English theatre of XIX and XX centuries

1st Comparative analysis of plays

The chosen theme is The way characters manage Love, fondness and hate in the plays: Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter.

In both plays love is understood as a mix of hate, passion and mystery. We can see it clearly in Jimmy’s relationship with Alison in Look back in Anger. He actually married her as an unconscious revenge to her high-class society and everything that it represents. Alison acted the same way; falling in love with him as an act of rebel.  Those motors were the base or their marriage. Indeed, theirs is a estrange love-hate relationship; a sickly love which hit everyone who surrounded them. “Jimmy to Cliff: … pusillanimous. Do you know what it means? ... I quote: … Wanting or firmness of mind, of small courage, having little mind, mean spirited, cowardly, timid of mind… That’s my wife!”

When Helena got into Jimmy’s life, there were an obvious feeling of repulse; but that was just a manifestation of her love for him. “Alison to Helena: you loved him…that’s what you wrote and told me…Helena: I could hardly believe it myself…Alison: …you used to say some pretty harsh things about him.”  And after Alison’s departure, he just treated Helena the same way he did with his wife, sometimes aggressive and offensive and other times passionate and sweet. “Helena to Jimmy: I shall never have loved anyone as I have loved you. But I can’t go on…”

We can see the same unhealthy and even masochistic love in Ashes to ashes, where Rebecca is madly and eternally in love with a fantasy. She talks about her imaginary lover to her husband, as if she actually had a relationship with that mysterious man in the past. About this man we just know the importance of his hands to her and some other rare facts that make us believe he was some kind of enemy soldier who used to tear apart babies from her mothers and throw them to the rail ways; and maybe she made up their romance based on pieces of memories from war-time. “Devlin: …I’m talking about your lover. The man who tried to murder you. Rebecca: Murder me?...No, no. He felt compassion for me. He adored me.”

By contrast, her relationship with her husband is relaxed and peaceful, full of silences, because his husband, Devlin, treats her in a paternalistic way; exactly the opposite of Jimmy’s reactions which I have just commented above. “Devlin: I always knew you loved me. Rebecca: Why?. Devlin: Because we like the same tunes.”

Even tough we know that this people really love each other in their particular way; the most sincere and healthy feeling in these two plays is the fondness. This happens among all the characters and makes them take out the best of each other because their humanity and proximity pulls out a bit of empathy so they can coexist as good as possible.

The best example of fondness we find it in Cliff’s behaviour. He simply gets on well with everybody and that makes him win his flat-partners affection. It’s particularly especial the fondness he share with Alison. He treats Alison like a caring brother and she is pretty grateful of his attentions. Their affection is so pure that can be easily confused with love on somebody else’s eyes. “Cliff: She is beautiful, isn’t she?...(Cliff and Alison still have their arms round one another) Why a hell she married you, I’ll never know. Jimmy: You think she’d have been better off with you?. Cliff: I’m not her type. Am I, dullin’?...”

On the other hand, we find Devlin fondness to his wife that sometimes even turns into condescendence because he really doesn’t understand her and he doesn’t even know much of her past, so he just follows her dialogues as if he were talking to a kid; and keeps trying hard to get to know her. “Rebecca: …I put my pen on that little coffee table and it rolled off. Devlin: No?...Good God. Rebecca: This pen, this perfectly innocent pen. Devlin: You can’t know it was innocent…because you don’t know where it had been…how many hands have held it…You don’t know nothing of his history. You know nothing of his parent’s history.”

So, we can arrive to the conclusion that both, John Osborne and Harold Pinter based their characters relationships on the weak balance between love and hate; and that fondness was the only salvation or equilibrium point on their chaotic routine as in Look Back in Anger, or dark and unknown past as in Ashes to Ashes.  

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ivonne Pamela Landázuri
ilanbe@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press