Osborne represents in his play both the working and the upper class. The four main characters are clearly divided on class lines, in which sex equals status. Honest and male proletarians are set against beautiful, but repressed or immoral and upper class women. This causes a social conflict represented by the sexual battleground of Jimmy´s marriage to Alison, who belongs to the upper class, and his seduction of Helena. Society is characterized by Alison´s apparent avoidance of commitment, which, in Jimmy´s opinion is the same that not having any feeling.
Another important development which affected the working class was the rise in wage benefits. Individual workers salaries increased 34 percent between 1955-1960 and 130 percent from 1955 to 1969. This lead to some changes in the class structure. The basic form was unaltered, with only changes in details and attitudes. The working class became more confident and visible. They were getting more involved with politics and government. They began taking on roles that were traditionally not ment for them. Education also became more available to the lower class.
Britain remained a class-structured society after the turn of the 20th century and into the middle of the century. However, the barriers between the classes lessened due to economic improvements in Britain. Rising incomes provided the working-class more time for leisure and a greater ability to buy goods that were not essential to their survival. Expenditures on clothing and entertainment by the working class had risen significantly since the Howard's End era. New technological items, such as televisions and cars, were suddenly affordable by more than just the upper class elite. As the wealth of the working class grew, so did their power. They gained the political power that is associated with spending power. Jimmy Porter symbolizes the working-class man in Look Back in Anger. It was the changes that had occurred to people like him that made the upper class members' lives so frustrating, such as . They no longer had the class barriers that they were comfortable with. The upper class lost its edge over the working class when the working class earned the same power to spend.
One of the things that contributed to improve the quality of life of the working class was Butler's Education Act of 1944, created after the war, which set the age that a child left school at 15. The act also required adequate education to be given according to age, abilities, and aptitudes. The biggest achievement of this act, however, was its abolition of a required payment in order for a student to be able to attend grammar school. No longer were the middle and upper class students the only ones that could afford an education. Secondary education saw great expansions as well in the post-war years. More universities sprang up during this time due to the large numbers of students seeking a college education. Along with increased affluence for all classes came an higher education for everybody. This is evident in Look Back in Anger within Jimmy. He is a lower-class man, who is well-read, and quite understanding of what is going on in society. Higher education was changing the realms of literature. Authors were writing to a more educated public. Literature changed to satisfy this higher-educated audience that better understood the dynamics of society compared to generations of the past.
This young people of the 50's, who belonged to working class families and who attended University, were finding themselves questioning, and often rejecting, what they felt were the staid and stifling Victorian morals and morays of previous generations. They longed for a "looser" society, free from any restraints upon morals, dress, language, gender roles, or expectations. And apparently they were "angry"- those working and middle-class young men who, although often university-educated at state expense, and despite colossal strides in upward mobility, still felt discontented and disillusioned with their continued inability to gain entrance into the restricted power circles of British politics, education, criticism, or literature. They expressed suspicion and resentment of upper-class culture, manners, and snobbishness. And it is this anger that would spill over into the 1960's like a tidal wave, bringing about the sexual revolution and the equal rights movement for both women and minorities.
This brings us, of course, to Look Back in Anger. Its protagonist, Jimmy Porter, is the essential "angry young man" and, as the play progresses, we can see all of the frustration, disillusionment, and dissatisfaction with life and society that epitomizes his generation, a generation which resents the past and finds little hope in the future except through radical, and often violent, change. Nevertheless, nothing changes in the life of Jimmy Porter. The fact that it is always Sundays suggests an image of stasis and displacement. All the actions are repetitive, ritualized and pointless. The ironing is never finished and the clothes are never clean. This circularity of the action is very significative. Jimmy is hurt because everything remains the same, there is no possibility of meaningful social change.
On the other hand, we find, Alison´s father, who represents the upper class within society, a group which had lost everything with the end of Imperialism, as the 1920-1930's and 1950-1960's were completely different for the powerful British Empire. In a short span of 30-40 years, the once booming industrial market of overseas business was changed. An era of British control over countries such as Australia, India, Nigeria, and Kenya ended with the beginning of the 50's and 60's. After World War II, there was a shift from the British Empire to the Commonwealth. Countries such as the aforementioned were given independence and the freedom to move to Britain. No longer could the British government tax and profit from these colonies. The Queen also took on a new role. Her position became more of a figurehead role rather than a position of authority. The powerful role of past monarchists was now shifted to the British Parliament. All these changes provocked that people like Alison´s father had lost the Britain they had and wanted. The values had chaged and society was not the same; this was the cause of a feeling of sadness, and nostalgia shared by such an opossite character like Jimmy, who also felt society should not be like it was.
Look Back in Anger reflects how society was after the Second World War. The working class started being more important and the quality of life improved; nevertheless the ties of class division within society did not change and this provocked the desillusion of many young people who believed things could change. On the other hand there were the upper class people who had lost the status they had gained during the Empire age, and who saw how things were gradually changing in British society.
There are other literary works from the same period, which, even if they do not have class division as the main topic, explore the results of this insecure nature of class identity during the immediately posterior period to the War. A good example of this sort of works is Serious Money, a play by Caryl Churchill which attacks the stock market as the epitome of Capitalism.
The topic of class war is not treated in detail in this play, but it talks about the consequences of Capitalism, the economic and political system that triumphed after the Second World War. Capitalism produced a sense of a classless society in which people were not divided into classes because they were not even persons, but objects. Serious Money presents a society on the edge of apocalypse.
This degenaration of society is present from the prologue, taken from Shadwell´s The Stockjobber, which also brings in a historical perspective. The comparison with Restoration Comedy not only implies that fraud is inherent in the system, but also serves as a measure of the difference between past and present. Where Shadwell´s Jobber are a despised under-class, whose only objective is make money, people who lives nowadays, in the present, still have the same desires. Bad has become worse; and this downward progress accelerates within the play.
The Characters in the play are mere objects, unidimensional people who lack almost any introspection. Thus the only alternative is mutual exploitation, as personal relationships no longer exists and morality is just imagery.
If Look Back in Anger explores the situation of the classes within the British society of the fifties, Serious Money, talks about the consequences of that situation. It is trying to make us aware of the fact that this society, where the working man does not longer feel himself a member of a deprived group which should fight for its rights, and where the upper classes has changed Imperialism for Capitalism, exploiting the working class, has no future, or even worse, it suggests a terrible future in which human relationships will be replaced by economic and power relationships.
Bibliography.-
Churchill, Caryl. Serious Money, ed. Rob Ritchie, London, 1987.
Downer, Alan. S, The British Drama: A Handbook and Brief Chronicle, ed. L. Ashley, London, 1967.
Osborne, John. Look Back in Anger, ed. John Russell Taylor, London, 1968.
