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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 STRUGGLE AND PROTEST IN JOHN BRAINE’S NOVEL ROOM AT THE TOP Dr. (Ms) Ramandeep Mahal1, Ms. Tanu Bura2
1Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Maharishi Markandeshwar (Deemed to be University) Mullana (Ambala) 2Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Maharishi Markandeshwar (Deemed to be University), Mullana (Ambala)
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
Received: 14 April 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 August 2020
ABSTRACT: The present paper focuses on the novel „Room At the Top‟ written by John Braine and analyzes the different concepts used in the novel. This novel published in 1957 is a story of an unethical social climber and class mobility. It is also focuses on the images of two towns, Warley and Dufton and may sometimes relate to the life and death antithesis. It brings up the problems of post war England and the subsequent blurring of class distinction prevalent in those times. Joe Lampton the protagonist of the novel has a working class origin and his struggle and manipulations to come up in society is the basis of this work. During the Second World War Joe lost his parents in a air raid and was living with his aunt in Dufton, a small town where he was unhappy with his surroundings and social environment. He was a war veteran and had been a pilot in the British Armed Forces.Gifted with good looks ,enthusiastic and ambitious he was dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities in Dufton. He ends up with a job in the town council of Warley which he is again extremely dissatisfied and unhappy with as it does not measure up to his expectations . His frustration with his existing situation had transformed him into an angry young man. This basic work is based upon Joe‟s projection as an ambitious Angry Young Man of post war England, his impatience with his status in life and his struggles to move to the upper echelons of society. This story is layered with his philandering with two women wherein he deserts Alice, one of them and choosing to marry Susan (who is better financially placed) for bettering his prospects in life. The naked desire to gain wealth, power and prestige finally guided the ruthless manipulations and resulting actions of this highly ambitious individual. Room at the Top is projected as a work of social realism, a literary style in vogue in Britain in the 1950s.
KEYWORDS: wealth, story, social, society, upper
I. INTRODUCTION Room at the Top is a story of the period following the World War when class boundaries were rigid and defined and social mobility was not easily possible. The after effects of the War was visible, and the material luxuries afforded by the affluent were coveted by the the Working Class. This produced the term „Angry Young Men‟ for individuals who were from the working class educated and resented the inequalities. For the protagonist Joe Lampton, this inequality makes him an ambitious socially upward bound person . Joe is acutely aware and obsessed with every income distinction . His study of the houses in the town and their style and size leads him to choose the room at the Thompsons because of it being in the more affluent part of the town. Therein the choice of the title „Room at the Top.‟ It signifies also Joe‟s ambition to catapult himself to the top of the social order. The narrator of the story is the protagonist himself namely Joe Lampton. Joe comes from a working class family and wants to rise above this below average routine life. He yearns to be upwardly mobile and achieve wealth and status. The pace was set in that period in theatre by John Osborne‟s work „Look Back in Anger‟ and in fiction by John Braine‟s novel „Room At the Top‟. The character Joe Lampton was with passage of time projected nationally and internationally by the filming of Braine;s novel. Joe Lampton became the epitome of the restless young Englishmen fed up with the social traditions and class barriers . Against a background of post-war Britain, a period of deprivation and desperation where the future was in flux and doubt, a reshuffling of social values was just around the corner. Joe Lampton was born in January 1921 and, aspired to socially and economically improve his lot. He was competent and employed as a local government official in a small time northern English town His leisure activities included amateur dramatics, smoking cigarettes and beer. He rated his own prospects of success as extremely poor. This whole decade (1950‟s) was of despair and frustration and was termed as “The Angry Decade” by Kenneth Allsop in his book. The “Angry Young Man” group includes writers like Kingsley Amis, John Braine, William Cooper, John Waine, Peter Towry, John Osborne and others with similar works. These writers dealt mostly with the working class protagonists and their frustration with their status in society. Fredrick Karl aptly puts it across in the following words :
