Eliza Doolittle in Waitrose: Social class, gatekeeping and the creative arts

Clare Bailey

The class system is a remarkable achievement.

Most societies with rigid social hierarchies at least have the decency to admit they possess them, yet in the (not) very United Kingdom and here in Wales, we perform a more sophisticated trick: we preserve them while simultaneously insisting that they no longer exist.

Some years ago, a figure of considerable local and cultural standing, with what many would consider social capital, referred to me as Eliza Doolittle on several occasions.

The reference was clear enough. George Bernard Shaw’s flower seller had scrubbed up, learned the correct vowels and acquired provisional access to a world from which she had previously been excluded.

I was flattered, naturally. I guess there are worse fictional characters to resemble than this one. Yet I could not help noticing that Professor Higgins only becomes necessary when somebody has already decided who belongs and who does not. The remark lingered, as did some of the encounters that followed.

I found myself effectively excluded from a local creative network for reasons so bizarre in their eccentricity that I briefly wondered whether I had wandered into an unwritten chapter of Under Milk Wood.

The issue, apparently, was food. The individual in question informed me that the problem was, and I quote:

“You buy your vegetables in supermarkets, and all my friends grow theirs.”

This information was delivered with a seriousness normally reserved for peace negotiations or constitutional reform, and so I did attempt a defence.

Had I not seen a Waitrose with my own eyes? Was Waitrose not, despite its carefully displayed organic vegetables and ambient middle-class reassurance, still a supermarket? The defence made no difference, and it was at this point that I began to suspect we were not discussing food.

No sane society constructs a hierarchy based on courgettes and carrots, but here I was, not being allowed access for reasons that remain, to this day, the most bizarre ever given for an exclusion.

Around this same time, I was informed that another person within this orbit had also taken against me because, in their view, I talked too much when we met. This was troubling news.

The encounter in question had taken place at a social gathering, and I had laboured under the genuine impression that conversation was the principal activity. I asked questions, I listened, and I showed genuine curiosity.

Growing up in Holyhead, this had always struck me as a conventional way of interacting with another human being. I had assumed I was being polite. Apparently not. I was damned.

Many of the people involved considered themselves egalitarian: pleasant people in the abstract, deeply committed to equality, sustainability and social justice, so long as these admirable values did not interfere with long-established assumptions about who naturally occupied which rung of the ladder, who was allowed in, for how long and under what conditions.

I had assumed we were all participating in a conversation, yet it dawned on me that I may have been participating in an assessment. That suspicion deepened when a member of the same milieu appeared to decide, entirely independently, that I should undergo some form of intellectual examination, and what followed felt like an Oxbridge admissions interview conducted by somebody who had misplaced the university.

Uncomfortable

Questions were posed, arguments were tested, and positions were challenged. It was very uncomfortable, but fortunately I held my own.

The verdict was later relayed to me by an intermediary: apparently, I was smart. It was reassuring to know because, until then, I had relied mainly on rumour, and I suppose I should have been grateful, as not everyone receives certification. Yet what interested me was the assumption underlying the exchange. Who had appointed this individual as the examiner? More importantly, when had I applied?

The oddest experiences, however, were often the smallest.

Over the years I have met people at events, spoken with them for hours, shared drinks, meals and occasionally entire evenings, only to discover later that they developed an acute inability to recognise me in daylight. A conversation at a festival might be followed by a blank stare on the high street. At first, I assumed people simply hadn’t recognised me, but then it kept happening again and again and again.

Unnerving

One of the most unnerving was at an exhibition. I was introduced to someone by an artist and I naturally exclaimed, “We’ve met,” because we had met about 13 times, so imagine my shock when they said, “Have we?”

I confess I was astonished, and I pondered that for a long time until it dawned on me that what I was encountering and running into relentlessly was what I call social games. I mean, who behaves like this?

Well, the answer, I discovered, is rather more people than you might imagine, and these moments possess a peculiar social function. They are not quite insults, too subtle for that.

Nor are they misunderstandings. They are signals, social games about belonging and status, about who is regarded as part of the furniture and who is a temporary visitor. I mean, nothing puts a person in their place more effectively than behaving as though they were never in the room to begin with.

All this was about class and hierarchy, and people who can’t connect with others in a relational way, only hierarchically. But it was also a subtle way of reminding you that you do not really belong, that you are not really accepted; a way of keeping you in your lane and warning you not to get ideas above your station.

After all, I was also informed (with authority) that I wasn’t an artist because I hadn’t been to art school, and so who the hell was I to think otherwise?

Egalitarians

The modern gatekeeper rarely recognises themselves as a gatekeeper. That would require acknowledging the gate exists in the first place.

They are all egalitarians, after all, which is precisely what makes them so fascinating. And, occasionally, so funny. It’s as if writing words on social media bios or publicly aligning themselves with noble causes is enough.

Because if there is one lesson I have taken from my brief period as Eliza Doolittle in Waitrose and other encounters, it is that the class society did not disappear.

It simply learned better manners, and the gate remains firmly in place.

The only difference is that the gatekeepers now insist there isn’t one.

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