Topic: A Cultural Materialist Approach to George Orwell’s text The Road to Wigan Pier

Prepared by:Chaabane Bechir Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies. Sfax. Tunisia
E-mail Address: Bechir.Chaabane@ipeis.rnu.tn

ABSTRACT

The period of the production of George Orwell’s book The Road to Wigan Pier, the
1930s, was very crucial and critical on both intellectual and political levels. The book was
published in 1937, that is, the period between the two world wars and after the Great
Depression (1929). At that time both intellectuals and politicians were faced with vexed
problems such as mass unemployment, poverty and democracy. Committed writers such as
George Orwell took interest in the way to represent these problems at that critical moment
of human history.
The problems facing genre during that period reflect the complexity of the situation,
hence the problematic of The Road to Wigan Pier. Orwell’s text is problematic due to the
ambiguity of its status as a literary genre and the way it deals with vital issues facing
intellectuals as part of the social structure. The text is subversive on many levels. Apart from
the form of the book which is effectively very challenging, another essential aspect of
subversion can be explored in this work of art. In fact, contrary to the conventional view of
the fictional novel as an isolated entity, the study of Orwell’s text from a different
perspective, that is, the materialist historical theory, reveals the social dimension of the book.
Challenging the bourgeois conception of the novel, the author diagnoses the social
ills, namely, poverty and unemployment, in the first part of the book in order to provide the
necessary treatment in the second part, that is, Socialism. There is a close connection in the
novel between reality and language as an essential medium of representation. Thus, literary
creativity and representation are mediated. Furthermore, as a committed writer, Orwell is
deeply involved in the problems concerning literature and politics. For Orwell, literature
cannot be dissociated from politics.

Consequently, the exploration of the novel from different angles

does not aim at the pure application of some literary and critical
approaches on Orwell’s text. This may be misleading since the
investigation may fall in superficiality and simplicity. But each
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strategy deployed is actually a further contribution to the author’s
general argument and a manifestation of the novel’s status as a
creative and subversive text.
CONTENTS

ABSTRACT......................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................4
CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK..................................6
Introduction...........................................................................................................................6
1- The Materialist Approach.........................................................................................6
1-1 Reflection Theory..................................................................................................7
1-2 The Althussarians’ Revision of the Reflection Theory..........................................9
1-3 Bakhtin’s Historical Poetics..................................................................................18
Summary...........................................................................................................................18
CHAPTER TWO: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.....................................20
Introduction............................................................................................................................20
2- The Materialist Historical Analysis of The Road to Wigan Pier.............................20
2-1 Socio-economic-Determination..............................................................................21
2-1-a Housing Problem.............................................................................................21
2-1-b Hideous Working Conditions..........................................................................25
2-1-c Mass Unemployment in Industrial Areas........................................................30
2-1-d Hideous Scenery on the Outskirts of the Industrial North..............................36
2-2 Cultural Determinism........................................................................................38
2-2-a Dirt..........................................................................................................40
2-2-b Smell.......................................................................................................41
2-2-c Passivity..................................................................................................42
2-2-d Crowding................................................................................................44
2-3 Socialism as an Alternative...............................................................................45
2-3-a Socialist Type Analysis and Socialist Propaganda.....................................45
2-3-b Socialism Vs Fascism...............................................................................47
2-3-c Cultural Understanding and Communication..............................................49

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Summary........................................................................................................................51
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................52
BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................53

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: The Elements of the Materialist Mode of Text Analysis.......................................19
Table 2: Housing Problem: Aspects and Effects.................................................................22
Table 3: Working Conditions: Aspects and Effects.............................................................25
Table 4: Mass Unemployment and Food Problem: Aspects and Effects..............................31
Table 5: Hideous Scenery: Aspects and Effects.................................................................36
Table 6: Prejudices and Assumptions and Effects..............................................................40

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 INTRODUCTION

Critics such as Raymond Williams claim that any separation between factual and fictional or
between documentary and imaginative causes much harm to literature and obscures many problems
of literary writing (Williams 42). Rather than division and separation, the association between the
imaginative and documentary works is the most salient feature of Orwell’s writings in the 1930s.
That is why Orwell views the problem, “more than a mere formal one, but rather as a problem of
social relations” (Williams 42). Based on this premise, a redefinition of fictionality, which will be
an alternative to the conventional common belief, should be readily advanced. Our thesis statement
is that fictionality should not be defined in terms of lack or absence of context, but as an interaction
between text and context. Thus, no discourse should be dissociated from its specific context. This
conception of fictionality in its close relation to literariness has made of The Road to Wigan Pier a
subversive novel both on the levels of form and content.
This problem of fictionality could be tackled from a Marxist point of view. The contribution
of the Marxist materialist approach to literature is very significant. Indeed, different Marxist
theorists have tried to produce a systematic view of literature. The emphasis on the literary work as
a material social product has resulted in a different view of fictionality. Since the literary canon is a
construct and value is a transitive term, literature cannot be studied in terms of a distinction between
fact and fiction. Literary form is not a stable, well-defined entity. Eagleton in Literary Theory: An
Introduction argues that “Any belief that the study of literature is the study of a stable, well-
definable entity…can be abandoned as a chimera” (Eagleton 10). He further argues that “Literature,
in the sense of a set of works as assured and unalterable value, distinguished by certain shared
inherent properties does not exist” (Eagleton 10-11). In fact, the literariness of a work actually
depends on the way it is perceived and received in a particular social and historical reality.
Therefore, Orwell’s text will be explored from a materialist perspective to show that it is not an
isolated work but rather a product of certain specific socio-economic conditions in a particular
historical stage.

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 The purpose of this research is to advance a conception of fictionality according to which the
fictionality of Orwell’s narrative discourse can be defined not solely in terms of truth-falsity
criteria, but mainly in terms of its interactive and communicative effect in social reality. Orwell’s
interaction with his specific socio-political context has encoded in the text certain ideological
attitudes which will be decoded through the process of interpretation. Therefore, the research will
reveal what specific analytic tools can be deployed, how they are used, and for what purpose(s).
The first chapter of this study will provide the theoretical background and the analytical tools
which will be deployed for the analysis of the text. This investigation will be carried out within the
framework of Terry Eagleton and Mikhail Bakhtin’s view of literature to reveal the social
dimension of the text as well as its cultural determinism. In the next chapter, that is, findings and
discussion, focus will be on the different strategies of re-assessment used by the author to liberate
himself from the cultural bourgeois prejudices of his class. His aim is to offer an alternative to
Capitalism and its cruel effects, that is, Socialism. For more validation of his project, the inquiry
and the results will be inferred from his personal experience and observation during his two-month
journey to the industrial north of England.

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 CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The study of a literary text is very polemical due to the problematic view of literature either as
a term or as a concept. Thanks to the rise of modern literary theory, there has been an increasing
interest in literature as a distinct object of study. Thus, the theoretical review includes the analysis
of the following items, namely: literariness, fictionality, and language versus reality. All these
problems will be discussed in relation to The Road to Wigan Pier.1 The study of literature is very
problematic in that it raises many questions that need to be answered such as: What is literature?
What is the nature of literature? What is the purpose of literature? What is literary and what is non-
literary? Is there a good literature and a bad literature? How can we evaluate a literary work and
what are the criteria and norms for literary evaluation or valorization? Finally, to what extent can
we apply the supposed definitions of literature to Orwell’ book? In other words, what makes it a
literary work and, namely, what are the inherent constituents that allow it to be classified as a work
of art and specifically a work of literature?

1. The Materialist Approach:

The Formalist and Marxist approaches to literature are two opposite alternatives. On the one
hand, Formalism is based on form and literary texts are viewed as self-contained aesthetic object,
hence the lack of social dimension. In contrast, the Marxist theory, which views the literary text as a
social product, presents itself as an alternative to the restricted Formalist approach to literature. The
materialist historical approach to literature marks a crucial break with the traditional aesthetic
definition of literature. Raymond Williams in Marxism and Literature, with regard to the concept of
‘literature’ states that:
…The crucial theoretical break is the recognition of ‘literature’as a specializing social
and historical category. It should be clear that this does not diminish its importance.
Just because it is historical, a key concept of a major phase of a culture, it is a decisive

1
It is hereafter referred to as RWP.
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 evidence of a particular form of the social development of language. Within its terms,
work of outstanding and permanent importance was done, in specific and cultural
relationships. (Williams 53 quoted in Bennett 15)

Thus, the Marxist new concept of literature will shift it from the field of aesthetics, that is, the
traditional bourgeois aesthetics, to that of politics and ideology. Therefore, given that the formal
mode of text analysis may reveal many limitations and shortcomings, to what extent is the
materialist view of literature effective in the study of a literary text, specifically Orwell’s RWP?
Besides, what are the nature and characteristics of this alternative view of literature? Moreover,
what are the main trends which have marked the development of Marxist theory and their impact on
the literary text analysis?

