In What Ways Does This Passage Develop or Clarify Our Understanding of Jimmy’S Anger? (from P.19 “Don’T Try…” to P.20 “…Racket of the Female.”)
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- Category: English: Plays
- Date Submitted: 05/19/2011 03:36 AM
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In what ways does this passage develop or clarify our understanding of Jimmy’s anger? (from p.19 “Don’t try…” to p.20 “…racket of the female.”)
“Look Back In Anger” by John Osborne is a 1956 play relating the relationships between Jimmy, a working class young man, his rather more upper class wife, Alison and the people that surround them. This play completely revolutionised English theatre with its scandalous portrayal of marriage, pregnancy and human relationships in general. Throughout the play, Osborne explores the idea of marriage as the “unhappy beginning” rather than the fairytale “happily ever after” of literary tradition. Osborne’s own misogynistic views are reflected in Jimmy’s bitterness towards Alison and the stereotypical woman as show in the extract I have chosen.
These views are especially apparent during Jimmy’s rant about the “eternal flaming racket of the female”. Jimmy’s clearly pre-meditated and well rehearsed attack and his cruel claims that Alison is “clumsy” and like a “dirty old Arab” which show both severe sexism and racism in their comparison of women to unsavoury images. While this shows Jimmy’s barely hidden contempt for Alison, a couple of fraises give away Jimmy’s fear of emasculation, intimidation at the success of the modern woman and misogynistic presumptions made about women in daily life and professional jobs, such as his completely unhidden “relief” at the lack of women in medicine saying that their “primitive hands” would “drop your guts like hairclips”.
Jimmy’s constant over exaggerations, such as the comparison of the girls’ going to the toilet sounding “like a medieval siege” and Alison’s getting into bed “as if she were stamping on someone’s face”. These details could be added to further hurt Alison, or to make his speech more entertaining to Cliff, or both. However they show Jimmy’s insecurities with women and his almost physical repulsion of them. His remarks that one must be “fundamentally insensitive to be as...
“Look Back In Anger” by John Osborne is a 1956 play relating the relationships between Jimmy, a working class young man, his rather more upper class wife, Alison and the people that surround them. This play completely revolutionised English theatre with its scandalous portrayal of marriage, pregnancy and human relationships in general. Throughout the play, Osborne explores the idea of marriage as the “unhappy beginning” rather than the fairytale “happily ever after” of literary tradition. Osborne’s own misogynistic views are reflected in Jimmy’s bitterness towards Alison and the stereotypical woman as show in the extract I have chosen.
These views are especially apparent during Jimmy’s rant about the “eternal flaming racket of the female”. Jimmy’s clearly pre-meditated and well rehearsed attack and his cruel claims that Alison is “clumsy” and like a “dirty old Arab” which show both severe sexism and racism in their comparison of women to unsavoury images. While this shows Jimmy’s barely hidden contempt for Alison, a couple of fraises give away Jimmy’s fear of emasculation, intimidation at the success of the modern woman and misogynistic presumptions made about women in daily life and professional jobs, such as his completely unhidden “relief” at the lack of women in medicine saying that their “primitive hands” would “drop your guts like hairclips”.
Jimmy’s constant over exaggerations, such as the comparison of the girls’ going to the toilet sounding “like a medieval siege” and Alison’s getting into bed “as if she were stamping on someone’s face”. These details could be added to further hurt Alison, or to make his speech more entertaining to Cliff, or both. However they show Jimmy’s insecurities with women and his almost physical repulsion of them. His remarks that one must be “fundamentally insensitive to be as...