I'm loving your thoughts on the Steve/Bucky social class thing and would definitely love to hear more. I'd also like to hear your thoughts on Steve being raised by a single mother, and his dad going to/dying at WWI.
I can’t deny I am fascinated by the concept and nature of classes. It’s one of those things that a lot of people aren’t really aware of on a conscious level. I hate to generalise, but in many cases, the people at the upper end of the spectrum really don’t understand how hard things are for people further down, be it financially, educationally, or even just mentally.
With the Steve and Bucky dynamic, I find it especially interesting, because Steve doesn’t just have his poverty and his class to deal with, but the stigma of his social background and his health as well. A lot of this, it’s clear that Bucky just doesn’t get: he doesn’t understand why his friend has to fight to be heard all the time; he doesn’t understand why Steve can’t accept his help without seeing it as pity; he doesn’t understand why Steve feels so determined to make such a huge sacrifice.
So much of this is Bucky being in a position where none of those things are an issue for him, because he has never once had to struggle for any of it. Imagine pretty much any of the popular guys from practically every teen movie you have ever seen: financially stable, good-looking, well-educated, well-dressed, and most importantly, white. He is pretty much your standard middle-class American guy.
Also, tellingly, Bucky’s family still have money enough to dress him well, get him educated, and live in an apartment/house big enough to have guests with no trouble. This wouldn’t be a major tell except that this period, when Steve’s mother popped her clogs? It was during the ongoing period of the Great Depression (around 1929 to 1940 before things were stable again, and then hey! Look! War!). If Bucky’s parents were able to weather that storm, they were either incredibly financially sensible or - much more likely - very well-off.
For Steve, at the bottom of the pecking order, everything would have been a struggle. The apartment he’s living in looks like one of the overcrowded slum tenement blocks that many Irish Catholics were wedged into out of necessity.
There is literally nothing that he can afford to give Bucky. He wants them to be on an equal footing in their friendship, but no matter what happens, there will always be that unconscious memory nagging at him that he’s not good enough. So no matter how freely Bucky made offers of help, there would always be an element of “you’re better than me. You don’t need to do this. Stop it”. It’s the feeling of owing, or even just not being able to reciprocate a gesture or a gift with something of equal value.
A lot of it comes down to pride. A lot of people who aren’t so well off really don’t feel comfortable accepting kindness/gifts/anything from people who are better off for the simple reason that it can feel belittling. As if they’re underlining the fact that you can’t afford the thing they have given, but they can. I doubt that’s ever the intention (unless it’s a gloating gift, in which case…), but it can feel like that.
And you can see that Bucky learns to work with it. Instead of making a gesture in kindness, he makes it in snark (“all you gotta do is shine my shoes”) and Steve appreciates it. Likewise, instead of letting Steve puff and make excuses to avoid things, Bucky learns to say “Hey, I’m doing a thing and you’re coming too”.
Bucky knows Steve doesn’t think he’s good enough for them to spend time together, so to make it easier, he uses the roles that society - and Steve, in part - expects of him, but turns them around to create a really genuine and loving friendship. He doesn’t *get* why Steve does a lot of the things he does, but when it comes to Steve’s self-consciousness about being poor and lower class, Bucky uses Steve’s own expectations of their class divide to tease him and make him laugh, and I think that’s adorable.
(I may have to save the Steve’s mother thoughts for another day. My brain is pudding)
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