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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (35239)	8/17/1999 2:41:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

I had never thought about this being related to that old formal parlor mentality, but most of the homes around here have a formal living room, very expensively furnished, and never used, because everyone heads for the family room which is big and open to the kitchen and has the TV. THey're silly little rooms, useless, like appendixes. But now you have me wondering if they're not some kind of class statement.

To: Ilaine who wrote (35239)	8/17/1999 2:51:00 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 71178

<<and the parlour that nobody uses strikes me as an expression of a belief in, or aspiration to, a social class that is "better". >> My parents rarely used their living room. It was 16x25 and had a fireplace that never saw a flame in 30 years. My mother would have it recarpeted and redecorated every 5 years. It was used for opening presents on Christmas Eve and twice a week my mother would sit in the room and smoke a cigarette using one of her her Wedgwood ashtrays. That was all my mother smoked, two butts a week. They also had a family room between the kitchen and garage and that is where everyone spent their time.

To: Ilaine who wrote (35239)	8/17/1999 3:02:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Blue, I would say there have always been two or three kinds of "upper class" in this country. One is the "upper class" of mone, often composed of "nouveaux riches," whose mentality was often as petty-bourgeois as the class they came from, and who had their own equivalents of the unused parlor and/or the plastic-covered furniture. Conspicuous consumption, a la Thorstein Veblen, is what we have here. Secondly, the "upper class" of old family, some of whose members used to affect beat-up VW bugs, rather than Rolls Royces. No unused parlours here. Thirdly, the "upper class" of what used to be called "cultivated" people. ("Intelligentsia" is too European a word.) They wouldn't be caught dead sitting in an unused parlor, let alone having one in their own homes. And they wouldn't even speak to a person who had plastic wrap on the furniture. Joan