30 pages • 1 hour read
John OsborneLook Back in Anger
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Sexism
Though the play was written in the 1950s, the theme of sexism reads as a quite contemporary critique of Jimmy Porter’s character. Readers can find ample evidence that suggests the relationship between Alison and Jimmy, and the short-lived one between Jimmy and Helena, is rife with sexist undertones. In the first act alone, Jimmy begins an angry tirade about Alison and women in general. He makes a number of generalizations, such as claiming that all women are noisy, and calls their makeup and dressing table items “weapons” (24), suggesting that there is a war that pits women, their possessions, and their default noisiness against men and their desire for peace. He says that women are “refined butchers” (24) when they put makeup on in front of a mirror. He even adds a racist streak to his criticism when he likens a woman applying makeup to a “dirty old Arab” (24).
One of the main reasons for Jimmy’s attack on women is that he wants to get a reaction out of Alison, whom he says has become passive and boring. He repeatedly attacks her and women in general because he wants to make her angry or provoke her into lashing out. In this way, Jimmy is operating within an assumption that the male sex is above the female sex, and that not only is the male sex superior, it is capable of triggering women, who supposedly respond emotionally to provocation. Jimmy’s treatment of Alison, Mrs. Drury, and Helena throughout the play is an example of how little he respects women. The argument might be made that Jimmy does not mean any of the things he says, and that he is simply lashing out because he is a lonely, injured man. This train of thought is one of the major themes of the play. It is a viewpoint that supports sexism and enables a dangerous narrative that suggests men can be forgiven for “acting out” like children who do not get their way, whereas women cannot act out, because, as Jimmy has already mentioned, they will be viewed as weak, fragile, and emotional—an irony that perhaps the playwright himself did not see.
Given the period in which the play was written, it might be presumed that Jimmy’s thoughts about women reflect some of the prevailing thoughts concerning a woman’s place in the home. Indeed, Alison is viewed as a housewife who irons Jimmy’s and Cliff’s clothes and caters to their needs. Her only awakening comes when she loses her child, and then she realizes how right her husband is. This can be viewed as sexism on the part of the playwright, and is something that modern critics have taken issue with: that the women in the play are viewed through the lens of the men they encounter.
Identity Crisis
Many of the characters in the play suffer from identity crises. Alison Porter’s struggle with identity is one of the most recognizable. Alison was born and raised in the middle class. Her life before her marriage had been one of ease and comfort. Her father is a retired colonel, and her friends were all a part of a social circle in which she could have wanted for nothing in life. The play suggests that she grew tired of this life. When Jimmy burst onto the scene at a party, his defiance—what she calls his “spiritual barbarism”—intrigued her. Alison threw her old life of privilege away and now barely makes ends meet with Jimmy. She misses her old life. She wonders why she is still with Jimmy when he is so abusive, and realizes that their marriage was troubled from the beginning. Despite being married to him, she still views some of Jimmy’s actions and thoughts as primitive, foreign, or “working-class” complaints. Alison is caught between two worlds, which makes it easier for her to briefly abandon Jimmy’s world and return to her birth world for a time, even though she then abandons her privileged life again and returns to Jimmy.
Helena also suffers from identity crisis for a time. Helena loathes Jimmy and much of what he stands for. She also does not like Cliff, considering neither of the men truly manly. She thinks Alison should return home and abandon the foolishness of living with Jimmy. Despite her beliefs and hatred of Jimmy, however, Helena has an affair with him. When the final act comes, Helena is in the same role Alison had held in the first act, ironing Jimmy’s clothes and wearing one of his shirts. This resemblance shows that Helena is also confused with her identity. At one point she was an actress, meaning an independent woman and individual. She abandons this independence for Jimmy. She eventually realizes that she does not approve of her own affair, and leaves Jimmy, but the reader can see how easy it was at one point for her to abandon her beliefs for the sake of a man, indicating fluctuations in her identity.
Colonel Redfern also suffers from an identity crisis. The colonel has lived most of his life outside of England. He was in command in India, which was a completely different lifestyle from how he lives in England. Though he is labeled an Edwardian due to his age and beliefs, the colonel now finds himself in a “modernized” England and does not know how he fits in. He appears sheepish and quiet, and these traits highlight the fact that he is a man out of step with the times. He has money and privilege, and commands respect, but feels there is no real place for him. Even Jimmy, who argues with and lashes out at everyone, says that he likes Colonel Redfern because he can feel sorry for him. Colonel Redfern also dislikes how his wife handled matters with Alison and Jimmy. As a member of the middle class, the colonel might look down on Jimmy. Yet the colonel shows that he despises how his wife treated Jimmy, and that he also understands where Jimmy is coming from regarding his hatred for the middle class and England’s passiveness.
Class Conflict
Jimmy Porter represents the working class, whereas his wife, Alison, represents the middle class. Jimmy argues with and insults Alison throughout the play, as she is a stand-in for the middle class. It is even suggested by Alison that marrying her was a way for Jimmy to take revenge on the middle class. In a sense, he corrupted her. Jimmy thinks that the middle class is passive and uninspired, and that their money will allow them to reach heights that he and the rest of the working class will never reach. Jimmy takes Nigel, Alison’s brother, as an example of this. Nigel is a member of Parliament, yet Jimmy says that Nigel is stupid and uncaring. Jimmy also has an education, but because Nigel has money and class status, he will always succeed whereas Jimmy will be stuck in menial jobs like running the sweet stall. The middle class can afford to be “fence sitters” and passive because their lives will always be secure. This is one of the reasons Jimmy gets so angry with Alison: her passivity does not bring about change. Jimmy wants change to arrive in the England, but sees the world headed to a frivolous end, much like America of the same period, as he sees it in his mind. For Jimmy, life is a daily struggle between the classes and the sexes.
Alienation and Loneliness
Alienation is another recurring theme in the play that starts with the characters and then transcends them to define loneliness and alienation within England more broadly. The play takes place during shifting political times. There is a general sense of isolation and alienation after WWII. People are attempting to orient and reorient themselves, like Colonel Redfern, to a new, modern England. Colonel Redfern is viewed as an extremely lonely individual trying to make sense of himself in an alienated world. His Edwardian beliefs have no place in the new England. Likewise, his daughter Alison finds herself alienated from her family and social class. She feels lonely in her marriage to Jimmy because she still desires some aspect of her former life. At least in her former life, she was not lonely. She wants to tell Jimmy how she feels, but does not know how. She wants to tell him about the baby as well, but is afraid. She feels alienated from her husband to the point where all she wants to do is make sure that he is happy, despite her unhappiness. Jimmy, too, constantly argues that no one can understand him. He asks both Alison and Helena if they have ever seen someone die. He watched his father die, and later, was with Hugh’s mother when she died. Death teaches Jimmy about loneliness and alienation, and he wants someone to understand that feeling and to know how he feels. By the play’s end, it is suggested that the death of their child has created within Alison a level of alienation from herself and from life, such that she now knows Jimmy’s loneliness herself. As the characters struggle with alienation and loneliness, Osborne shows how these struggles are symptomatic of those within larger populations, issues that people must face and address daily.