1-1 Reflection Theory:

As viewed from a Marxist standpoint, literature must be studied in relation to historical and
social reality. In fact, the superstructure of a society, which includes ideology, religion, literature
and other cultural institutions, is directly determined by its economic base, or infrastructure. Thus,
since literature is part of the cultural practices of the superstructure, literary texts are causally
determined by the economic forces and relations of production. And one of the major adherents of
the direct form of Marxist criticism, often referred to by the ‘Althussarians’, namely, Louis
Althusser himself, Pierre Macherey and Terry Eagleton, as ‘vulgar Marxism’, is the Hungarian
theorist, Georg Lukacs.
Lukacs’s approach to literature is Marxist in the Hegelian tradition. Frederic Hegel insists that
philosophy reflects its historical circumstances. Marxist concern with literature as a form of
reflection replaces the Formalist view of literature as a signifying practice. This makes Lukacs see
literature as the direct reflection of the socio-economic reality in a particular society and at a
particular historical phase. This new approach helps the writer to see society and reality as they are
which makes him more creative. That is why he advocates the ‘reflection theory’ showing
socialism’s concern with the truth in depicting reality and mirroring the divisions and conflicts of
Capitalism.
On the other hand, Lukacs’s view of reflection undermines both naturalism and modernism.
He contends that literature in capitalist society is dominated by these two tendencies. He rejects the
naturalism of the recent European novel arguing that a novel reflects reality not by conveying its
surface appearance but by providing us with “a truer, more complete, more vivid and more dynamic
reflection of reality”(Selden 29). He adds that a novel may lead the reader “towards a more concrete
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insight into reality” (Selden 29). Thus, Lukacs rejects both the objective and impartial reflection of
reality as demonstrated by the French novelist Emile Zola and other exponents of naturalism.
Similarly, he rejects the subjective impression of reality as shown by modernist writers, namely,
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Lukacs rejects both random ways of ‘photographic’ representation
of reality (Selden 30). In his book The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (1957), Lukacs attacks
modernism and rejects Joyce’s static view of historical events, arguing that “The failure to perceive
human existence as part of a dynamic historical environment infects the whole of contemporary
modernism” (Quoted in Selden 31) giving the example of writers such as Kafka, Faulkner and the
German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Therefore, because of the reactionary nature of modernist
ideology, he considers the modernist form - literature- as unacceptable. What he argues for is a
‘dialectical’ view of history, that is, a dialectical development rather than a random or chaotic one.
The inner contradictions in every social organization, which are produced by the mode of
production and expressed in class struggle, should be reflected in the literary work itself.
As an alternative to modernism and naturalism which reject class struggle, Lukacs advocates
Marxist-based critical realism. In his works, such as The historical Novel and Studies in European
Realism, he argues that “such realism cannot only avoid the fragmented visions of both naturalism
and modernism, but in true Hegelian fashion can combine and reconcile the subjective and the
objective, the personal and the public” (Singer and Dunn 33-34 Quoted in Selden).
Lukacs’s anti-modernism is also criticized by Walter Benjamin who argues in his article “The
Artist as Producer” that a truly revolutionary art must break with the traditional forms which use
traditional techniques. He adds that works which use these conventional techniques in order to
attack capitalism will themselves be consumed by bourgeois audience. Therefore, truly socialist
artists must focus on production instead of consumption by means of the use of radical techniques.
(Newton 158)
Newton, in his book A Critical Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Literary Theory,
remarks that many contemporary critics, without adhering to a Marxist political perspective, have
turned away from interpreting “literary works in reflective terms directly determined by socio-
economic forces. These critics refer to this traditional critical approach, that is, the reflective
Marxist interpretation, as ‘vulgar Marxism’” (Newton 102). Newton viewed that: “the major
nineteenth century novelists as not merely reproducing reality in terms of bourgeois ideology but
also using the form of the novel to reveal the contradictions within that ideology. Bourgeois literary
forms were not merely reflective but could incorporate implicitly Marxist critique” (Newton 102-
103).

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 However, with Louis Althusser, the neo-Marxist French philosopher, as well as with Pierre
Macherey and Terry Eagleton, there are new directions in Marxist criticism during the 1960s. In
fact, Althusser’s anti-Hegelian Marxism marks a new orientation and a shift in the Marxist view of
literature as opposite to that of Lukacs. So, what does this shift consist in? And what are its major
effects on the view and study of literary works in general? Besides, to what extent has this
reorientation brought the Althussarians, namely, Althusser himself, Macherey, and Eagleton closer
to the structuralist and Formalist views in their aim to establish a ‘theory’ or ‘science’ of literature
as an autonomous discipline?

1-2- The Althussarians’ Revision of the Reflection Model:

Althusser’s break with the traditional basic Marxist concept of ‘Reflection Theory’ is very
significant. His revision of Marxist theory is characterized by “a move away from the position that
literary works reflect socio-economic reality towards a fundamentally different view of the
relationship between the work of literature and historical reality” (Newton 103). Althusser, in his
attack of Hegel’s readings of Marx, has directed his attention to Marx’s attempt to found a
‘scientific’ system. He has introduced new formulations, namely, the concept of social formation
instead of social ‘system’ or ‘order’ as well as the notion of ‘overdetermination’ as the basis for a
radical revision of the reflection model.
This leads to another significant difference between the traditional Marxist position and
Althusser’s theory. He rejects the so-called ‘vulgar Marxist’ view of art as wholly determined by
socio-economic forces and instead argues that these works have a ‘relative autonomy’ and are
‘overdetermined’, that is, determined by “a complex network of factors” (Newton 159). These
levels themselves embody inner contradictions. For Althusser, art is not merely a form of ideology.
Its position is between ideology and scientific knowledge. In “A letter on Art », he argues that art
“makes us see” , in a distanced way, “the ideology from which it is born, in which it bathes, from
which it detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes” (Quoted in Selden 40). Althusser’s definition
of ideology is as follows: “[It is] a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to
their real conditions of existence” (Quoted in Selden 40). While this imaginary consciousness helps
us understand the real world, it also masks or represses our real relationships to it. For instance, in
order that the capitalist system perpetuates itself, it presents the ideology of freedom for all
including labourers but at the same time masks the real relations of the capitalist economy: “The
dominant ideology is accepted as a common sense view of things by the dominated classes and thus

9
the interests of the dominant class are secured” (Selden 40). Yet, art makes a ‘retreat’ (a fictional
distance) from ideology. 
Althusser’s theories as well as Macherey’s show great similarities with structuralism, though
they claim not to be structuralists. In fact, Raman Selden, in his book A reader’s Guide to
Cotemporary Literary Theory, classifies them under the heading of ‘Structuralist Marxism’ despite
the differences between both Structuralist and Marxist theories. Nevertheless, nobody can deny the
great impact of structuralism on modern literary theory and particularly on the Althusserians. Both
Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh, in their book entitled Modern Literary Theory, state that “The
initial influence of structuralist Marxism on literary theory centered mainly on the concept of
ideology, though Althusser’s notion of ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ and of the construction
(‘interpellation’) of the human subject has been taken up in some post-structuralist work” (Rice and
Waugh 52).
The study of the structure and functioning of ideology involves two aspects for Althusser. The
first aspect concerns the object representing the imaginary form of ideology. Ideology represents the
imaginary relationship between the individual subject and the real conditions of existence. Thus, all
the ‘world outlooks’, namely, the religious ideology, the ethical ideology, the legal ideology, and
the political ideology are imaginary relationships since they do not correspond to reality. For
Althusser, ideology represents an illusion and only makes an allusion to reality: “What is
represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence
of the individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they
live” (Rice and Waugh 56). We have to interpret these ideologies in order to understand the reality
behind the imaginary representations of that world.
One of the functions of ideology is recognition (‘re-connaissance’). Althusser’s formulation is
that “All ideology hails or interpellates individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the
category of the subject” (Rice and Waugh 59). In fact, the hailing or interpellation of individuals as
subjects shows the ‘duplicate mirror structure of ideology’. Being inspired by Lacan’s theory of the
“mirror stage”, Althusser talks about the individual’s subjective existence, that is, his subjectivity,
and his capacity of assimilating concrete social practices. Being ‘hailed’, that is recognized by the
‘other’, is an assertion and a recognition of one’s identity. That is why Althusser understands the
subject to be inescapably ideological.
Given this conception of ideology, Althusser believes that the work of art is similarly
implicated in the representational matrix of ideology. While he rejects the suggestion that art is
counted among the ideologies that oppress subjectivity, in contrast, he holds that “It possesses the

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capacity to expose the internal contradictions of ideological practice” (Singer and Dunn 66). He
further expresses his ambition of Marxist aesthetics, that is, to explain the production of the artwork
in relation to the production of a scientific, that is non-ideological, knowledge by saying “In that
way it [artwork] may help to pave the road toward a scientific critique of ideology and the advent of
a human knowledge that surpasses ideological subjectivity” (Singer and Dunn 66).
In addition to the imaginary form of ideology, Althusser insists on its materiality, that is, its
material existence by means of what he calls “Ideological State Apparatuses”. In fact, when he
defines the concept of social formation as a structure of distinct and interrelated levels of practice-
the economic, the political and the ideological- he insists on the word practice by stating that: “By
practice in general I [Althusser] shall mean any process of transformation of a determinate given
raw material into a determinate product, a transformation effected by a human labour, using
determinate means (of production)” (quoted in Bennett 113). Thus, ideology has its own material
existence since its work consists in “transforming individuals into concrete social beings who are
the subjects of determinate form of consciousness” (Bennett 113). Its product is the consciousness
of human subjects and its function consists in securing the reproduction of the relations of
production.
For Althusser, this work can be carried out by means of the ‘Ideological State
Apparatuses’(ISAs). These are the main agencies for the reproduction of both ideology and the
subject. They include the church, the family, the media, the education system, and the cultural
apparatuses, namely, literature, the arts, sports, and so on. What distinguishes these apparatuses
from the normal state power apparatuses, namely, the Government, the administration, the Army,
the Police, the courts, the prisons etc., is that the former often function by ideology whereas the
latter usually function by coercion or threat of coercion. The state apparatus is repressive which
suggests that it “functions by violence”. ISAs present themselves in the form of distinct and
specialised institutions such as the communication ISA including press, radio, TV etc.; the
educational ISA made up of both public and private schools, universities etc.; the cultural ISA
consisting of literature, arts sports; etc, . For instance, both Balibar and Macherey have taken up
Althusser’s notion of ISAs and studied the way literature functions in the reproduction of ideology
within the ISAs of the French education system. In his book entitled A Theory of Literary
Production (1966), Macherey, the French philosopher, has applied textual analysis based on
Althusser’s ‘symptomatic’ reading in order to uncover “the significant absences of the texts, the
ideological presuppositions on which the text was once founded but of which it could not speak”
(Rice and Patricia 53).

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 To sum up, Althussarian Marxism has tried to reformulate the relation between infrastructure
and superstructure in structuralist terms. Althusser has substituted the relational model for the
causal one. He has attacked the traditional Marxist doctrine of the expressive causality which is
associated with the work of Georg Lukacs. This doctrine implies that all the products of the
superstructure, including works of literature, are causally determined by the economic factor. The
economic factor is, for Althusser, no longer the hidden cause of the superstructure or ‘the hidden
master narrative’ as he puts it in The Political Unconscious (Althusser 28). Instead, the economic
base exists within the superstructure itself. The relationship between the economic base and the
superstructure is viewed not in terms of determinism but in terms of ‘overdetermination’. Thus, he
replaces expressive causality by structural causality. The latter allows relative autonomy for the
different levels of the superstructure rather than being a mere reflection of the economic base.
Finally, Althusser’s attack on expressive causality is also related to his criticism of the other central
traditional Marxist concept of mediation (Newton 112-113).
Althusser’s general view of literature has provided a strong theoretical background upon
which both Pierre Macherey and Terry Eagleton have based their future and more detailed work.
Tony Bennett, in his book entitled Formalism and Marxism, states that Althusser has made an
outstanding contribution to literary criticism in that his view, contrary to reflection theory, “has
enabled us to ‘think’ the literary text as a practice of transformation, as a working upon and
transforming of other forms of representation which gives rise to distinctive ‘effects’ whose social
impact can be subjected to a political calculation” (Bennett 127).
Bennett further develops his critique of Althusser’s view of literature by criticizing him for
completely exiling politics from his own criticism and, ultimately, from literature in general. He
contends that the literary effects of literary works must not be abstractly calculated, they should
rather be calculated in relation to the historically concrete and changing modes in which they are
appropriated. In fact, the production of a work of literature should never be completed once and for
all; it is endlessly reproduced with different political effects: “…It is this, the position of the text
within the full material social process that must be made the object of inquiry” (Bennett 136). He
also holds that the quest for an objective ‘science’ of literary text is illusory. The concern is not with
“what literature’s political effects are but what they might be made to be, not in forever and once-
and-for-all sense but in a dynamic and changing way- by the operations of Marxist criticism”
(Bennett 137). Consequently, all forms of criticism are inescapably and necessarily political forms
of discourse.

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 However, Althusser’s insistence on the formal and technical considerations in order to
understand the relation of the work of art to the socio-cultural forces that have produced it, has
created an alignment between Marxism and structuralism. This fact, as Newton argues in his book
entitled A Critical Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Literary Interpretation, has been an
important factor in promoting a greater interest in Marxist criticism among those who are non-
Marxists (Newton 103-104). The possibility of combining both Marxist and structuralist criticism in
an effective way has also clearly been demonstrated by another eminent French Marxist
philosopher, Pierre Macherey, who has greatly collaborated with Louis Althusser.
Macherey, in his book entitled A Theory of Literary Production (1966), attacks the plenitude
of meaning and affirms that “Conjecturally, the work has its margins, an area of incompleteness
from which we can observe its birth and its production”  (Macherey 90). In fact, the text has an
‘unconscious’, that is, something to conceal. The textual process produces certain lapses and
omissions. These ‘not-saids’ correspond to the incoherence of the ideological discourse used in the
text: “For in order to say anything, there are other things which must not be said”  (quoted in Selden
40). Thus, the main concern of the critic, like the psychoanalyst, is with what the work does not say:
“the text’s unconscious – to what is unspoken and inevitably suppressed” (Selden 40). His role
consists in “uncovering the significant ‘absences’ of the texts, the ideological presuppositions on
which the text was founded but of which it could not speak” (Rice and Waugh 53).
One important factor connects Macherey’s theory to the structuralist approach to literature.
This aspect consists in his refusal of interpretation in the conventional way as a comprehensive
reading of the text. In fact, he believes that the critic seeks to achieve knowledge of the text not
through interpretation but rather by means of “explanation [which] recognizes the necessity that
determines the work but which does not culminate in a meaning” (Macherey 77-78). For him, the
critic’s question should be ‘how’ rather than ‘what’ the text signifies.
Concerning the relationship between the text and ideology, Macherey’s view is a modification
of the traditional Marxist reflection theory which sees the literary work as a mirror which reflects
historical reality. For Macherey, the mirror is only partial and selective. And the critic’s task is to
decipher images in the mirror like deciphering dream imagery for Freud. Thus, history may be
compared with the Freudean unconscious in that it is similar to the interpretation of dreams which
can be interpreted indirectly. History also can be revealed through the divisions in the work of art
which constitute its unconscious: “the unconscious which is history, the play of history beyond its
edges, encroaching on those edges” (Macherey 94). Therefore, the work of art is a set of
contradictions which has a “self-sufficient meaning” (Macherey 128).

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 As for the representation of reality in literary texts, Macherey argues that it emerges in the
‘fissures’ or ‘gaps’ existing in the systems that govern literary representation. It is then an absence
in the text. For Macherey, “The relation is not between system and reality, but between ideology
and history” (Newton 106). Macherey believes that a scientific criticism “is not an interpretation of
its objects; it is a transformation, an attribution of significations which the objects themselves did
not initially possess” (Macherey 149).
Macherey, who refuses to consider Balzac, through his book Les Paysans, as a realist in the
mimetic sense, sees" literary discourse as a parody, as a contestation of language rather than a
representation of reality” (Macherey 61). So, he believes that the role of the critic consists in
displaying rather than resolving the conflict between meanings which “produces the radical
otherness which shapes the work” (Macherey 84). For Macherey, who considers the literary text as
an ideological form which consists of internal contradictions and which constitutes the critic’s
concern, is interested in understanding the ‘langue’ or underlying system of Balzac’s fiction while
the text itself is treated as ‘parole’ or product of the system. He thinks that Balzac, as a novelist,
“confronts an ideological utterance with a fictional utterance” (Macherey 84). Thus, considering
Balzac’s fiction as a production and working of both politics and art, Macherey similarly holds that
the critic’s focus of attention should be equally centered on politics as well as on art.
But, the crucial problematic is: What is fictional about literature? Since we cannot talk about a
literature as being a ‘realist’ reproduction of a certain social life or even a straight mirroring of a
particular historical reality, we may talk about the production of a reality effect. In fact, the text
simultaneously produces “a reality effect” and “a fiction effect” which mutually interpret each other
on the basis of their dualism (Rice and Waugh 66). So, both fiction and realism are notions
produced by literature: “The literary discourse itself institutes and projects the presence of the ‘real’
in the manner of an hallucination” (Rice and Waugh 66). How is this materially possible? This
process can be achieved through the ideological effect of identification produced by literary texts :
“ Through the endless functioning of its texts, literature increasingly ‘produces’ subjects, on display
for everyone…Literature transforms (concrete) individuals into subjects and endows them with a
quasi-real hallucinatory individuality” (Rice and Waugh 67). Thus, apart from Macherey's view,
another approach to the study of the literary text is suggested by Terry Eagleton.
Terry Eagleton, in his book entitled Criticism and Ideology and especially in the chapter
called “Towards a Science of the Text”, has analyzed the literary text and its relations to ideology
and history. In order to accomplish this task, he has tried to answer such questions as: In what sense

