There are several references to the 'cost' of the trial to the family, both financial and emotional. Which character in the play do you feel pays the greatest price for Ronnie's innocence?

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Carwyn Morris

There are several references to the ‘cost’ of the trial to the family, both financial and emotional.  Which character in the play do you feel pays the greatest price for Ronnie’s innocence?  You will need to look at each character in turn and consider the sacrifices she or he has made.

Based on a true story, The Winslow Boy, by Terrence Rattigan, is about a fourteen-year-old boy, Ronnie Winslow.  Ronnie was expelled from Osborne Naval College, and his father, Arthur Winslow, has vowed to prove the boys innocence in court.  Many things are lost to the Winslow Family, and it’s closest friends, due to the case.  Sacrifices are made, by those who do not have the right to make these, and lives change.

The Winslow Boy follows the case, the family, and shows how the life of individuals, and the family, is changed by the case.  Terrence Rattigans highly acclaimed play does not only follow these things, but also gives an insight in to the changing social attitudes of a generation, and how these changes are seen from the generation before.  

At the start of the play, and from the title, it would appear that Ronnie, The Winslow Boy, has lost the most.  He has been expelled from Osborne and has had to move schools.  The fact that he has been expelled from Osborne is important for two reasons.  One was that he was wrongfully expelled, which is the point that the play revolves around.  The other is that Osborne was the school that his father, Arthur Winslow, had wanted him to go to, even more so after Dickie, the families other son, had been rejected, and had to go to different a school.  But as the case, and play, goes on, it is apparent that Ronnie has probably lost the least, compared to other family members at least.  He has been accepted at Eton, so has a new school to go to, and the pressures of the case are less on him than others e.g. Arthur Winslow.  Later on in the case, although about Ronnie, moves onto something bigger, and this is something Ronnie doesn’t care about, or cannot understand at his age.  By the end of the play he has seemingly lost his interest in the case.  This is shown well at the end of the play as Ronnie was at the Cinema as the result was announced:

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Ronnie: I say Sir Robert, I ‘m most awfully sorry.  I didn’t know anything was going to happen

Sir Robert: Where were you?

Ronnie: At the pictures.

Arthur Winslow is one of the characters that would be a contender for the family member who has paid the most.  Arthur has paid not only in money terms, but with his well-being, as the play goes on his health deteriorates from a small case of arthritis, “Will you forgive me for not getting up?  My arthritis has been troubling me rather a lot, lately.” to being confined to ...

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