The play is criticised as being a vehicle for Jimmy Porter with other characters peripheral and superfluous. Do you agree?
Clair Peach
English Literature
The play is criticised as being a vehicle for Jimmy Porter with other characters peripheral and superfluous. Do you agree?
The play 'Look Back In Anger' was published in 1956 and staged to great acclaim. The play focuses on the story of one unusual household, the household of Jimmy Porter, his wife Alison and their housemate Cliff. Further characters are Helena, the friend who comes to stay with them, Alison's father and mother, and Jimmy's friend Mrs Tanner. The characters of Mrs Tanner and Alison's mother do not have any lines or personal presence, yet are developed sufficiently enough to give them a pivotal role in the dynamics of the play.
The question asks whether the play is a vehicle for Jimmy, with the other characters being peripheral and superfluous. My response is that far from being so, Jimmy is defined by the other characters, just as any rebel is defined by that which is revolting against. Without Alison, Cliff and Helena, Jimmy and the play simply would cease to exist: the angry young man would have nothing to be angry about. In fact, Jimmy is a parasite on the other characters, and gets all his identity and meaning from them alone.
The plot of the play depicts how each of these factors moves into his life and finds a role, but is found to be unsatisfying and unchallenging and discarded for the next phase.
The play focuses on three days in their lives. The Sunday evening of the first act is where Jimmy's angst and the general history and dynamics of the family unit are revealed. In the second act we watch as the status quo crumbles, unhinged by the influences of Helena. In this act, Alison leaves Jimmy and the marriage, and is replaced in the marital bed by her friend Helena. The third act has the purpose of a resolution, returning a now changed Alison to the unit, and witnessing the departure of both Helena and Cliff.
There are many interpretations of the play, but the one I will focus on in order to answer the question in the title focuses on the play attempting to define the angst of the angry young man. Jimmy represents young males, and each character in his household represents one of the characteristics he is rebelling against. In order to understand this, we will look at each character in turn in an attempt to understand their personal dynamics, and establish whether they are superfluous or in fact essential components of the play.
The main character, Jimmy, is extremely complex. He is classically the 'angry young man' of the 1950's, as characterized in film by actors such as Marlon Brando and James Dean. The angry young man phenomenon defined the angst of an era in which young men felt trapped between the dutiful, rigorously defined role models of the Edwardian and war eras, and the reality of a world becoming increasingly modern; the old conventions of marriage began to be challenged as divorce became more acceptable, women became more educated and achieving, and religion began to be superfluous in the lives of many. The bright new world promised during war time became a reality of rationing, temporary housing and disillusionment. American McCarthyism filtered to the UK, restricting the expression of such disillusionment through political means- in the Eighties, another time of unrest as capitalism became a dominant force, political dissatisfaction could be expressed through membership of left wing organisations. Instead, young men began to rebel simply against society- dropping out and leading deliberately pointless lives, affected so deeply by a society in which nothing improved with sacrifice, and in which they personally could effect no change.
However, although Jimmy is complex, he is also easily categorized, something that is not necessarily true of all the other characters in the play.
Alison is another significant character in this play, and far less simple to define. She occupies the place of wife and certainly seems to fulfil the obligations attached to such a role; as the play opens she is seen ironing, and at the start of Act 2, she is preparing dinner for her 'family'. She is also pregnant, at a time when contraception was limited and marriage and providing children, as opposed to ...
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However, although Jimmy is complex, he is also easily categorized, something that is not necessarily true of all the other characters in the play.
Alison is another significant character in this play, and far less simple to define. She occupies the place of wife and certainly seems to fulfil the obligations attached to such a role; as the play opens she is seen ironing, and at the start of Act 2, she is preparing dinner for her 'family'. She is also pregnant, at a time when contraception was limited and marriage and providing children, as opposed to individual success within a career or academic capacity, was seen as the main role for women. The play was written at a time when this was about to change; within a decade the pill would be introduced, giving women the chance to effectively control their fertility and therefore plan a life that would allow them to follow other objectives, besides having a family. Alison, however, seems to have no career aspirations, and is wise enough to realise that the relationship is not ready for children, and has therefore been stuck in a type of pointless limbo with no real aim or direction. Her pregnancy may well have been the catalyst needed to make a change, irrespective of Helena's intervention.