14
is it correct to maintain that ideology, rather than history, is the object of the text? Or, in what sense,
if any, do elements or the historically ‘real’ enter the text?
First, Eagleton has totally rejected the traditional Marxist notion of direct and spontaneous
relation between the text and history since it belongs to a naïve empiricism which he thinks has to
be discarded. He argues that, as a word in a certain language cannot be correlated with its object,
similarly the text cannot be conceived to be directly denoting a real history. Instead, he contends
that “A text, naturally, may speak of real history, of Napoleon or Chartism, but even if it maintains
empirical historical accuracy this is always a fictive treatment- an operation of historical data
according to the laws of textual production” (Eagleton 70). In fact, the text must be read as literary;
otherwise, it would be considered as a historiographical discourse. But, a text operating as a
‘historical’ literary work does not mean “to suppress the relevance of the particular history with
which it deals, as though this might be any history.” Rather, “This particular history is being
fictionalized- construed in terms of ideological production of its agents’ modes ideological insertion
into it, and so rendered as ideology…” (Eagleton 70).
The literary discourse does not take history as its immediate object. Instead, it works upon
ideological forms and materials which conceal history. The literary text has history as its object
only in the last instance. Thus, as Eagleton contends, this distancing of history, that is, the absence
of a particular historical ‘real’, confers on literature a sense of freedom. But this liberation is simply
another face of internal necessity in the text. Since it conceals the constituents of its ideological
matrix: “History operates upon the text by an ideological determination which within the text itself
privileges ideology as a dominant structure determining its own imaginary or ‘pseudo’-history…”
(Eagleton 73-74). The literary work is the imaginary object which is actually the product of certain
representations of the real. This imaginary production of the real is ideology itself: “If it distantiates
history, it is not because it transmutes it to fantasy- but because the significations it works into
fiction are already representations of reality rather than reality itself” (Eagleton 74-75).
Furthermore, Eagleton holds that the text is not simply a product but a necessity of ideology,
and the fictiveness of the literary text, its most prominent aspect, is its lack of a real direct referent:
“It [fictiveness] is the most general constituent of the literary text, and that refers not at all to the
literal fictiveness of the text’s events and responses (for they may happen to be historically true),
but to certain modes of producing such materials” (Eagleton 78).
Terry Eagleton, in his book Criticism and Ideology, contends that Macherey’s concept of
‘absence’ is “an essentially negative conception of the text’s relation to history” (Eagleton 93).
Rather than focusing on gaps, Eagleton is mainly concerned with “the complex mediations that

15
govern the relation between history and the literary text. Eagleton, trying to revitalize literary
criticism, has tried to retain the Marxian concept of ideology but at the same time has modified the
traditional Marxian formulations. Drawing upon Althusser, he believes that the relation between the
text and ideology should be seen in terms of ‘overdetermination’ since “The text is an imaginary
construction produced from representations which are themselves productions” (Newton 109).
History can be present in the text only as ideology since its material is not drawn directly from
reality but from how reality is signified. Reality in the text is therefore ‘pseudo-reality’ (Newton
109). For Eagleton, criticism should be concerned with studying “in conjuncture two mutually
constitutive formations: the nature of the ideology worked by the text and the aesthetic modes of
that working” (Eagleton 85). And it can achieve its status of a ‘science’ only on the basis of ‘the
science of ideological formations’ (Eagleton 96); which requires the study of “the laws of the
production of ideological discourses as literature” (Eagleton 97).
Therefore, the literary text should be read to reveal within its formal organization the
conditions of its own making, that is, the process whereby it is produced by an interaction of
structures. In the chapter dealing with the categories of a materialist criticism, in his book Criticism
and Ideology, Eagleton analyses the major constituents of a Marxist theory of literature, namely, the
general mode of production (GMP), the literary mode of production (LMP), the general ideology
(GI), the authorial ideology (Au I), and finally, the text which is the product of a specific
overdetermined conjuncture of all the elements or formations set out schematically. In order to
establish a science of the text, Eagleton has not separated this external process of literary production
from the intrinsic study of the literary work itself along with the analysis of its relations with
ideology and history.
In the late 1970s, postructuralist thought had great impact on Eagleton’s work and produced a
radical change in his view. His previous rejection of Althusser’s view that literature can distance
itself from ideology shows that the literary text “works on reality at two moves: the meanings and
perceptions produced in the text are a reworking of ideology’s own working of reality” (Selden 42).
Thus, literature can be defined as a complex reworking of already existing ideological discourses.
Besides, Eagleton’s attention has shifted from Althusser’s ‘scientific’ attitude towards the
revolutionary thought of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin. This shift has thrown Eagleton back
to the classic Marxist revolutionary theory which believes not in the mere theoretical interpretation
of the world but in its practical change.
In his book Literary Theory: An Introduction, Eagleton has tried to show how the study of
literature as a stable entity is a chimera; literary canon is a construct; and value is a transitive term.

16
First, he has shown that defining literature as imaginative writing in the sense of fiction-writing is
not literally true- and therefore cannot be accepted. The reason is that: “The definition of literature
cannot be based on a distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’” because “ there is no clear distinction
between what is factual and what is fictional, hence the difficult distinction between novels and
news reports” (Eagleton 1-2). He further argues that since literature is a creative and imaginative
writing, this does not mean that history, philosophy, and natural science are uncreative or
unimaginative. That is why this definition of literature, according to Eagleton, is inappropriate.
Consequently, the definition of literature as a ‘highly valued kind of writing’ may put in
question the notion of its objectivity in the sense of being eternal and immutable. The fact that
literature is not a stable entity implies that value judgements are actually variable. Eagleton believes
that “The so-called ‘literary canon’, the unquestioned ‘great tradition’ of the ‘national literature’,
has to be recognized as a construct, fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a certain
time. There is no such thing as a literary work or tradition which is valuable in itself, regardless of
what anyone might have said or come to say about it » (Eagleton 11). He considers ‘value’ as
“transitive term: it means whatever is valued by certain people in specific situations, according to
particular criteria and in the light of given purposes” (Eagleton 11). Therefore, literary works are
constantly ‘re-written’; and being in a continuous ‘re-writing’ process makes literature unstable.
Bennett sees that Eagleton’s conception of literary value is somewhat paradoxical. In fact, on
the one hand Eagleton claims that there is no such thing as intrinsic value since each value is
transitive and relational ‘exchange value’. On the other hand, he argues that all works of ‘great
tradition’ are indisputably of ‘aesthetic value’ since the conditions of their making are inscribed
within their structure. Due to his contradictory arguments, Bennett concludes that Eagleton’s theory
is judged to be a failure: “For there is simply no way in which a given text can be said to be valued
because of the circumstances of its production” (Bennett 154).
Bennett further argues that the major Marxist theoretical break with aesthetics is an important
phase in the history and development of Marxist criticism. This shift of Marxist criticism from
aesthetics to non-aesthetics is especially promoted by Raymond Williams. In contrast to the
traditional aesthetic theories, mainly the Formalists and later the Althussarians, Williams argues, in
his book entitled Marxism and Literature, that the concept of ‘literature’ should refer to a particular,
historically determined form of writing practice while the concept of ‘aesthetic’ should be
discarded.
In his previously mentioned book, Williams has coined what has become to be known in
Britain as ‘cultural materialism’ that is a similar approach to ‘New Historicism’ in America.

