Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  If the working-class ideal is the flamboyant, lavish ‘celebrity’ wedding, such as those of wealthy pop stars, footballers and glamour-models, the lower-middle and middle-middle aspirational benchmark is the royal wedding. For these classes, this generally means a fairly ‘traditional’ wedding with no wacky themes or gimmicks, although some of the more tame, generic and inoffensive themes, such as ‘English Country Garden’, are creeping up the social scale, and secular weddings in non-traditional locations are increasingly popular. The location must be suitably romantic and ‘weddingy’, though (no football clubs or amusement parks), and every detail must be dainty and effortfully elegant. These bourgeois or wannabe-bourgeois weddings are very contrived, carefully co-ordinated 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, funeral or Christmas 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, unfussy 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 often focused not so much on doing things correctly as on doing them distinctively. Desperate to distinguish and distance themselves from the Philistine, uncultured middle-middles, they strive not only to avoid twee fussiness, but also to escape from the more banal aspects of ‘traditional’ weddings. 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 recognises, 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, avant-garde fashions, but are not always easy to wear or to look at.

  Unfortunately for these determinedly eccentric upper-middles, ‘unusual’ secular weddings have now become more popular among the working classes and lower-middle/middle-middle classes, so they are no longer charmingly distinctive and might even be compared with the vulgar ‘themed’ weddings favoured by the lower classes. The upper-middles are therefore reverting to more traditional locations, ceremonies and vows, which they can now reframe as charmingly ‘retro’.

  Upper-class Rites

  Upper-class weddings tend to be fairly traditional, although not in the studied, textbook-traditional manner of many 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. Upper-class couples generally have no desire to make their weddings ‘different’ or distinctive, and very rarely write their own vows. Even at register-office weddings, where the traditional church vows are not permitted, they will choose the simplest of the ‘standard’ vows on offer.

  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 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 well: anything they cannot afford can be dismissed as ‘flashy’ or ‘vulgar’. (Big, glamorous weddings have long been 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!’)

  Lower- and middle-middles can use the same modesty principle to good effect by calling the extravagant celebrations they secretly envy ‘wasteful’ and ‘silly’, and talking disparagingly about people with ‘more money than sense’. The ‘respectable’ upper-working class sometimes use this line as well: it emphasises their prudent respectability and makes them sound more middle class than the more common working-class approach, which is to express sniffy contempt for the ‘stuck-up’ ‘showing off’ of big, ‘fancy’ celebrations. ‘She had to have a big posh do in a hotel,’ said one of my informants, referring to a neighbour’s silver wedding anniversary. ‘This [their local pub, where our conversation took place] wasn’t good enough for her. Stuck-up cow.’

  The economic recession has resulted in a significant increase in the use of these sour-grapes comments. The cloud of austerity has a silver lining, in that lavish celebrations we cannot afford can now be smugly dismissed not only as ‘vulgar’, ‘wasteful’ or ‘stuck-up’ (by the higher, middle and working classes respectively), but also self-righteously condemned, by all classes, as ‘inappropriate when so many people are struggling’.

  RITES OF PASSAGE AND ENGLISHNESS

  Poring over the rules in this chapter, trying to figure out what each one tells us about Englishness and scribbling my verdicts in the margins, I was struck by how often I found myself scribbling the word ‘moderation’. This characteristic has featured significantly throughout the book, but in a chapter focusing specifically on our ‘high days and holidays’, our carnivals, festivals, parties and other celebrations, its predominance is perhaps a little surprising. Or maybe not. We are talking about the English, after all. By ‘moderation’, I don’t only mean the English avoidance of extremes, excess and intensity, but also the need for a sense of balance. Our need for moderation is closely related to our concern with fair play. Our tendency to compromise, for example, is a product of both fair play and moderation, as are a number of other English habits, such as apathy, woolliness and conservatism.

  Our benignly indifferent, fence-sitting, tolerant approach to religion is a product of moderation + fair play, with a dash of courtesy, a dollop of humour, possibly a pinch or two of empiricism. (Oh dear, I seem to have slipped from ‘equation’ to ‘recipe’ in mid-s
entence. This does not bode well for the final diagram.)

  The other principal themes emerging from this chapter are pretty much the usual suspects, but we can now see even more clearly how many of the unwritten rules governing our behaviour involve a combination of two or more defining characteristics. The one-downmanship rules of kid-talk, for example, are clearly a product of modesty and hypocrisy (these two seem to go together a lot – in fact, we very rarely find modesty without an element of hypocrisy) with a generous slosh of humour. In the self-deprecating insult rule, we see a typical example of utterly hypocritical ‘modesty’, combined with acute class-consciousness and humour (in this case irony) used as a weapon.

