Posted by PeterH on December 06, 2006 at 19:54:29 from 86.130.137.218 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: the 'people's sheep' factor (was UHT milk posted by Adam Quinan on December 06, 2006 at 17:00:23:
I certainly agree with Peter and Adam about the futility of projecting 21st century values onto the 1930s. However, I find some things worrying even by the standards of the time. An example: In Swallowdale, Mrs Dixon addresses Susan as 'Miss Susan'. For most of my life, I barely noticed this, vaguely believing that Mrs D used 'Miss' because Susan was a young girl, and maybe also because Susan was a visitor and Mrs D felt she had to be polite to visitors out of a feeling of hospitality. Latterly, I have become aware that Mrs D may have used 'Miss' because she consciously or subconsciously detected that Susan was from a family higher up the social ladder than the Dixons. This I find rather a pity.
It is interesting that the Swallows refer to 'Mrs/Mr Dixon' - this is regardless of any class distinctions, being the way in which children then (and in my own era) were taught to address all adults outside their family. Now, in her turn, Mrs D may have felt that she could hardly address Susan as 'Miss Walker', being over-formal and also confusing, and that 'Susan' would be over-familiar and would not match the formality of 'Mrs Dixon'. Therefore she used a compromise - 'Miss Susan'.
There appear to have been no class distinctions when adult addressed adult. Mrs Walker would have said 'Mrs Dixon' and vice versa. So we are left with adult-to-child address as being the sole verbal tell-tale indication of a class difference.
The above is probably an idealistic way of explaining away what sociologists would see simply as class conventions in form of address. But I think I'll try to stick with it. BTW, IIRC, Nancy is addressed by natives as both 'Miss Nancy' and 'Miss Ruth'. Now what would that depend on? Perhaps, Ed, you could do a count?