17
Williams has a major influence on cultural materialism. His support for a materialist approach to
literature is also apparent in his previous book Keywords (1976), where he revealed that a
separation between art and its social and cultural dimensions was “damaging, for there is something
irresistibly displaced and marginal about the now common and limiting phrase ‘aesthetic
considerations’” (quoted in Newton 120). He also defines cultural materialism as “the analysis of all
forms of signification, including quite centrally writing, within the actual means and conditions of
their production” (quoted in Newton 120).
So the traditional Formalist concept of literature, that is, of a privileged set of texts
which exemplifies a universal and eternal aesthetic form of cognition, should be reformulated and
substituted by a concept of signifying a specific practice of writing in a certain historical and
cultural context. In addition to this, the breakdown of the Althussarian attempt to develop an
autonomous theory of literature and its essential concern to distinguish between literature, science
and ideology have led to a shift of the Bakhtinian School from the aesthetic to a non-aesthetic field.

1-3 Bakhtin’s Historical Poetics:

The prominent members of the Bakhtinian School are mainly Mkhail Bakhtin, Valentin
Volosinov and Pavel Medvedev whose work The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: An
Introduction to Sociological Poetics (1928) was an attempt for ‘rapprochement’ between Formalism
and Marxism. Though the School’s main concern is with the linguistic structure of literary works,
which is actually a Formalist approach, it remains deeply influenced by Marxism in that language
could not be separated from ideology. Members of the Bakhtin school strongly believe that
language, as a social construct, is a material reality hence the strong connection between ideology
and its medium, that is, language. Volosinov, while refusing the classical approach to ideology as a
purely mental phenomenon, emphasizes that it “arises as reflex of a material (real) socio-economic
substructure” (Selden 17). He has produced a ‘Historical Poetics’ which is a new, historical
approach to the study and development of language. Volosinov’s work is the theoretical backloth on
which the future work of Bakhtin and Medvedev will be based.
Drawing upon Volosinov’s historical theory of language, Mikhail Bakhtin has tried to
build on this dynamic view for his future study of literary texts. Bakhtin, however, rejects the idea
that literature directly reflects social reality. Instead, he keeps the Formalist concern with the
literary structure: “He stressed not the way texts reflect society or class interests, but rather the way
language is made to disrupt authority and liberate alternative voices” (Selden 18).

18
 To conclude, we can say that, by means of historical method, Bakhtin aims to show that
the function and effect of a particular literary text may vary according to the matrices of its
production within certain specific social context. Unlike the Formalist method, Bakhtin’s approach
explains this process in a concrete sense, rather than abstractly, by taking into account all the
political and historical conjunctures within which the text is produced and received by the reader.
Therefore, this overview of the major aspects of development of the Marxist approach to literature
will provide useful tools for the rigorous materialist analysis of Orwell’s text. The analytic tools that
seem to be the most pertinent to this investigation are best provided by Eagleton and Bakhtin’s
models.

The aim of this general review of theories of literature and criticism, namely, the materialist
perspective, is to provide a thorough repertoire from which only pertinent analytic tools will be
selected. The deployment of these tools will be conducted for the purpose of the exploration of the
text. Mikhail Bakhtin and Terry Eagleton’s works will be used as a model. The analysis of the text
based on this model will serve as a further contribution to the major argument of the research paper
which consists in proposing a re-definition of the notion of fictionality. This discussion will be
based on the investigation of Orwell’s text The Road to Wigan Pier.
Table 1: The Elements of the Materialist Mode of Text Analysis

CATEGORIES AND STRATEGIES

- Housing
- hideous working conditions
- mass unemployment in the North
Socio-economic determination - hideous scenery in the North

- dirt
- smell
- passivity
Cultural determinism - crowding

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 - Socialist type analysis and Socialist
propaganda
- Socialism vs Fascism
Socialism as an alternative - cultural understanding and
communication

This table presents the different elements of the materialist mode of text analysis and
obviously shows the potential significance of ideology as treated by this approach to Orwell’s text.
The study of a literary text cannot be dissociated from the analysis of the political and ideological
position of the author.
CHAPTER TWO: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The analysis of RWP will be essentially based on the discussion of the analytic tools presented
in the previous chapter. This investigation will be carried out from the materialist mode of text
analysis. This section comprises three main divisions. The socio-economic determination deals with
significant issues in the text such as housing, working conditions, mass unemployment and hideous
scenery on the outskirts of the industrial North. Moreover, cultural determinism includes social
prejudices such as dirt, smell, passivity and crowding. The last division concerns Socialism as an
alternative, including the Socialist type analysis and Socialist propaganda, Socialism Vs Fascism
and finally cultural understanding and communication. The general purpose of this analysis, which
is based on the aforementioned approach, is to present more validity to the thesis proposed in this
research paper.
2- The Materialist Historical Analysis of The Road to Wigan Pier
In this section, the main task consists in moving a step further towards the text’s literariness
and the author’s argument. It aims at analyzing the strategy deployed by the author on a different
level, that is, from a social perspective. The narrator has opted for several strategies which
ultimately lead to his liberation from the cultural bourgeois prejudices of his social class. As Peter
Davison puts it “Much of Orwell’s work, and especially RWP, is therefore a struggle towards a
liberation, liberation from the restrictions of class” (Davison vii).
However, the text will reveal that the purpose of this challenge is not the complete destruction
of norms and the elimination of class distinctions. The author’s objective is not a total rejection of
the status quo and the establishment of a classless society. His aim is communication and
interaction instead of class war and enmity. Liberty, justice and equality will guarantee ‘common
20
decency’ for the deprived and oppressed working class. Therefore, this section will be a threefold
approach. A materialist historical approach to RWP will consist of:
First, the socio-economic determination. It deals with the different extrinsic structures which
have contributed whereby RWP, as a subversive novel, is produced. These elements will be spotted
within the text itself.
Second, the cultural dimension: how the social relations are mainly determined by cultural
factors, that is, bourgeois assumptions and prejudices, rather than by economic factors.
Third, Socialism as an alternative: strategies of reassessment deployed by the narrator.
Socialism is presented as an alternative through the example of the narrator’s personal experience.
Finally, the study will show how the author remains suspicious of tampering with tradition despite
his call for social justice and common decency.
2-1 Socio-economic Determination:
Capitalism, the dominant mode of production in the 1930s England, has generated specific
relations among the different strata which constitute the social formation. These social structures,
which are governed by the forces of production of the capitalist system, are characterized by the
cruel exploitation of the poor working class by the apparatuses and institutions of the ruling wealthy
upper middle class. While the former, the oppressed class, represents the majority, the latter, the
dominant class, is only a minority within the social formation. Given his belief in the appalling and
dreadful situation which is the product of a cruel machine, a responsible writer, namely George
Orwell, feels aware and committed to express this reality. As a committed writer, he writes politics
in literary practice. So, what are the different aspects and the main strategies deployed by this
committed writer to represent this tension in his work? How does he depict this cruel picture in a
creative way in his novel?
In order to conduct this task, it may be useful to draw tables showing the different aspects
along with the effects of the problems facing the working class and the unemployed in the northern
areas of England. The main issues concerning the cruel effects of capitalism on this category of
people in the 1930s are essentially the housing problem, the working conditions of coal miners,
mass unemployment and its effects, the problem of food especially for the unemployed and finally
the portrayal of filth and smoke on the outskirts of the northern towns. These tables will be followed
by a discussion of the different aspects and effects of each problem as witnessed and experienced by
the narrator himself during his journey to the North.
2-1-a Housing Problem:

21
 This section deals with squalid housing. The table below clearly reveals the two main aspects
of the crucial issue facing the working class and particularly the unemployed. The first aspect is the
lack of decent lodging-houses while the second one is the acute housing shortage in the northern
industrial areas. So how are these problems manifested in the text?