  The invisible-puberty rule is a more straightforward example of English social dis-ease. Pubescents and adolescents are essentially in an acute phase of this dis-ease (triggered or exacerbated by raging hormones). Our reluctance, as a society, to acknowledge the onset of puberty is a form of ‘denial’ – ostrichy behaviour that is in itself a reflection of our own social dis-ease. Social dis-ease can be ‘medicated’ to some extent with ritual, but our pubescents are denied any official rites of passage, and so invent their own. (The gap-year ordeal provides ritual medication, in the form of appropriate initiation rites, but rather late, and only for a privileged minority.) As noted earlier, however, we now finally have at least the beginnings of a ritual celebration of this transition, in the form of the increasingly popular end-of-primary-school ‘prom’. I hope and expect that this new custom (and the slightly later Sweet Sixteen celebrations and secondary-school proms) will become more firmly established – but it is also worth noting that both Eeyorishness and hypocrisy were again evident in some reactions to these innovations.

  The Freshers’ Week rules involve a combination of social dis-ease – medicated with both ritual and alcohol – and that distinctively English brand of ‘orderly disorder’, a reflection of our need for moderation. The exam and graduation rules combine modesty with (as usual) an equal quantity of hypocrisy, plus a large dollop of Eeyorishness, seasoned with humour and a hint of moderation.

  Our matching rites seem to trigger a rash of social dis-ease symptoms. The money-talk taboo is social dis-ease + modesty + hypocrisy, with class variations. At weddings, we find again that the symptoms of social dis-ease can be effectively alleviated with humour, and the painful ‘natural experiment’ of funerals shows us how bad the disease symptoms can get without this medication, as well as highlighting our penchant for moderation again. The tear quotas involve a combination of moderation, courtesy and fair play.

  The celebration excuse and its associated magical beliefs are another example of social dis-ease medicated with alcohol and ritual. The Christmas moan-fest and bah-humbug rule combine Eeyorishness with courtesy and hypocrisy, while the Christmas-present rules blend courtesy and hypocrisy again. The New Year’s Eve orderly-disorder rule is about moderation again, as well as the now very familiar attempts to control social dis-ease symptoms with alcohol and ritual – also evident in most of the minor calendricals. Holidays involve more of the same, and highlight our need to limit excess and indulgence – our need for moderation.

  The class rules governing our rites of passage are about class-consciousness, of course, but also involve the usual close relation of this trait, hypocrisy – and in particular that special English blend of modesty and hypocrisy, which all the social classes seem to exhibit in equal degree.

  Although we retain our squeamishness about earnestness at intimate, private transitional rites, they represent one of our very few genuine escapes from our debilitating social dis-ease. (The other main escape is sex, also a private matter.) Our fanatical obsession with privacy may be a symptom of our social dis-ease, but we also value privacy because it allows us some relief from this affliction. At home, among close family, friends and lovers, we can be warm and spontaneous and really quite remarkably human. This is the side of us that many visitors to this country never see, or only catch rare glimpses of. You have to be patient to witness it – like waiting for giant pandas to mate.

  115. I quoted a much higher percentage in the 2004 edition, but this figure is more up to date, and also based on more reliable survey methods. The national census survey (among other sins) phrases the religion question in a misleading way, asking people, ‘What is your religion?’, which presupposes that respondents have a religion, and giving them a list of world religions to choose from – whereas the British Social Attitudes survey, for example, asks, ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion? If yes, which?’ followed by denominations.

  116. Incidentally, only 56 per cent believe in opinion polls.

  117. As the son of God, that is: they may believe that the historical person existed.

  118. The technical term for this is ‘apatheism’ (apathy + (a)theism), but this doesn’t quite convey the peculiarly English type of indifference I’m trying to describe here.

  119. Or at least, I thought I’d pretty much covered it, until an Anglican clergyman published a book (The Faith of the English) using Watching the English as his ‘key text’ and as the entire basis of an educational programme for church groups, with the aim of ‘integrating’ Christian faith and Englishness. I was surprised, to put it mildly, as all my observations on our tacit atheism, ‘benign indifference’ and so on in this chapter should have been enough to put anyone off such an attempt. But his book is intelligent and intriguing, and he deals with all my inconvenient observations – and my unflattering comments on his church – in typically English fashion, by politely ignoring them.

