So, a woman was trying to convince her dad to let her get married to a man she liked. Her dad said "you can't marry a man who was passed the soup from the wrong side of the table". Do British people still have strict ettiquettes? I even noticed in the movie Titanic that there was a certain way to sit, eat, walk, stand, and etc. Are they still this way (particularly the rich people)?
The key is that this was an upper class family 100 years ago, the Titanic sailed in 1912, and back then it certainly was the case that there was a "correct" way to do everything, your family could find any number of reasons to disapprove of who you want to marry, dinner should be served just so, no gentleman would ever be seen outside without a hat, no true lady would be seen ANYWHERE not wearing gloves, and all that kind of thing. "You can't do that, it's just not DONE!"
But this was a tiny section of society. It was nothing like that for the vast majority of people, who wouldn't even have had much education and struggled to make ends meet on working long hours for low wages, as I well know from my grandparents, who were small children at the time. My grandma was one of 13 children and got kept home from school all the time to help look after the younger ones (she was number 3 out of that lot). She never got anywhere with asking her parents why they kept having kids when they can't cope!
And it was still common for girls to go "into service" - servants for a middle or upper class family - a couple of her sisters did, and I have a great-grandma who was a housekeeper "in service" according to my other grandad's birth certificate dated 1902. I know what that meant... if you had any pretensions to being more than working class, you would have at least one servant, a maid or a housekeeper. It really was a divided society. You even see this in "Mary Poppins"... the family in that really was doing well. Mr Banks had a good job in a bank so he could afford THREE - a cook, a maid and a nanny to look after the children. Again that's set in 1910 - same period.
Grandad always said that the only reason he could afford to get married was that while working as a carpenter in building houses in the 1930s, he fell off the scaffolding one day, nearly died of breaking his neck and he could afford to put some money down on a house with the compensation.
And who do you think supported the upper classes in their luxury? The workers, with the upper classes making money out of their labours. No wonder we ended up with a strong trade union movement. For one example, I said that no lady would ever be seen not wearing gloves. Who made them? In the West Country of England, there were whole villages where the women made gloves by hand at home to make some more money to support their families. A lady needed dozens of pairs of gloves so the demand existed.
It is NOTHING like that now. A lot of what changed it was modern appliances, which meant the household chores became much less hard work and a housewife could manage by herself, so domestic service died out except for the very rich. The UK is a much more equal society than it was then. The only time you're likely to come across strict etiquette these days is at a very formal dinner party, and then it's more like fun to be different from normal, do things the old-fashioned "right" way and feel like you're part of how it used to be. If you're going to watch something set a century ago, recognise that it is history.
The moneyed classes in the 1900-20s were mostly very snobbish and obsessed with social status, so what you describe would be pretty accurate for the times. Etiquette amongst the upper classes is a bit more relaxed these days, but there is still quite a lot of stress on 'proper' behaviour, particularly at formal occasions.
There is still some snobbery and racism, obviously - for instance, in Alan Clark's 'Diaries' he mentions one of his son's fellow Army officers describing a gold coloured car as being painted in 'Jewish Racing Yellow', and his wife could apparently be quite sniffy about 'below-stairs types'.
That only ever applied to aristocrats and the extremely wealthy, not middle class or working class people
Try watching Shamless or East Enders to see the other side
And it wasn't just upper class Brits. Read Edith Wharton novels set in the US
Aristocrats around the world have had (and in some places still do) have extreme etiquette rules. They don`t really work and they have unlimited money, so they spend time having social dinners and making up rules. It's not by any means exclusive to England.
No. You are talking about costume dramas. I'm sure there are some people like that. However, generally, anybody with similar behaviour in today's UK would be a figure of fun.
Stop watching films and TV dramas thinking they are real...especially since they are set 100yrs ago and very likley produced by Americans, who have little understanding of the reality and work on stereotypes ( which are ignorance based ideas)
People who write that sort of show, both in the UK and elsewhere, frequently have no historical connections with the society they are imagining. It is a classic example of why you should 'write about what you know'.
Only an idiot would think the nonsense shown on a TV show was like real life
This is the 21st century, we Brits have moved on from that kind of nonsense.
Yes. We are, fortunately, not foeign