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 “They are however, disgruntled – with themselves, with their social status, with their work, with their colleagues, with the shabbiness of daily life, with their frustrated aspirations for self fulfilment, with the competitive spirit, with the inaccessibility of women and drink, with all the small activities whose pursuit takes up their depleted spirit”. These are called protest novels because of their depiction of the imbalance in society. These protagonists are generally thought of in need of comfort with power that‟s why their rebellion is result of their egoism or the feeling of being placed below their deserved status. There is also a feeling by other writers that their protest lacks moral substance. Kenneth Allsop remarks: “They do not rebel for the sake of society. They are in fact nauseated by the moral demands that society makes upon them”(52). Aspiring to reach the upper crust of society, the protagonist is ready to give up his moral values and personal beliefs. The major obstacle in Joe‟s path is the town where he is born and brought up in i.e. Dufton which he deserts for greener pastures offered by a more on the move town namely Warley. He comes before us in the novel as “a natural hero-un-hero, tongue-tied in all beyond materialistic values” (Tibble 211). As Braine‟s brain-child, “he seems to announce most clearly the philosophy of the times” (Albert 574). In this novel the hero‟s protest is against society at large in which he hates the fact that the rich becomes richer and the poor becomes poorer and continue to suffer. In his case it is a hollow protest against these social norms of the society because after deriding and despising the affluent he himself is trying to achieve the same things he is biased against that is the symbols of affluence.. As Joe belongs to lower middle class he pretends to hate the upper class society. In reference to these points Kenneth Allsop states: “An angry man, if his protest is to have significance, must reach in terms beyond his own wants and dislikes. When he is angry or when he rebels – he must stand for something significant. (75) In the beginning Joe and friend Charles expose the hypocrisy of Dufton‟s so called upper class society and also label them as the “Zombies in the society” . He categorizes them according to their financial position and status. That‟s is the prime reason that Joe leaves Dufton the city of Zombies because he does not want to become a Zombie himself . In fact the novel opens with Joe saying, “No more Zombies, Joe, no more Zombies”. When he reaches Warley, the voice of social protest eventually turns into the voice of his personal selfish ends. In the beginning of the novel he who hates the upper class becomes the most “successful Zombie” towards its end. It is indicative that Joe‟s protest is just a pretension. His hatred of the upper class and empathy towards the working class, disappears during his change of his environment in Warley, Dufton his native town becomes “Dead Dufton, Dirty Dufton, Dreary Dufton, Despicable Dufton”. In Warley, he runs down his existence in Dufton. and says: “It was as if all my life I‟d been eating saw dust and thinking it was bread”. He hates everything and everyone connected to his own town and was even derogatory in a comment pertaining to his old uncle and aunt whose hospitality he took advantages of after the death of his parents. Joe actually asserts: “I was too much at Top now, and half – hating myself for it, I found myself seeing them as foreigners. They were kind and good and generous; but they were not my sort of people any longer”. In the dislike for the higher echelons of Society Joe is not part of a social movement of that period rather he has this dislike of the affluent based on his dislike of his own lowly position and his bias against the socially better offs. The focus of novel is on the consciousness of a group or a mass movement but through an individual‟s consciousness based upon is being aggrieved by where he is socially placed. Though Joe describes the agony and obstacles of slow rise to the top for whoever wants to succeed in his life, but reality is that his desires and resulting ambitions are wholly self centred and conceited. We can conclude that he hates the upper-class solely because of his own social standing, He gets attracted towards Susan Brown, who is a daughter of a rich industrialist and a leader of the local community and sets his eyes on ensnaring her into matrimony . She is beautiful, has black shoulder length hair, large and round hazel eyes and a neat nose like the Typical American poster girl. Joe thinks she fits “financially as well as sexually” (38). He marries Susan not only because he loves her but because of his quest for wealth and social betterment. When he tells Charles about his love towards her, Charles frankly remarks: “In love with her! Drive! In lust with her. And Daddy‟s bank balance. I know you, you scoundrel!” (88). Joe himself admits the reality and says:
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 “I was taking Susan not as Susan but as a Grade A lovely lady: as the daughter of a factory owner, as the means of obtaining the key to Aladdin‟s cave of my ambitions”. (173)