Yet Alison is either far weaker, or stronger, than the average middle class woman of her day. Whichever of these is correct, she is certainly not a peripheral influence on the play. Firstly, she has opted to marry Jimmy against the advice and wishes of her parents. It is arguable whether this shows strength of character in the ability to make her own choices, or a weakness in that she instead passes the responsibility for the match to Jimmy- "Whether or no he was in love with me, that did it. He made up his mind to marry me" (Act 2, Scene 1) and a few lines before, "there never seemed to be any choice". Certainly, Alison is easily led; Helena finds it very easy to despatch her back to the care of her parents. However, in the end her strength- for this is what she has- shows through, and she makes the choice to return. To contemporary readers it might seem an odd decision, but the point here is that she has made her decision and stuck to it. That is also the key to understanding her marriage: she might not understand why she did it, or be prepared to accept responsibility for it at a later date; nevertheless she chose to do it, regardless of how it hurt the others around her.
Further evidence of how Alison possesses an ability to be cruel that seems incompatible with her outwardly compliant appearance comes on page 28
"I pretended not to be listening- because I knew that would hurt him, I suppose".
Another important facet of Alison is the importance of her background. Alison is both hated and loved by Jimmy because of her middle class background.
Loved because she has had the very stability he longed for as a child, hated because she has had this and he cannot understand why he has not. Comments such as "The White Women's Burden" draw our attention to this- this is an allusion to a Kipling poem, "The White Man's Burden", about imperialism (http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/kipling/kipling.html. Jimmy
Is envious of the heritage and sense of grounding that is seen as inherent in the middle class, imperialist system that Alison is a member of and to which he can never gain admittance. Jimmy longs for that sense of self but he can never achieve it. The complication is that he cannot acknowledge this as a personal failing, instead attributing it to any outside factor he can- the class system, his wife's family, the futility of life itself.
Helena, however, is a different being altogether. Even before we meet her,
Jimmy has described her as "one of my natural enemies" (Act 1 Scene 1). She is deliberately portrayed as fulfilling Alison's role after she leaves, in scenes such as where she is ironing (Act 3 Scene 1). However, it is understood in the text that she never completely fills the void Alison has left. She is not, as Alison is in Act 1, burned by Jimmy. She certainly loves him, as she herself says in Act 3. However, what really attracts Jimmy to Helena is her incorruptibility- he enjoys the challenge she presents. This is evident in Act 3 (scene 1) where Jimmy says "... something I want from that girl downstairs, something I know she is incapable of giving me". Indeed she is; at the first real challenge, Helena leaves Jimmy. "I can't take part in all this suffering- I can't!".
The next character we will look at is Cliff. The character of Cliff is often overlooked in it's importance, but in fact he represents an essential component of the play. Like the others he is not superfluous at all, unlike the others he is the only genuinely warm, compassionate, even 'normal' person in the flat. Jimmy understands this, yet he finds Cliff's reality just as inaccessible as the others: "You've been loyal, generous and a good friend. But I'm quite prepared to see you wander off, find a new home, and make out on your own. And all because of something I want from that girl downstairs, something I know she's incapable of giving".
Cliff's place in the family becomes redundant after the departure of Alison, partly because he is no longer needed as a protector of the female of the household, but mainly because he is no longer required to act as a dampener on the raging passions in the house. His role until Alison leaves in to absorb the excess energy, to try to provide a calming influence; a sedative in the manic cocktail of conflicting personalities and confusions.
The play appears to be written in such a way that whilst each character has a complex and developed personality of their own, each has one significant and dominating characteristic that Jimmy finds antagonizing, and rebels against.
