Billy Liar - Discuss your opinions of Billy's 3 girlfriends. Do they give a fair representation of women, or are they biased and stereotyped and calculated to bring comedy to the performance?

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Daniel Watson

English Coursework – Billy Liar

        Discuss your opinions if Billy’s 3 girlfriends. Do they give a fair representation of women, or are they biased and stereotyped and calculated to bring comedy to the performance?

Introduction

        Billy Liar is a story about a young man not strong enough to cope with to reality. Billy lives in his own secluded bubble where every thing will work out fine and he can lie and live as recklessly as he likes, hence “Billy Liar”.

        During the play we see Billy become more and more tangled up in his problems and in his troubles, it seems that the more he struggles the harder it becomes to cut himself free.

        The authors Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse composed the play in 1960 and it was re-published in 1998. During the 1960’s we saw the removal of the National Service, which was seen as a great victory for peace movements, which had been formed after the World War.

However for the people that had not seen the World Wars it was seen as an action of freedom. Especially amongst the younger generation… or children. I think an example of one of these children is Billy.

There to provide another layer of freedom was “the pill”. It was also seen by the younger generation as an act of freedom, and why not? They could have sex as freely as they liked. This was seen as a sexual revolution amongst the public. Perhaps this is reflected in the play with Billy and his three girlfriends, he does try and seduce them in the performance, and bear in mind that he is not married and is still a teenager.

I think the 1960’s was the time when the older generation that were brought up with “sex only in marriage” and “children should be caned for an hour upon disrespect to their elders” were dying out along with their views and arguments. We see this in Florence (Billy’s Gran) when she finally gets a word in.

“Mucky Liz” as she is nicknamed by the people that know her isn’t even “mucky”. I think this re-enforces the fact that people believed women should only indulge in sex during marriage. This is a sign of the time. The society in Bill Liar saw Liz as the local slag.  

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Describing the Characters

Barbara:

Barbara is the sort of person that was respectable and decent in 1960’s society as she is rather old fashioned and shy, not as goby as Rita, who is disrespectful to her elders as we read on page 69 and on, Rita says,

“You can bring his rotten farther down”.

Also we don’t see Barbara smoking; in fact, we see her eating oranges all the time and because it is so repetitive it adds to the comedy of the play.

        Barbara is a lot like Alice we actually see them bonding on page ...

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