Osborne’s achievement was to articulate .. Post war British dilemmas and create for them a domestic metaphor. Woolfe in Day 2000.What dilemmas are being explored in Look Back In Anger? How and with what degree of success does Osborne translate these into
...calm and fairly placid. ‘Standing below the food cupboard is Alison. She is leaning over an ironing board. Beside her is a pile of clothes. Hers is the most elusive personality to catch in the uneasy polyphony of these three people….. She is turned in a different key, a key of well bred malaise that is often drowned in the robust orchestration of the other two’. This gives us a sense of the differences between Alison and Jimmy. It soon becomes clear that Jimmy treats Alison with a degree of disdain, the reason for this is at first unclear. We begin to deduce through the interactions between the three characters of Alison, Jimmy, and Cliff that Jimmy seems to resent Alison in some way. ‘Well she can talk can’t she? You can talk; can’t you? You can express an opinion, Or does the white woman’s burden make it impossible to think?’ A theme that becomes apparent in the play is Jimmy’s discontent with his situation. It is clear that he is resentful of class privilege, and this is translated into his marriage with Alison, who has been described by Woolfe…. As being in some respects Jimmy’s natural enemy. She is the product of an affluent army family, making her middle class and of a different social standing to her husband. Jimmy’s contempt for Alison’s family background is demonstrated on many occasions. ‘ Why don’t you get my wife to explain it to you? She’s educated. That’s right, isn’t it?’ The issue of class divisions becomes a focus point during the play, and the characters discuss this issue amongst others whilst perusing the Sunday newspapers. ‘He’s upset because someone has suggested that he supports the rich against the poor. He says he denies the difference of class distinction- ‘this idea has been persistently and wickedly fostered by – The working classes! Well’ Osborne has very effectively used setting here to convey very important issues in a domestic setting that people can relate to. For example, the two characters of Jimmy and Cliff mention significant matters in an almost casual manner, looking up from their papers for a response to what they just said. I think that this would be a very effective theatrical convention to translate momentous events of the time into a domestic context. ‘Oh it says her that he makes a very moving appeal to all Christians to do all they can to assist the manufacture of the H bomb’….. he looks up at both of them for a reaction but Cliff is reading and Alison is intent on her ironing. Jimmy is angered by the world and a lot of this anger, clearly of a class nature is directed at Alison, her family and their background. He frequently makes direct attacks at members of Alison’s family. ‘Yes that’s the little woman’s family. You know mummy and daddy, and of course don’t forget the marquess of Queensbury manor fool you. They’ll kick you in the groin while your handing your hat to the maid’. A large proportion of Jimmy’s anger seems to be directed against the conventions and complacencies of society. Arthur Marwick stated in ‘Culture in Britain since 1945’ that there is certainly no coherent ‘alternative ideology’ and Osborne attacked those who looked for profound meaning in the plays most famous line.. ‘There aren’t any good, brave causes left’ explaining it as merely an expression of ‘ordinary despair’. Ironically, although Jimmy appears to detest Alison’s family and the world in which they come from, he and Cliff constantly speak of ‘bettering themselves’ and seem in a sense to aspire to what Alison’s family have. It is also true to say that although Jimmy Porter seems to be an exact opposite of the character of Colonel Redfern, they do actually share a lot of the same ideals and values. Both characters share a sense of nostalgia, and yearn for a society that used to be. Trends and events at the time of this plays release, for example the loss of Empire, the national search for a new global role, the uprising in Hungary, along with the failure of the futile Suez intervention resulted in a disillusioned and depressed Britain. Colonel Redfern symbolizes in the play a comforting image of the Britain that was, and this is epitomized in his speech in Act 2 scene 2. ‘…. And I can’t understand why the sun isn’t shining anymore…. It was March 1914, when I left England, and apart from leaves every ten years or so, I didn’t see much of my own country until we all came back in ’47… But it all seems very unreal to me, out there. The England I remembered was the one I left in 1914, and I was happy to remember it that way….Those long cool evenings up in the hills, everything purple and golden.’ The words ‘purple and ‘golden’ create an image of a paradise and ‘golden era’ and really capture how Colonel Redfern felt things used to be, and the extent to which the world has changed from his perspective. In ‘Lifting the Lid’ Michael Woolfe describes the colonel’s speech as ‘The only sustained lyrical moment in the play, and it embodies precisely a sense of disposition and a vision of a lost Eden which explicitly or implicitly is echoed and re-echoed through the plays of this period.’ I think Osborne has used characterization very effectively in the character of Colonel Redfern to symbolize the backward looking attitudes of some people at this time. The character of Hugh’s mother in the play seems to represent the working classes, and Jimmy appears to almost turn her into an icon for everything he believes in. She is the only woman in the play who Jimmy seems to credit with any value, and Alison recognizes her elevation in Jimmy’s mind. ‘Jimmy seems to adore her principally because she’s been poor almost all her life, and she’s frankly ignorant’ The issue of sexual behaviour, the female role, and attitudes to women are also explored using domestic metaphors. Jimmy is portrayed as very misogynistic, and uses very aggressive language to show his hatred towards women. ‘Thank God they don’t have many women surgeons! Those primitive hands would have your guts out in no time’ His frustration about society and his life seems to turn into self loathing which is redirected outwards into aggression towards Alison. Some of his language symbolizes women as the enemy. ‘Have you ever noticed how noisy women are? Have You? The way they kick the floor about, simply walking over it/ Or have you watched them sitting at their dressing tables, dropping their weapons and banging down thei...