Table 2: Housing Problem: Aspects and Effects

HOUSING PROBLEM
ASPECTS EFFECTS
Poverty
Dirt
Smell
Overcrowding
Lack of decent lodging-houses in
Depressing atmosphere
northern towns
Aversion–hatred–jealousy
But
No complaint from lodgers
Author’s great surprise
Acute housing shortage in industrial Filthy slums
areas Condemned slums
Misery
Squalor and confusion
Overcrowding-congestion
Squalid conditions of life
Caravan – dwellings
Hopeless caravan dwellers: no job, no
house
Paralytic slownesss of rehousing and
slum clearance

22
 Problems with Corporation Estates
But
No awareness of the workers and
unemployed of their appalling
conditions

Concerning the first aspect, that is, the lack of decent lodging- houses and its effects, the
characteristic feature of common lodging-houses is their squalid state. They are different from the
commercial hotels in many ways. First, most of them have poor tenants. The lodgers are miserable
pensioners. One typical example is the Brookers’ lodging-house. In fact, the Brookers consider their
tenants as intruders or even dreadful parasites (RWP 10-11): “They couldn’t, they complained
perpetually, get the kind of lodgers they wanted-good class ‘commercial gentlemen’ who paid full
board and were out all day. Their ideal lodger would have been somebody who paid thirty shillings
a week and never came indoors except to sleep” (RWP 13). This will lead to the landlord’s jealous
attitude and hatred towards poor old-age pensioners. This category of lodgers are victims of a bad
system, the Means Test,152 by which the tenant is forced to live in somebody else’s house without
being a member of the family.
There are other distinct features of the low-class lodging-houses, namely, dirt, smell, bad food
and particularly overcrowding. Dirt is effectively one common characteristic of landlords or
landladies and their lodging-houses. For the author, this type of landlords is a by-product of the
modern world. They represent the ‘filthy heart of civilization’ (RWP 17). In addition to squalor,
wreckage and dirt, smell is another essential feature of common lodging-houses. Disgusting and
12
John Stevenson in British Society 1914-45, talking about the economy measures following the financial
crisis of 1929, stated that:

Under these, the level of unemployment benefits was reduced by approximately

10 per cent…The most emotive part of this package, however, was the ‘means test’.
This period for which unemployment benefit would be drawn as of right was limited
to twenty-six weeks. After this period those requiring relief had to apply for
‘transitional payments’. Although they were to be paid through the unemployment
exchange, the claimants had first to undergo a household means test carried out by the
local Public Assistance Committee. (Stevenson 276)

Stevenson also adds that: “the means test became one of the most despised aspects of the inter-war
years and long after the Second World War a source of bitterness and ill-feeling to the family” (Stevenson 277).
2

23
dreadful smell usually emanates from filthy bedrooms and kitchens. Furthermore, these lodgings are
usually overcrowded. For instance, the drawing-room in the Brookers’ typical lodging-house is
turned into a bedroom with four squalid beds among the other wreckage: “… I had to sleep” the
narrator says, “with my legs doubled up; if I straightened them out I kicked the other occupant of
the other bed in the small of the back” (RWP 5). He further adds that he can only uncoil his legs and
have a couple of hours proper sleep after the other occupant has gone out for work. Finally, all these
factors, namely, dirt, smell, vile food and overcrowding, create a depressing atmosphere. This is due
to the hopeless and appalling conditions of life in the low-class lodging-houses in the old mining
towns. This hopeless and desolate situation of the poor lodgers is expressed by the narrator’s
fellow-Southerner’ aversion. The latter said feelingly, addressing the Brookers: “The filthy bloody
bastards!” (RWP 15).
The other aspect of the housing issue is the acute housing shortage in the industrial areas and
its effects. Apart from the squalid conditions of the common lodging-houses, the narrator contends,
coal miners suffer from the squalor of the slums. The squalid conditions in the slums in Wigan,
Leeds, Sheffield and Barnsley are un-bearable. These slums are condemned to be pulled down. Yet,
despite the abject squalor of the frightful northern slums, the local authorities can neither make
these existing houses more livable nor actually condemn them to be pulled down. The ‘paralytic
slowness’ (RWP 59) of slum clearance is due to the inability of the authorities to build new houses
and substitute the old ones.
Furthermore, similar to the miseries and squalor of the low-class lodging-houses, filth and
smell are two peculiar features of the slums: “And there are the special miseries attendant upon
back to back houses. A fifty yards’ walk to the lavatory or the dust-bin is not exactly an inducement
to be clean” (RWP 51). Sometimes the smell is unbearable. Describing some of the appalling slums,
the narrator states that:

To begin with, the smell, the dominant and essential thing, is indescribable. But the
squalor and the confusion! A tub full of filthy water here, a basin full of unwashed crocks there,
more crocks piled in any odd corner, torn newspaper littered everywhere, and in the middle always
the same dreadful table covered with sticky oilcloth and crowded with cooking pots and irons and
half-darned stockings and pieces of stale bread and bits of cheese wrapped round with greasy
newspaper! (RWP 52)

Moreover, congestion is a major characteristic of slums in the old mining towns. In fact,
overcrowding is unbearable owing to poverty and the big number of children in the miner’s family.
24
This phenomenon is aggravated especially in “the dreadful caravan dwellings” existing in great
numbers in the northern industrial areas. (RWP 54) Caravan dwellings are actually another major
effect of acute housing shortage in the North. The narrator states that “The dirt and congestion of
these places is such that you cannot well imagine it unless you have tested it with your own eyes
and more particularly your nose” (RWP 55). Thus, the squalor in the caravan colonies has a great
impact particularly on children who became ‘unspeakably dirty’ and undoubtedly lousy as well.
(RWP 55) The narrator believes that certainly all these factors are due to the squalid state of these
cramped interiors to which he was a witness.

2-1-b Hideous Working Conditions:

Another aspect of the horrible reality of capitalism witnessed by the narrator and represented
in the text is the cruel exploitation and oppression of the working class, hence their hideous
conditions of work and suffering. The table below will reveal the various aspects of this exploitation
and its effects on the category of coal miners.
Table 3: Working conditions: Aspects and Effects.
WORKING CONDITIONS
ASPECTS EFFECTS
Unbearable cramped space
Noise
Heat
Description of coal-pit
Suffocation
Dust
Dusty fiery smell
Coal-extraction processes
Risks: accidents-diseases-deaths
Description of job: processes Author’s disappointment with
processes of coal extraction
Creation of monstrous ‘dirt-heaps’
Description of coal-miners Descent by shaft to coal-pit
Journey to coal face
Author’s surprise at the immense
horizontal distances to be
travelled underground

25
 Startling and horrible agility of
miner’s movement
Stiffness and suffering
Author’s sympathy with miners at
work
Low salaries: wretched
earnings and stoppages
Poverty
Suffering, indignity and slavery

As the above table shows, there is a threefold description of the miners’ working conditions:
description of the coal-pit; of the job, that is, coal-mining and of the coal-miners at work. The
interaction of these three elements will produce an effect which ultimately constitutes another
contribution to the general effect of the whole text.
First, conditions of work down the coal-pit are hideous. The author makes a skilful portrayal
of the mine which has a crucial and determining role in the miners’ life. In fact, it is part of their
discussion and their daily life since they spend most of their time there. Nevertheless, the mine,
their place of work resembles hell. Through his personal experience, the author depicts the coal-pit
as a hell for the following reasons: “Most of the things one imagines in hell are there-heat, noise,
confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space” (RWP 19). The first
characteristic, that is, heat reveals how the conditions down the coal mine are difficult and terrible.
Heat which varies from pit to pit, has great impact on workers: “It is suffocating-and the coal dust
that stuffs up your throat and nostrils and collects along your eyelids, and the unending rattle of the
conveyor belt, which in that confined space is rather like the rattle of a machine-gun” (RWP 20).
Thus, apart from the relatively great depth and darkness in the pit, the machine produces awful
deafening noise; “The first impression of all, overmastering everything else for a while, is the
frightful, deafening din from the conveyor belt which carries the coal away” (RWP 20). This
machine equally sends clouds of dust that make it almost impossible to breathe and see more than a
few feet ahead. All these factors obviously produce unfavourable conditions for work underground.
A second element necessary to construct an accurate picture of what is happening in the coal-
pit is the detailed description of work there. The author provides the reader with much information
about the nature of the work, that is, coal-mining, and the different processes involved in coal-
extraction. His aim is to produce effect on his / her reader. In fact, the first impression he gives is

26
that coal-extraction is actually a dreadful job for a variety of reasons. In addition to the previously
mentioned factors, namely unbearable cramped space, suffocating heat, coal dust, foul and black
air, depth, darkness, and dusty fiery smell, the miners have to do a very savage job. Though this job
is carried out by machines in some mines, unlike old-fashioned ones, the process of getting coal out
is hard and risky. The process of extracting coal consists of a threefold operation: cutting, blasting
and extraction. These operations are done in separate shifts. Yet, this stupendous task has great
effects both on the environment and on nature.

