Although I've said my own bit, I don't think ANYONE is actually qualified to talk about 'british social class' - and that includes George Orwell, whose own essays on 'class' strike me as nonsensical (he was an Etonian who chose to 'slum it'). Writing about the british class system has driven people mad: I know a couple of real burned-out cases!
That's true, old chap. It's open to many interpretations. And those definitions will alter and change depending on the class of the person who comes up with those definitions!
I think that his personal life was complex, but who hasn't experienced the loss of parent or other loved one, or parents who were divorced or separated when they were young? John was not the only one.
The Beatles themselves inadvertently (or 'advertently'!) helped to foster that idea, but it is far from the truth.
Not only that, his parents were not middle class at all. As someone else said Aunt Mimi was Hyacinth Bucket, an outwardly respectable middle class lady saddled with embarrassing working class relatives and background.
True. Mimi might have been middle class but his mother and father were not, so perhaps that's who John choose to identify with.
They weren't, and this is at the crux of the matter: when you compare Lennon's upbringing (his own bedroom in a substantial family house that was only occupied by three people) with the equivalent ones of McCartney (sharing a room with his brother in a council house), Harrison (sharing a room with several of his brothers in a council house) and Starr (dirt poor, by all accounts), it's clear that John was somewhat 'above the salt', as they used to say. McCartney has commented on his astonishment when he first visited Mendips - at how 'big' it was, how John had his own substantial library and basically wanted for nothing. It must've seemed like a different world!
Yes, it does seem like a bit of over compensation on John's part. "What a minute! I'm just as poorly off as you."
The Stanley family were middle-class and came from Woolton, (what was then) one of Liverpool's most prosperous suburbs. There is a rumour (can't recall where I read it) that they were distantly related to the 'real' Stanley family, one of the most important landed families in Britain, one of whose members played a decisive role in establishing the Tudor dynasty. Alfred Lennon was a tearaway and a tinker, hence Mimi's disapproval.
Wow, that's fascinating! I had no idea. But that kind places John in an even worse light! But I always thought that John's mom married "below her station", as they used to say.
I guess I’m just cynical. I was born in the mid-80s and graduated college right into the 2007/2008 financial crisis, which wiped out people’s savings—and their home values—in one fell swoop. My generation is way behind our parents, in terms of earnings, when they were our age. We’re dealing with crippling student loans from college (which cost roughly $50,000/year for a private college when I went, and $10-15k/year for a state school). Kids who are in college now are paying even more. It just feels like the system is completely stacked against regular people.