Joe sacrifices his true love for Alice for his machinations to reach the top of the Social and affluence heap. Joe maintains a sexual relationship with Alice a married woman who remains the victim of Joe‟s sexual advances and emotional gratifications and eventually on being abandoned by him commits suicide. At one point, Alice says, “I love you, Joe, I love you properly, like a wife... I‟ll make you the most loved man in the whole world” (180). Joe becomes emotional and replied, “I love you, I love you like a husband. I‟d die for you”(180). But with the death of Alice Joe”s true colours become visible. Before coming to Warley he tells Charles, “Zombies lose people like a parcel or a glove. And they can‟t bear to talk of it or to be reminded of it. They are dead already” (19). Joe is in no way better than these Zombies he describes and even behaves like them after entering Warley. He after categorizing some of them as “Sex-starved Zombies” and “Adulterous Zombies” thereafter stoops down to emulate what he despises. Peeping into the blouses and skirts is a temptation which he just can‟t resist . Whenever he gets a chance he goes ahead to bed the lady in question without a thought of the repercussions. About Susan he says: “I imagined her nakedness, young and firm fragrant... Even when I let my eyes rest on the outline of her firm, small breasts beneath her sweater, it was with a trace of lasciviousness (57). As the protest novels place the hero‟s responses in critical perspective with ironic treatment, just as Joe‟s journey in the novel is depicted. Lee James remarks: “Braine‟s apprehension of his heroes for worldly goods is acute and exact” (52). In a way the protest of the protagonist is not against the ills of society but in reality against himself. His indulging in hypocrisy, shameless behaviour and the hollow norms of so called the upper class whose behaviour he was a critic eventually proves him to be more of an opportunistic sham. Thus the protest in the novel is unwarranted as neither the hero, nor the author suggests any substitute for these suffocating circumstances, and may be easily classified as a pseudo protest. Simply because Joe belongs to the working class is no excuse for his social criticism because he emerges as a manipulative social climber sacrificing the ideals he loftily propounds. The novel seems to argue that having a humble origin is a deterrent to uplift which can not be achieved without immoral manipulations and manoeuvres . John Braine wrote in the novel itself, “It‟s astounding how often golden hearts and silver spoons in the mouth go together”(10). The narration of the the novel indicates a curious capacity to change the life of all the major characters depicteded. In Joe Lampton‟s case he meets with Mr. Brown, Susan‟s father at Leddersford Club who finally gave his daughter‟s hand in Joe‟s hand for marriage and absorbs him in his business. In this curious way a “Swine Herd” is changed into a “Prince” (200). Joes emotions on his so called dubious achievements are indiscernible with the strange comment “that‟s the trouble” (235) at the ending of the work.
II. ANGRY HERO Like other leading works of the period by the class of Authors classified as the „Angry Young Men‟ Joe too is also quite often angry in the novel. He continually suffers from “savage... and sick anger” (122). Whenever he feel “betrayed and dirtied” (115) he becomes very angry. When it came to his knowledge that Alice in her younger days modelled for a photographer “in the nude” (115), he is described as “too angry and too sick” (116) and berates her by calling her a “stupid bitch” (116). Alice responds by calling him “a narrow minded prude”. His reaction to Jack Wales enjoying an upper class life was envy and anger. Jack Wales is the son of a rich local business man and engaged to Susan. At the Civic Ball when he sees Susan and Jack Wales as “part of a little circle” of rich persons he has “a bad taste in” his “mouth, the indigestion which always attacked him” when he was “angry” (116). The anger seems mostly envy targeting those who he feels are privileged with wealth rather than an emotion of dislike for social inequality. Its an anger which reflects what he longs to socially be and is deprived of by circumstances. The relationship with Alice and her body is very important for him, and with this relationship he brings a disastrous end to her life. Like mentioned before her foray into a “nude modelling” angers him as he can‟t tolerate the idea that her body has “no importance”(121). The rage in him manifests itself to such levels that at times he feels he feels “sick and murderous” (193) with the anger. When Susan questions his relationship with Alice he slaps “her hard on the face” (198). Obsessed with sex and blinded by money he behaves as an animal raged with “hot lunacy of his instincts” (198). The anger is more about self awareness of the moral code which Joe is casting aside in his greed for wealth and social uplift and the methods he is employing to obtain it. Analyzing anger in other protagonists like Joe Arthur Seaton asserted that their protest is, “thoughtless and unorganized” (180). They remain continually disturbed, confused and spiritually empty inside with thoughts. They always seen disillusioned, downhearted, dejected and cynical in their life stories. They lack well defined aims. They do not have power of clear thinking. Taber‟s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary states, “Anger is
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 instrumental in mobilizing and enhancing our ability to respond to adverse situations; and, for that reason, it may be essential to survive in certain circumstances” (Thomas 97). These heroes behave more like antiheros. To overcome their anger and anxiety they get involved into violent fantasies and at times actions..