Jimmy is of course exceedingly complex, but in many ways he represents lost youth. The 1950's are seen by many as the advent of the teenager, the first time that youth culture gained its own power and identity. Jimmy would have missed this phenomenon only by a matter of a few years; he would have been of the last young men expected to make the jump from child (and for Jimmy, student) to adulthood without an intervening period of adjustment. Jimmy seems to resent this, and Osbourne appears to have identified the character closely with the notion of 'lost youth'.
Helena is simple to analyse: she represents the narrow minded yet reassuringly firm absolute values of the past. Even when Helena deviates from the path of 'good', she is under no illusion what she has done. " I believe in good and evil and I don't have to apologise for that" (Act 3, Scene 2). Jimmy is aware that there are new possibilities that didn't exist before, both culturally and personally, and he wants with all his heart to follow the 'new' way forwards. Yet the past looks reassuringly safe, if unachievable. Helena's character is, in many ways, a personification of nostalgia.
Cliff represents a related but different factor- comfort. Cliff is lazy- "You're too comfortable to bother about moving for the sake of some other pleasure" (Act 2, Scene 1), and although definitely not stupid, he has none of the active intelligence of Jimmy. If someone wanted the things in life that are still today considered normal- steady, not too challenging job; adequate home; appropriate marriage, then they would be a Cliff. In a storm or during difficult times, a Cliff is a safe haven, a place to hide from the rigours. But when a more exhilarating time returns- such as when Alison is replaced by Helena- Cliff's personal brand of comfort appears boring and unimpressive.
The most complex character to analyse is Alison. She is not steadfast and sure in her motives, yet neither is she so completely lost she could be taken to represent futility or even evil. No, Alison is an enigma; indefinable and impossible to compartmentalise or understand, simply because so much seems to contradict itself. Enigma, ambiguity or the lack of a clear purpose is precisely that which she represents. Jimmy doesn't want to be boring and comfortable, or steadfast and solid. But he does want to have some form of purpose, something in his life that gives him a cause, that is definite. "There aren't any good, brave causes left. If the big bang does come, and we all get killed off, it won't be in aid of the old-fashioned grand design. It'll be just for the Brave New-nothing-very-much-thank-you" (Act 3, Scene 1). The sad thing of course is that Jimmy too really is an enigma: he is a mixed up jumble of self-hatred, superiority complex and plenty of self pity. It is precisely this lack of co-ordination in his self that drives the character in endlessly to seeking a meaning.
It would be interesting and challenging to transfer this interpretation of the play to the stage, but it would be a satisfying challenge as the whole point of any play is its dramatization. I would not want to emphasize the notion of Jimmy as star of the play; I would pay close attention to the characters on stage to ensure that none were pushed into the background, and that each had ownership of their importance in the play. I would deliberately cast actors of a similar size and build, and ensure that during their important moments, they are able to take centre stage and emphasize the essential nature of the character's existence. I would also highlight the moments of the play that belong to characters other than Jimmy, and use lighting to identify certain areas of the stage with certain characters- for example whenever Cliff was speaking, highlight a comfy chair . When the character was absent from the stage, this area could be blacked out, to introduce the idea that a piece of the picture is missing. If I were producing a more experimental version, I would consider how I could translate the important traits they represent into costume; slogans on t-shirts might be an interesting idea, or the use of appropriate music- for example, (I could quite see Jimmy making an entrance to 'Born To Be Wild', or Helena to 'Rule Britannia).
This play has been an interesting challenge, as there have been many possible interpretations that could have led to quite different responses to the title question. However, I believe that this response not only answers the questions, but provides some explanation for a novel that is initially hard to define, and also gives each individual character a significant purpose. Osbourne's play itself is an enigma, however with careful reading and character analysis, I believe that the essence of this play is best understood by analysing the characters and historical context, rather than a solitary reading of script alone.
Sources:
John Osbourne, 1957, Look Back In Anger (1960 Edition), Faber and Faber, London
White Womans Burden, http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/kipling/kipling.html
