Class Game

• The poem "The Class Game" by Mary Casey is about class division set in the north of England and Liverpool in the late 1970s
• The poem is about someone demanding to know how you can tell what class they are from, and then listing stereotypes surrounding class difference and class division
• The poem uses a repeated refrain of "how can you tell what class I'm from" until the final line where it is changed to "why do you care what class I'm from"
• Mary Casey


  • She was a housewife from a working class background in Liverpool
  • Her poem was published in 1979 in a literary magazine called "Voices" that was interested in publishing reflections of the working classes
  • She only wrote 4 poems, all of which were published in "Voices"
• The year Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, marking the beginning of the "Winter of Discontent"


  1979
• The "Winter of Discontent"

  • A period of recession and high unemployment, particularly in the north of England and places like Liverpool
  • There was a lot of confrontation between the working class/poor and the higher classes who were receiving benefits like tax cuts
• Dramatic monologue


  First person narrative with a sense of direct address
• Poetic form


  • Starts in free verse, then moves into rhyming couplets
  • The first 5 lines set up the issue, then there is a caesura and the rest is a series of challenging questions
• There is a repeated refrain of "how can you tell what class I'm from" that is amended to "why do you care what class I'm from" in the final line
• Title


  The Class Game
• The title is a metaphor calling the ideas to do with class Division and class war a game
• The use of the article 'the' suggests the game is something very specific that a lot of people are aware of
• Rhetorical question


  • How can you tell what class I'm from?
• The rhetorical question becomes a refrain repeated throughout the poem
• The last rhetorical question changes to 'why do you care?'
• Hypophora


  When a rhetorical question is posed and then answered or expanded upon
• Examples of hypophora


  • How can you tell what class I'm from? I can talk Posh like some.
  • Why do you always wince when you hear me say tat Mama instead of bye Mommy dear?
• Rhyming couplets


  • Used in lines 6-8 of the poem
• The poem moves from free verse to rhyming couplets after the first 5 lines
• Corpy


  Liverpool Corporation, equivalent to social housing in 1979
• The poem contrasts living in a 'corpy' with living in a 'pretty little semi' in a wealthier area
• The poem comments on the class division shown by the ability to commute by train each day
• Toil meaning?

  Work, labour
• The poem contrasts hands 'stained with toil' versus 'soft Lily white with perfume and oils'
• The inverted syntax in the rhetorical questions emphasises the metaphorical 'label' of class
• The final stanza uses inverted syntax to emphasise the speaker's working class identity and pride in it