On the one hand, when the coal is hoisted to the surface, it is run over machines and
sometimes washed: “All that cannot be used is sent to the surface and dumped; hence creating the
monstrous ‘dirt-heaps’ like hideous gray mountains, which are the characteristic scenery of the coal
areas” (RWP 28). These giant slag-heaps along with the great number of chimneys belching out
smoke from factories and the rows of squalid slums are a common landscape in northern industrial
areas. The author describes this scenery saying “To my eye the snow and the black walls were more
like a white dress with black piping running across it” (RWP 17). Slag-heaps, filth, smell and smoke
are a substitute to grass, trees, fresh air and beautiful nature. This thorough mess, which is generated
by a cruel and an unjust system, constitutes a great harm to man and his environment.
On the other hand, risks, accidents diseases and deaths are also a common characteristic of
coal-miners’ life. Indeed, mine workers are threatened by accidents which may lead to their total
disablement or even their killing: “The rate of accidents among miners is so high, compared with
that in other trades, that casualties are taken for granted almost as they would be in a minor war”
(RWP 39). The author further insists on the risks of work in the coal mine saying that “No other
trade approaches this in dangerousness” (RWP 39). These accidents are essentially due to
explosions down the pit. The narrator believes that explosions are the major cause of accidents
because of the dangerously high proportion of gas existing in the mine: “ The great mining
disasters which happen from time to time, in which several hundred men are killed, are usually
caused by explosions; hence one tends to think of explosions as the chief danger of mining” (RWP
40). Falls of roofs are a subsequent result of explosions which may be potentially disastrous and
devastating.
Accidents in the coal-pit can also result from the frightful crash of cages while carrying
miners into the pit-bottom at a very high speed. The narrator affirms that there have been cases of
the cage crashing into the pit-bottom at its maximum high speed. He expresses his feeling by saying
“This seems to me a dreadful way to die” (RWP 41). Besides, the new machinery may contribute to

27
the rise in the rate of accidents underground. Some miners believe that “The new machinery, and
‘speeding up’ generally, have made work more dangerous” (RWP 41). In fact, the rapid extraction
of coal by machines leaves a dangerous large stretch of roof unpropped as the coal face moves
further. This potential danger is aggravated by the deafening noise and roaring of the machines
which prevent miners from hearing the faint creaking of the props before the collapse. Finally,
mining-related diseases such as nystagmus163 can pose a great problem to miners’ health and safety.
The third link necessary in this chain and which is in interaction with the other elements,
namely, the mine and the job, is miners themselves. The latter play an important role in the process
of coal extraction and therefore in the development of the capitalist economy. However, they suffer
from very bad conditions of work. The narrator makes an accurate portrayal of the miner at work
from his descent to his journey to the coal face and ultimately his journey back home. Miners have
to travel approximately half a kilometer down through the mine shaft in the cage nearly at sixty
miles an hour: “But because of the speed at which the cage has brought you down and the complete
blackness through which you have travelled, you hardly feel yourself deeper down than you would
at the bottom of the Piccadilly Tube” (RWP 22).
Yet, despite the speed and the risks of the journey down the pit, it cannot be compared to the
long distance that leads to the coal face which may reach five miles. The narrator expresses his
great surprise stating “What is surprising…is the immense horizontal distances that have to be
travelled underground. …I had not realized that before he [miner] even gets to his work he may
have to creep through passages as long as from London Bridge to Oxford Circus” (RWP 22). Here,
the narrator resorts to an analogy to produce an effect upon his reader who is supposed to be
familiar with these references. The aim of this analogy is for better understanding and awareness of
the real situation. The narrator makes another analogy for more emphasis. He comments upon “this
frightful business of crawling to and fro” that every worker has to do every day is an extra work
“like the city man’s daily ride in the Tube” (RWP 26). Certainly, this daily task is actually an
‘unbearable agony’ (RWP 25).
Nevertheless, despite the significant role of coal and coal miners in the industrialist
civilization, they still represent an alien universe to the other bourgeois world: “Watching coal-
miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit. Down
there where coal is dug it is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without
hearing about” (RWP 29).

13
Nystagmus is an eye -disease common in coal mine areas which may cause partial or total blindness.
3

28
 This job is done not only by men but also by women who suffered and are still suffering from
the bad conditions of work and exploitation in coal mines:
There are still living a few very old women who in their youth have worked underground,
with a harness round their waists and a chain that passed between their legs, crawling on all fours
and dragging tubs of coal. They used to go doing this even when they were pregnant. And even, if
coal could not be produced without pregnant women dragging it to and fro, I fancy we should let
them do it rather than deprive ourselves of coal. But most of the time, of course, we should prefer to
forget that they were doing it. It is so with all types of manual work; it keeps us alive, and we are
oblivious of its existence. (RWP 30-31)
The narrator tries to convince his bourgeois reader that this work, that is, coal-mining, is
vitally necessary though it is still remote from their experience. He also tries to involve his reader,
call him to share his feeling and identify with him. He states that it is a humiliation watching coal-
miners at work: “All of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges
underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels
forward with arms and belly muscles of steel” (RWP 31).
In addition to the problem of the acute shortage of houses throughout the industrial districts
and the hideous conditions of work in the pit, coal miners suffer from very low salaries. In fact,
despite their long hours of strenuous and risky work, their average gross earnings per shift are very
low. The narrator uses the technique of facts and figures to reveal the position of thousands of
young as well as adult mine workers whose wages are much below the average. This technique adds
validity to his argument more objectivity to his information. Furthermore, the colliery company
imposes stoppages on these wretched earnings since they are only gross earnings. These stoppages
are actually weekly deducted, which adds to their appalling conditions. And one of these stoppages
is the strange ‘death stoppage’. Indeed, among the five pay-checks that the author has examined, at
least three of them are rubber-stamped with ‘death stoppage’. This rubber stamp detail indicates the
high rate of accidents among miners “Every year one miner in about nine hundred is killed and one
in about six is injured, most of these injuries, of course, are petty ones, but a fair number amount to
total disablement” (RWP 39). The narrator explicates that in case “a minor is killed at work it is
usual for the other minors to make up a subscription, generally of a shilling each, and this is
collected by the colliery company and automatically deducted from their wages” (RWP 38-39).
In case a miner becomes disabled, the narrator argues that he can be compensated by the
colliery company. His dependence on the colliery company makes him subjected to it. In other
words, he actually becomes a slave to the dominant authority of the company. His role is passive:

29
“He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm
conviction that ‘they’ will never allow him to do this, that, and the other” (RWP 43).
The narrator further contends that power position is usually determined by social status. The
narrator argues that differences between the poor working class and the wealthy upper middle class
are the result of an unfair economic and political system. The relationship between the members of
the working class and those of the bourgeoisie in a capitalist social formation is similar to that
between a slave and his master. In order to illustrate this unfair relation between the miner and his
company, the narrator gives a concrete example of a miner in Wigan suffering from nystagmus, a
disease causing partial or total blindness in mining areas. Being a simple miner from the lower
working class and though he has full right to draw his pension, he is, however, subject to many
restrictions and inconveniences: “He could not, so to speak, demand his pension – he could not for
instance, draw it when and how he wanted it. He had to go to the colliery once a week at a time
named by the company, and when he got there he was kept waiting about for hours in the cold
wind” (RWP 43). The narrator is very surprised at this indignity and humiliation of the disabled
miner who is “also expected to touch his cap and show gratitude to whoever paid him” (RWP 43).
Different from a man who has a bourgeois status, who can be paid his pension in a bank in a
gentlemanly manner and who can draw it out whenever he likes; a lower class pensioner had to
waste an afternoon and spend sixpence in bus fares. Certainly, the miner will feel this injustice and
oppression exerted upon him by the company, the master, and this will have a great effect upon him
and the other members of his class. Therefore, the narrator’s recreation of this experience has a
fourfold effects:
First, as an outside observer, the narrator wants to depict historical reality and dramatize it for
particular purpose. Second, the social relations produced by the Capitalist system are based on
exploitation and oppression which may lead to inevitable class hatred and antagonism. Third, the
portrayal of this horrible picture can create a sense of alienation from this social injustice. Both the
narrator and his reader feel alienated and disgusted. Finally, the depiction of this social reality and
particularly the recreation of the horrible scene of the lower-class pensioner will produce great
effect on the narrator and the bourgeois reader who seems unaware of the real conditions of the
working-class and the unemployed.

2-1-c Mass Unemployment in Industrial Areas:

In this section emphasis will be put on another product of the Capitalist system. As it is shown
on the table below, mass unemployment and its effects on the northern industrial areas of England

30
 during the 1930s is a critical issue. A rigorous study of this problem and the other related problem
of food requires a close examination of Orwell’s text. Thus, the first task consists in analysing the
table below illustrating the problems of unemployment and food.

