"" The lack of commonality contributes to the instability of the middle class. Further, its instability is an effect of the cycles of capitalism, which means that being middle class is not secure. In times of affluence, some members of the middle class acquire savings. But the margin of comfort afforded by such savings tends to be limited, and so an economic depression can lead to financial demise for those in the middle class. Hence, as Cohen notes, the spectre of failure haunts the middle class even as it anticipates a better life (19-21). Put another way, to be middle class is to be located within a social sphere of inherent instability marked by the lack of homogenous interests amongst members of the class and by the reality that the defining economic location is precariously uninsulated from vacillations in the economy. The optimistic investment - psychological and fiscal - that the future brings possibilities of affluence and a better life is the underlying anxiety that the conditions of capital generate in the middle class. A valence of the "uncanny- that renders the comfort of the "homey- uncomfortable may well stem from the fundamental instability of the middle class, which, given its investments, cannot acknowledge that "instability- is its condition. It is a class that, as Cohen suggests, is haunted by the possibility of failure. The strain of having limited and insecure affluence is the context of Peter Pan, which opens in the nursery of a house "at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury- (87). The house is so nondescript that Barrie advises, "you may dump it down anywhere you like, and if you think it was your house you are very probably right- (87). While this is a particular house, belonging to the Darling family, Barrie assumes that members of his audience recognize and identify with it because they, like the Darlings, are middle class: if they don't live in a house like the Darlings', they know of people who do.
