeral, Christmas, birthday, anniversary) the upper-middles and upper classes will often make a rather sour-grapey virtue of this, saying that they 'don't want a big, flashy production, just a simple little family party with a few close friends', rather than running up credit-card debts like the working classes, or dipping reluctantly into savings like the lower- and middle-middles. The English modesty rule, with its associated distaste for ostentatious displays of wealth, serves the impecunious higher echelons welclass="underline" anything they cannot afford can be dismissed as 'flashy' or 'vulgar'. Big, glamorous weddings are regarded as decidedly 'naff', as Jane Austen pointedly reminds us by describing her upper-class heroine Emma Woodhouse's wedding as a small, quiet one in which 'the parties have no taste for finery or parade', and having the ghastly, pretentious, jumped-up Mrs Elton exhibit typically middle-class poor taste when she complains that the proceedings involved 'Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!'