GrayFoxDown
05-27-2007, 04:23 PM
Even though Orwell, as a boy, admired the "adventurous" nature of working class people (bricklayers, sailors, etc.) he was warned to stay away from them..."They smelled!" It was this preconceived notion (even allowing for the fact, due to their living conditions, that they indeed did smell) that intensified the class divisions of English people. Whether or not they actually smelled is secondary to the fact that their lack of education (grace, refinement, culture...the imagined results of education) made them "smell' even more.
When he became an adult and began to seriously consider the class division in English society, Orwell went beyond the comfortable libraries and sitting rooms of most liberal thinkers: He lived for a time (albeit superficially) with the lower class. Indeed, sometimes he lived with the lowest of the low: tramps, bums, social outcasts, and assorted ne'er-do-wells. Orwell found that in a low class enviroment, education (including his own) didn't guarantee any social advantages or recognition. In the lowest echelons of society a bum is a bum of "equal merit"...it is a "classless society for the very reason that it lacks class." To abolish class-distinction means abolishing a "part of yourself"...and, through this, one's presumptions and patronizing attitudes toward the lower classes. When one encounters people of a different culture (in this case, the British lower class) one realizes that his/her own beliefs are of little significance. Observing the lower class on a one-to-one level, and within their own environs, he found that it wasn't education (insofar as its academic basics are concerned ) but the "education" of class snobbery that caused societal division in the nation. It was a struggle between those who were educated(?) and unable to abolish their class prejudices and those who were uneducated and branded with the stigmata of "smell."
Orwell's experiences among the lower class were the ingredients for his work THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER. It is a straightforward attack on the hypocrisies of liberal thinkers, generally, and on English Socialism, particularly. Not as well-known or as widely-read as 1984 or ANIMAL FARM, THE ROAD contains many of the concepts for those later works. All in all, THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER reveals Orwell's distrust and dissatisfaction with society's ability to come to reasonable and just terms with itself.
(all quotes: THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER)
When he became an adult and began to seriously consider the class division in English society, Orwell went beyond the comfortable libraries and sitting rooms of most liberal thinkers: He lived for a time (albeit superficially) with the lower class. Indeed, sometimes he lived with the lowest of the low: tramps, bums, social outcasts, and assorted ne'er-do-wells. Orwell found that in a low class enviroment, education (including his own) didn't guarantee any social advantages or recognition. In the lowest echelons of society a bum is a bum of "equal merit"...it is a "classless society for the very reason that it lacks class." To abolish class-distinction means abolishing a "part of yourself"...and, through this, one's presumptions and patronizing attitudes toward the lower classes. When one encounters people of a different culture (in this case, the British lower class) one realizes that his/her own beliefs are of little significance. Observing the lower class on a one-to-one level, and within their own environs, he found that it wasn't education (insofar as its academic basics are concerned ) but the "education" of class snobbery that caused societal division in the nation. It was a struggle between those who were educated(?) and unable to abolish their class prejudices and those who were uneducated and branded with the stigmata of "smell."
Orwell's experiences among the lower class were the ingredients for his work THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER. It is a straightforward attack on the hypocrisies of liberal thinkers, generally, and on English Socialism, particularly. Not as well-known or as widely-read as 1984 or ANIMAL FARM, THE ROAD contains many of the concepts for those later works. All in all, THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER reveals Orwell's distrust and dissatisfaction with society's ability to come to reasonable and just terms with itself.
(all quotes: THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER)