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Originally Posted by Selmo
Tolkien's rise up the class ladder was not as rapid as Sam's, nor did it reach as high but it ensured that his view of class was not as ridged as many of his contemporaries in the first half of the 20th Century.
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Tolkien rose from being lower Middle Class to being Upper middle class, in as far as we can 'escape' our origins. He was a higher level academic, one of the intelligentsia, and went as far as he could up the class ladder as to become Upper Class he'd have had to marry into the landed gentry.
Sam rose as far as he went from being Working Class to being Middle Middle Class (there are two 'Middles' as he would have fallen slap in the middle of the class, remaining without the formal h'education which would make him Upper Middle).
Although whether someone could 'fit into' their new place in the class structure would depend upon many subtle points, and Sam may have remained 'marked' as Working Class anyway (he may even have willingly marked himself that way, as a lot of us do). Tolkien I think may have fitted right in to his new class, as the accessories of the Upper Middle Class are reasonably easy to understand if you have been to University and pick up on the correct signals (though who knows, he
may have possessed
napkin rings?
). And as proof that class anxiety is still very much a driver in Britain today you only have to look at the books on our bestsellers' lists, tomes by Jamie Oliver telling us all how to cook properly (a key Middle Class skill, and written by a Middle Class icon) and Richard Dawkins' latest Atheist work (a must-have for all Upper Middles, as was A Brief History Of Time, books it's important to have on the shelf when colleagues call round for canapes, even if you never read more than one or two chapters
).