"Shabby genteel": What is its history and generally accepted meaning?

See subject. Just read quickie Wiki entry (a shitty mangle-jangled one) on the playwright Sean O’Casey, who was, according to Mr. and Mrs. Wiki, not “working class” like his celebrated characters but “shabby genteel.”

Not quite getting that.

Of course, modern-day Irish, Brit, or US “working class” differ from back then. Don’t know about “shabby genteel.”

Anyone want to take a potshot or two?

I always took shabby genteel to mean born into a better class than you can afford right now. But specifically British as being much more acutely aware of subtle class differences than over here on the other side of the Atlantic.

Not a better class than you can afford: a high social class but not a high economic one.

This requires social class to be separate from economic one. it’s the inverse of someone who’s got the money and the diplomas but who isn’t allowed into “the right country club” because he’s the wrong color/religion/etc: this person is the right economic class but isn’t being allowed into the social class which would correspond to his economic position. Don Alonso Quijano was somewhat-shabby gentility: he was a “child of a noble house” (that’s the original meaning of hidalgo), but not one who could live without careful counting of pennies and occasional pinching thereof; a large-landowner living in the same area would have lived much better than what’s described in the first chapter of Don Quixote, being a higher economic class regardless of whether he was a higher social one or not.

Somebody whose financial position was no longer comparable with their social position. Usually a family which had fallen on hard times ( hard being relative of course), either a Nobel or more often a gentry family. They were expected to keep up appearances, although the money situation might and would hamper that. Work was usually out, they would lose said social position if they did. There were a few professions for a gentleman which were acceptable. The Bar was one of them and a very lucrative one. Unfortunately, you needed brains to get in. The Army or politics were others. Not as well paying, but might relieve you of some social expectation.
Everyone’s favourite solution? Marry someone rich.

There’s olde money, new money, and usta-be money. Shabby genteel (and it’s even harsher cousin “decent poverty”) is like the American usta-be money. It’s the worst of all worlds outside straight-up poverty. You get all the expectations, rules, etiquette, and wardrobe requirements of the high class, without any of the income.

So while new money is wishing they could get a copy of the rule book, we are wishing folks would refrain from applying it unfairly to us.

Shabby-genteel indicates someone whose clothes are high quality, but worn out. Indicating a decline in finances. It could also indicate someone like a teacher or clergyman who was expected to dress above their income. (Now days you can’t tell income from clothes.)

You can. The differences are not that stark.

Do you remember the name of the place?

I imagined Thackeray invented the phase, and looking up shabby genteel actually shows he wrote an unfinished novel, ‘A Shabby Genteel Story’.
Didn’t apply to him, despite his association with shifty characters in his fiction; not only slightly tragic, not only a little tick as we would say in England, he was also a striver who could not reach the social classes he amiably envied.
I am not a Whig, but Oh how I should like to be one ! he exclaimed.
( Thackeray was a nascent Liberal of the respectable middle class, same as a stockbroker or wine merchant: there were more types of whig than one can shake a stick at, but at that time he was referring to the aristocratic oligarchic masters, who had ruled for a century and a half, to whom the respectable middle class were no better than footmen. )
As for O’Casey, as is well-known, the bold revolutionary shunned his native land and settled down on an hotel on England’s south coast — the essence of shabby gentility from the 1840s to the 1940s in Europe was to live hand to mouth in a boarding-house or pension.

The name of the lugar no, but I do remember that neither did Don Miguel. The name of the region, which affects such things as the existence of latifundios or not, La Mancha - which did, and does, have latifundios (very large tracts of land). Placing the start of the story in La Mancha vs, say, Galicia is as significant as setting a story in Texas vs Vermont.

One fictional example is Max Bialystock - he’s quite hard-up for cash, but still has the manners and manner of the successful Broadway producer he once was (or once thought he might be), and he does his best to dress and behave (in public) up to that standard - but if you look closely, you’ll see his belt is cardboard and his tux is rented (and two weeks overdue).

Nothing to contribute to the question, but I wanted to share that I was reading that Wikipedia entry yesterday too.

The ladies Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility are shabby genteel. They are of the gentility, but when Mr. Dashwood dies, his estate and inheritance pass to his son from his first marriage, except for a small yearly allowance to his second wife and daughters. (This is not his fault, it was the rules of inheritance at the time.) They must therefore move to the small cottage on a distant relative’s estate. They still move in genteel social circles, but they do not have money for beef, much less new dresses and expensive travel.

Marianne ends up marrying money (although she does fall in love with him gradually, which is unlike her impetuous nature). Elinor marries a disinherited (ie, poor) man and they are invited to live on Marianne’s new estate. The youngest, Margaret, we don’t really learn the ultimate fate of, as she’s a teenager when the story ends.

In some ways, it was easier to be in this state if you were a woman, as it was expected and acceptable for you to live under the guardianship of a rich relative and eventually marry well on your family name. Men were in a tough spot. As already mentioned, you couldn’t become a merchant or a brick layer or other “trade” and still hang out with your gentlemen friends. Some could become lawyers or ministers or soldiers. Many of them end up being more or less couch-surfers, staying with one friend for a while and then going on to “visit” another for a while. In a time when transportation was on hooves, most visits were weeks or months long, rather than an afternoon or weekend*, so one could make this work for quite some time.

*Downton Abbey - "What Is A Weekend?" - YouTube

See also: “Poor relation”.

The question has been pretty well answered. The world wars created a lot of new taxes which knocked down the inherited wealth in many families, creating lots of shabby gentility. But there were always financial problems with maintaining big estates. Often the estates would go neglected for generations until someone managed to marry a wealthy heiress. Also, everyone except the first son in a family had to shift for themselves.

… I was going for a joke with you, 'cuz the first line of the book is En un lugar de La Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme… I was hoping you’d say something like, ‘I don’t care to remember it.’

Achhh, never mind…

I believe “genteel” comes from the same root as “gentleman” (in the sense of social class, not in the sense of manners as we often use it in the US).

There is a line in Pride and Prejudice (at least one of the movies) near the end where Elizabeth says to Lady Catherine that there is no difference of rank between herself and Mr. Darcy:

“He is a gentleman, and I am the daughter of a gentleman.” Or something like that.

Mr. Darcy is both rich and related to nobility (Lady Catherine, for one), so it’s easy to see how he would be considered a gentleman. He has no title, so he is not actual nobility himself. I believe Lady Catherine married into nobility, so she was merely gentle before that.

Mr. Bennett (Elizabeth’s father) has some kind of fairly modest inherited income, so he doesn’t have to work for a living either. During his life, at least, he owns the source of the income, even if it passes away from his immediate family on his death. (I believe it is mentioned in the book that Mr. Bennett married beneath his class, and this is one explanation for why Mrs. Bennett is so vulgar. Presumably she had other charms at the time which have faded after the rigors of having 5 children.)

To look at another character from an old movie, in “The Old Dark House” Charles Laughton plays a very rich man who is not a gentleman. He is an industrialist of some kind instead.

So a gentleman appears to be someone whose income is based on what he owns, rather than on what he does (Charles Laughton’s character works very hard being an industrialist; Mr. Darcy probably has someone to manage his estates for him). There are, apparently, exceptions, for a gentleman, especially a younger son, may go into a profession like the law, the clergy or the army (as already mentioned). A gentleman may not go into Trade or get a Job working for someone else, on pain of becoming middle class (a step down from gentility).

All this is a long way around the barn to say what has already been said - shabby gentility means that you can be received as a social equal by other gentle people due to your ancestry, but you do not have the means to hobnob with them as much as you would like. You must pinch pennies. You (or your wife if you are a man) will make many or most of the family’s clothes, especially the women’s clothes (men’s tailoring is rather more difficult). You may owe money at some of the shops, but since you are a gentleman they don’t send the sheriff after you to pay, nor take you to court, as long as you make some effort to pay some of it. You may be constantly overdrawn at your bank (which just means that the bank is giving you short-term loans to cover your checks). If you are lucky and can get away with it, you will be going out to dinner at other people’s houses much more often than you have them to yours. Especially if you have relatives who are better off - it is permitted to be too proud to accept actual money from them, but not too proud to eat at their table frequently. Shabby gentility was often the lot of spinsters who had no close relations with whom they could live and off of whom they could sponge.

This was life as a shabby genteel person in 19th century England, at any rate.
Roddy

A bit delicate there WhyNot.:wink: You seem to have diplomatically omitted to mention another common option; mistress. :smiley:

Very true. But even within those professions, it depends. Being a Barrister was acceptable. Being a Solicitor or Attorney was not. You also wanted a commission as an officer in a fashionable regiment, like the Guards or the Cavalry. Quite expensive and did not pay well in peace time, although your social status was maintained and you could hope to sell your commission and earn money and glory in wars.

Going to the colonies was another favoured practice.

Hmm. In Our Mutual Friend Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood are both young gentlemen who have set up as solicitors. I had always assumed that this meant they were accepted in Society (with a capital S). Now that I think about it, though, they’re always hanging around the Veneerings who are just silly nouveau riches, and though Lizzie Hexam calls Eugene a gentleman, she isn’t in a position to know the intricacies of the title. Are we supposed to be embarrassed for Mortimer and Eugene?

Ha! Well, yes. I’d actually forgotten that one. Good point!

Ooh! You sound like the kind of person who knows the difference! If it’s not too much of a hijack, could you translate those professions into American? I’ve never quite grokked them.