  120. Victor Turner later redefined ‘rites of passage’ to exclude calendrical rites, focusing only on transitions in which an individual is socially transformed, but as van Gennep invented the term I feel he should get to decide what it means, and I’m using his rather broader definition.

  121. Secular baby-naming ceremonies are becoming more popular, but still only a few hundred of the 800,000 or so babies born each year are welcomed in this manner.

  122. In terms of numbers of invited guests, at least. When christenings take place at a normal morning family service, numbers depend on how well attended the church is.

  123. By which I mean an ordinary ‘Christian’ or ‘traditional’ funeral, the kind that the majority of us still have, and that most English readers will have attended at some point. I do realise that there are many other sorts, but there is not space here to cover all the funeral practices of minority faiths, which in any case could not be described as ‘typically English’ as only about seven per cent of the population belong to these faiths.

  124. We seem to have a habit of renaming festivals after the main symbols associated with them, rather than the events they are supposed to commemorate: Remembrance Day is more widely known as Poppy Day, for example, after the red paper poppies we wear to remember the war-dead. The charity Comic Relief had the good sense to pre-empt us by calling their national fund-raising day Red Nose Day, after the red plastic noses we are encouraged to buy and wear, rather than trying to call it Comic Relief Day.

  125. I’m using the term ‘holidays’ in the British sense, meaning what Americans would call ‘vacations’.

  CONCLUSION: DEFINING ENGLISHNESS

  At the beginning, I set out to discover the ‘defining characteristics of Englishness’ by closely observing distinctive regularities in English behaviour, identifying the specific hidden rules governing these behaviour patterns, and then figuring out what these rules reveal about our national character. A sort of semi-scientific procedure, I suppose. Well, systematic, at least. But despite all the confident-sounding noises I was making in the Introduction, I had no idea whether or not it would work, as this approach to understanding a national character had not been tried before.

  It seems to have worked. Or maybe that’s a bit presumptuous. What I mean is that this approach has certainly given me a better understanding of the ‘grammar’ – or ‘mindset’ or ‘ethos’ or ‘gemeing
eist’ or ‘cultural genome’ or whatever you want to call it – of Englishness. Now, when I witness some apparently bizarre or ludicrous English behaviour (as I write this, we are in the middle of the Christmas-party season) I can say to myself, for example, ‘Ah, yes: typical case of social dis-ease, medicated with alcohol and festive liminality, + humour + moderation’. (I don’t usually say it out loud, because people would think I was bonkers.)

  The point of this Englishness project, however, was not to allow me to feel quietly smug and omniscient. The idea was that other people might find it helpful too. Judging by all the letters I receive, the 2004 edition of this book has been helpful – or at least it has contributed towards the anthropological mission of ‘making the strange familiar and the familiar strange’. But, as you know, I’ve been puzzling all this ‘strangeness’ out as we went along, chapter by chapter, so the book has been a bit like one of those maths tests where you have to ‘show the workings-out’ rather than just putting down the final answer. This means that if you think I’ve got the final answer to the ‘What is Englishness?’ question wrong, at least you can see exactly where I made my mistakes. It also means that, at this point, you know at least as much as I do about the defining characteristics of Englishness we’ve been trying to identify. I don’t have anything up my sleeve to pull out for a grand finale. You could write this final chapter yourself if you felt like it.

  THE LIST

  But I promised, at the very least, a definitive list of our defining characteristics, and at best some sort of model or diagram or recipe showing how they fit together. So let’s start with the List. During all the ‘workings out’, I seem to have developed a kind of shorthand way of referring to these characteristics, using a single term for each (‘social dis-ease’, ‘moderation’, ‘Eeyorishness’, etc.) without spelling out its entire meaning every time, and indeed often expanding, revising and refining my definitions of these terms in the light of new evidence, particularly when dissecting stereotypes such as English ‘courtesy’ and ‘modesty’, which turned out to be far more complex and full of contradictions than the colloquial use of these terms would suggest. Much as I love making up new words and playing with old ones, I do realise that there’s a danger here of us ending up with enough home-made woolly jargon to knit ourselves a whole pointless new discipline (Englishness Studies or something equally inane), with its own impenetrable dialect. To avoid this, and to save you the trouble of going back to check exactly what I meant by ‘empiricism’ or ‘fair play’ or whatever, I’ll try this time to give definitive definitions of each of the defining characteristics. There are ten of these: a central ‘core’ and then three ‘clusters’, which I have labelled reflexes, outlooks and values.