Wednesday 15 May 2013

The working class, if you like, then. But they smell just the same.

'Of course I know you’re a Socialist. So am I. I mean we’re all Socialists nowadays. But I don’t see why you have to give all your money away and make friends with the lower classes. You can be a Socialist and have a good time, that’s what I say.’
‘Hermione, dear, please don’t call them the lower classes!’
‘Why not? They are the lower classes, aren’t they?’
‘It’s such a hateful expression. Call them the working class, can’t you?’
‘The working class, if you like, then. But they smell just the same.’
‘You oughtn’t to say that kind of thing,’ he protested weakly.
‘Do you know, Philip, sometimes I think you like the lower classes.’
‘Of course I like them.’
‘How disgusting. How absolutely disgusting.’

G. Orwell, Keep the aspidistra flying (1936), 108-9

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