Tackling Class in Romances

Class perception

In a prior post, I mention that class has more impact on contemporary relationships than most romance writers (and modern Westerners) will admit.

What I should have written was that class has more impact on contemporary relationships than most Western romance writers will allow for.

That is, plenty of romance writers will bring up issues of class surrounding money or education, so long as the upshot is that caring about class is just an awful, humiliating, baaad thing to do.

Tortuga skillfully addresses

the class distinctions that can occur

within middle America.

These romances will address the discomfort that one lover feels about not being as well-educated or as well-off as the other. That character feels uncomfortable around the other character's wealthy, overly educated family. Self-esteem issues arise.

And truthfully, this type of romance can be well-written--and not just by Britishers (who presumably have more historical experience with class distinctions). A number of American romance writers have captured this unease between lifestyles when discussing middle America versus New York/LA city life.

However, I will maintain that class is often ignored as an ongoing factor in Western culture and romance. When it supplies suitable villains, okay; as semi-aware calculation, not so much.

Darcy and Elizabeth begin to calculate class before they barely know each other. I'm not referring to Mrs. Bennet and her crowing boasts that her oldest daughter will marry well. Rather, Darcy is aware almost from Day One of the younger Bennet sisters' behavior, the Bennets' wealth (or relative lack thereof), the Bennets' relations by marriage.

Elizabeth does the same--as when she determines (correctly) that the Bingley sisters are operating slightly above the station into which they were born (they are less gracious than true gentry should act). She may be more flexible than Darcy in her calculations, but she knows what is owed her sister when Jane visits the Bingleys in London.

It is easy to perceive all these class distinctions in terms of crass money--as Mrs. Bennet largely does--but they go beyond that. When Darcy uses the words "easy distance" to describe the miles between a newly married woman and her parents, he is revealing a sophistication that is partly money-based (he can afford to live an "easy distance" away) but also experience-based. Elizabeth feels a bit like a "hick" because, well, she kind of is.

In many ways, manga tackles class in the

same unself-conscious way as Austen:

certain embedded class distinctions are

assumed and allowed for, then dealt with.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't get married. The point is that experience--books one has read, movies one has seen, travel one has taken, traditions one has maintained, ideas one has encountered, education one has experienced, neighbors one has befriended--is partly influenced by class, which includes not just money but the importance placed on those things by one's social peers.

It isn't about deciding that one set of experiences is more important than another: art shows versus bowling. It is about acknowledging that people want their experiences validated: I'm going to date someone who values the same things I do. That desire for validation doesn't stop simply because "class" has entered the picture and one is supposed to be more democratically minded.

Some of the more interesting romances are not the ones where the upper-class, wealthy, snobby family tries to prevent the marriage of their child to the poor, downtrodden, blue-collar lover. Rather, the more interesting romances are when members of two classes use the romantic journey to peep outside the box. What do I truly want? Is everything I have always valued what I wish to continue valuing? If so, why? If not, do I want something else? 

It's even better when both characters undergo that journey, not just one.