III. TRAGEDY IN THE NOVEL Joe on his ascent to the top uses Alice Aisgill, a married woman but dumps her and for Susan leading to Alice commiting suicide. This novel has certain tragic elements with the demise of Alice and others at the end. It can be considered tragic in a certain way seeing as the plot unfolds that a character as shallow and selfish can play with the lives of two females and desert one for the other for greener pastures and not true love. Collectively, a tragedy is originally a ancient literary genre which tells a sombre story, taken for example from classical Greek mythology, and ending in a catastrophe of the hero. As Aristotle states that tragedy provides catharsis to the audience. Geoffrey Chaucer expressed the views of the ancient as follows: Tragedy is to sayn a certain storie, (As olde books maken us memorie), Of him that stood in greet prosperitee, And is yfallen out of heigh degree Into myserie, and endeth wretchedly (Chaucer 1996: 180). For Alice it was a sad alliance which broke her emotionally and led to her tragic end.
IV. ANTITHESIS IN THE NOVEL The contrast of Dufton and Warley in the novel realizes both implicitly and explicitly the antithesis in the novel. The base of opposition in the novel is of “life – death”, “Dead Dufton” – “Living Warley”. By comparing these two towns in the novel John Braine compares two worlds – the images of Great Britain of the 1930‟s and the 1950‟s. Both these towns describe their own different values. While Dufton symbolises impoverishment and human values on the other hand Warley represent affluence and consumerism. There is constant recurring structuring of Dufton and Warley and presentation of the different values they embody. The word “world” is used to indicate a general atmosphere of a particular life style. Two “worlds” are set against each other with the different concepts they evoke; Dufton, poor and humanistic, and Warley, rich and materialistic” (1990, 309). The author describes Dufton as dead town with negative connotation, metaphors, alliteration, repetition and irony. Using all these styles the writer tries to create the negative image of the Dufton Through Joe‟s eyes. Dufton and Warley signify the opposites of living conditions and human values.
V. CONCLUSION From this we can conclude Room at the Top is not only a novel of protest also a work which revolves around the reader's opinion of Joe. The question that comes into one‟s mind is whether Joe Lampton's behaviour is to be condoned or condemned? There's no doubt that his behaviour is obnoxious from Society‟s set standards of propriety and decency. It is more so unsettling that he eventually takes a path of low morality and indecency even when he is aware and as a narrator assessing right and wrong. For all his protestations, Joe is hollow and can be judged by the reader as a scoundrel, sybarite and hedonist. Apparently all his major decisions in life are based on materialism. A house in a upper class locality , a posh car, good apparel and other symbols of affluence are his targets in life. He gives up Dufton for the glamour of Warley and succeeds in hooking a rich girl, even impregnating her so that he could make his way to the top of the world and fulfil his ambitions. Nevertheless he loses his humanity in the process. Though in the end when Alice commits suicide he comes to realize the enormous cost that he has to pay for a room at the Top: The world still wants to console him but Joe remains inconsolable. The novel is a lesson for those who lose themselves by overreaching themselves for materialistic goals. This novel gives the idea that poverty and hunger cannot be an excuse for the moral downfall of a person as one cannot sweep morality beneath the carpet of money. In short, the novel is besides being a story also the condemnation of lust for materialism and affluence. It also is the censure of the crass behaviour of a certain set of youth of that time to better their life by making stepping stones of others to fulfil their ambitions and bettering their lives. If you look around closely the above definitely holds true for today‟s generations too.
VI. REFERENCES [1] Albert, Edward. A History of English Literature. Calcutta : Reproduction, n.d. [2] Allsop, Kenneth. The Angry Decade. New York : John Good Child, 1984. [3] Braine, John. Room at the Top. New York : Penguin, 1992. [4] Frederick, R. Karl. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary English Novel. London : Lowe, 1963. [5] James, W. Lee. John Braine. New York : Tawayne, 1969. [6] Tibble, Anne. The Story of English Literature : A Ctirical Survey. Delhi: Doaba; 1974.
https://hcommons.org/deposits/objects/hc:11068/datastreams/CONTENT/content
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