A Touchy Subject: An Anatomy Of The Classes By Paul Fussell

In the texts “A Touchy Subject” and “An Anatomy of the Classes”, (1992), author Paul Fussell, asserts that social class is defined more by lifestyle choices than the amount of money one has. Fussell primary works with the visible and audible signs of social class and how they reflect choice. He backs up this claim by doing the following: first, tries to identify what class means, how the word affects people and questions the means of classification of a social class; he then describes the differences between the classes, almost as if he's trying to figure out how the class system really works, detailing the personal things a member of a certain class may buy and how he or she acts in the comfort of their home; lastly, he correlates how social classes and their lifestyle choices show their insecurities. Fussell

The text is also easy to read, which helps to understand not only the visual and and audible signs of class, but also by explaining how people react to the class structure they find themselves in, the reader is able to get an idea of both the impacts of social systems both on top of the surface, and well beneath. One of the weaknesses this text has is that it does not greatly address the ambiguities between social class and the factors that are not so clearly defined. Furthermore, Fussell does not consider matter of race or gender within class because he states while they are visible, they are not chosen. Additionally, throughout this text, I have been contemplating whether or not these same principles would apply to a caste system. Would the lifestyle choices between the classes be extremely distinct within a caste system or would it be similar to those of the United States? I would like to venture into the correlation between lifestyle choices and the caste