Table 4: Unemployment and food Problem: Aspects and Effects

UNEMPLOYMENT AND FOOD PROBLEM
ASPECTS EFFECTS
Means Test and its effects
Extreme poverty
Utter and hopeless idleness
Author’s horror and amazement
Mass
Feeling of shame, degradation and failure among miners
unemployment
Post-war development of cheap luxuries
in northern areas
Deadening, debilitating effect of unemployment
Impoverished families; lower standards of living
Mitigation: cheap luxuries as palliatives
Averted revolution by governing class : holding unemployed down

31
 Unemployed miner and his family’s diet
No proper nourishment for unemployed families
Disgusting public wrangle about minimum wage
Physical degeneracy: population of troglodytes
Problem of
Badness of underfed’s teeth: sign of undernourishment
food for
Tinned food
the unemployed
Unemployed food values: rejection of good natural food and
preference for tinned products
Great mitigation of unemployment by buying and selling cheap fuel
Thieving of coal: fierce competition for coal

The narrator constructs a sinister and gloomy picture of the living conditions of an
unemployed man in his book. It has already been shown previously that he is really leading a
dreadful life. In fact, it is obvious that the circumstances of a person living on the dole 174or on the
P.A.C (Public Assistance Committee)185 are much worse than those who are actually earning a

14
Stevenson, describing life on the dole, states that “unemployment started with loss of work, or for the
young, failure to find it” (Stevenson 280). He also explains that:

When Britain first began to experience mass-unemployment in

1921-2, unemployment benefit offered a sum equal to about a
third of the average wage, with six weeks of contributions
required for each week of benefit, up to a maximum of fifteen
weeks. Workers had to prove themselves available for work by
‘signing on’ everyday at the labour exchange during working
hours. From the summer of 1921, an unemployed man over
eighteen could receive 15s. , plus 5s. for a wife and 1s. for each
child. (Stevenson 274)

15
After 1929, the Public Assistance Committees (PACs) replaced the Poor Law. The PACs of the local
authorities “deal with sick and infirm paupers, usually the elderly” (Stevenson 213). The PACs provide
assistance and relief for the poor.
5

32
living – however low it is. Due to the First World War and the Great Depression (1929), 196 the
number of the unemployed people soared especially, in industrial towns such as Wigan, Sheffield,
Manchester, Liverpool, Barnsley and so on. The narrator’s technique in calculating and examining
the increasing unemployment figures is based on facts and figures. This strategy allows the narrator
and his reader to realize how the unemployment figures are greater than those actually drawing a
dole.
The situation of the impoverished family living on the dole is aggravated by the cruelty of a
system named Means Test: “The Means Test is very strictly enforced, and you are liable to be
refused at the slightest hint that you are getting money from another source” (RWP 70). As a matter
of fact, if an unemployed draws a pension and at the same time is assumed to have been working by
means of ‘spying’ or ‘talebearing’, his dole will be immediately reduced. The most dreadful and
cruel effect of the Means Test is surely “the way it breaks up families. Old people, sometimes
bedridden, are driven out of their homes by it” (RWP 70). Therefore, old age pensioners who live
with their children are deprived of their right to receive their dole; otherwise they are forced to live
in a lodging-house threatened by starvation.
The narrator’s first contact with unemployment was during the Depression. He was both
horrified and amazed to see a great number of unemployed people at close quarters. These people
were ashamed of being unemployed. Besides, they had a feeling of personal degradation and
failure. (RWP 77) The narrator states that: “This was not dramatic exaggeration, it was a touch from
my life. That cry [the poor man’s cry ’O God, send me some work!’] must have been uttered, in
almost those words, in tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of English homes, during
the past fifteen years” (RWP 77). Yet, as unemployment is getting so widespread and it has lasted
so long, people on the dole are growing used to it. Thus it ceases to be shameful, through it still
remains unpleasant. (RWP 78)
In a further step to mitigate the misery of the oppressed class, the hegemonic ruling class has
developed different strategies to compensate the wretched lower orders’ needs. During a period of
unparalleled unemployment, the bourgeois economy has encouraged the consumption, among the
half-starved people, of cheap luxuries as palliatives: “Trade since the war [the First World War] has
had to adjust itself to meet the demands of underpaid, underfed people, with the result that a luxury

16
Depression, especially the Great Depression of 1929, is a “period when there is a little economic
activity, and usually poverty and unemployment” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 323).
6

33
is nowadays almost always cheaper than a necessity” (RWP 79).207 In addition to the production and
marketing of those ‘sedatives’, such as the new designs of clothes for the young (RWP 79), another
trade has equally been spread among the wretched unemployed people, gambling, as the cheapest of
all luxuries: “Organized gambling has now risen almost to the status of a major industry. Consider,
for instance, a phenomenon like the Football Pools,21 8with a turnover of about six million pounds a
year, almost all of it from the pockets of working-class people” (RWP 79-80).
Therefore, in order to hold the unemployed down, the governing class has plundered whole
sections of the lower class of all that they need. This oppressing ruling class has compensated them
by cheap luxuries, as substitutes for their vital necessities. On their side, the desolate unemployed
people have tried to psychologically adjust themselves in such circumstances by lowering their
standards: “They have neither turned revolutionary nor lost their respect; merely they have kept
their tempers and settled down to make the best of things on a fish-and-chip standard” (RWP 80).
The result is that in the period between the two world wars twenty million people are underfed in
England but they have access to cheap palliatives.
One basic effect of unemployment is the problem of food. In fact, the author clearly
demonstrates that the unemployed family is living on an appalling diet. This is mainly due to the
very low income which is generally about thirty shillings a week. Based on vital statistics and on
lists of the family’s weekly expenditure, the narrator conducts a research to study the unemployed
diet and its possible effects on his family. For instance, the narrator asks an unemployed miner and
his wife to make a list which represents “as exactly as possible their expenditure in a typical week”

27
Stevenson states that :

By the 1930s ‘mains’ radio sets with built-in speakers were becoming
a familiar part of the furniture in many homes. The radio revolution
was illustrated by the number of licences issued, starting from a mere
36, 000 in 1922, rising to two million in 1926, and to over eight
million in the late 1930s. (Stevenson 408)
7

28
Stevenson describes the situation of the unemployed between the two world wars stating that:

There was…an increased amount of gambling. Horse-racing

was avidly followed even before 1914, but the inter-war years
saw the organization of nationally run football pools and the
introduction of greyhound racing. Figures for the total turnover
from gambling varied considerably, but sums in the region of
300-500 were being suggested by the 1930s. (Stevenson 384)
He adds that “The football pools, however, took an even larger share. By 1938, an estimated ten million
people were sending in coupons with stakes totally over £40 million” (Stevenson 385).
8

34
(RWP 83). The purpose of this investigation is to study the diet an average family is living on with
an income of round thirty shillings a week of which a quarter is for rent” (RWP 83). His research is
based on references such as newspapers and magazines, namely, New Statesman and News of the
World along with direct contact with people during his journey in many northern industrial towns.
At the end of this research the narrator draws several conclusions about an average unemployed
family diet. The narrator states that the basis of the diet of an unemployed miner’s family “is white
bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes- an appalling diet” (RWP 85-86). So
what are the effects of this appalling diet on the different members of the family as revealed in the
text?
The general effect of the unemployed’s extremely bad diet is physical degeneracy. The
perception of this reality is possible by means of observation, inference or a look at the vital
statistics. For instance, one sign of the terribly low physical average in industrial towns is that you
can see a population of ‘troglodytes’ 229 in Sheffield (RWP 86). The miners there, though they are
splendid men, they are small. The other obvious effect of undernourishment is “the badness of
everybody’s teeth” (RWP 87). Working class people are generally deprived of their natural teeth at
an early age since “Teeth is just misery” (RWP 87). Besides, even children’s teeth do not last. The
obvious inference from this set of facts is, what the narrator supposes, calcium-deficiency.
Furthermore, the statistics clearly show that “in any large industrial town the death rate and infant
mortality of the poorest quarters are always about double those of the well-to-do residential
quarters-a good deal more than double in some cases…” (RWP 87). All these facts explain the
prevailing bad physique in the mining towns in the North.
The decline of the English physique is a continuous process. This process is basically due to,
as the narrator contends, unhealthy ways of living, that is, industrialism: “The modern industrial
technique… provides you with cheap substitutes for everything. We may find in the long run that
tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine gun” (RWP 88). Stevenson demonstrates the
dreadful effects of unemployment as follows:
The most that could be demonstrated was that unemployment was having adverse effects
upon standards of diet and nutrition. These inevitably had some effect upon the health and well-
being of individuals and families. Analysis of the food actually consumed by the unemployed
illustrated that there was a marked tendency for changes in diet to occur: meat, eggs, fresh
vegetables and fresh dairy produced were cut down because they were relatively expensive, while
29
A troglodyte is a “person living in a cave, especially in pre-historic times” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary 1371).
9

35
cheap ‘fillers’- bread, potatoes, margarine, jam, stew, tea and condensed milk- tended to increase.
(Stevenson 283-284)
The unemployed’s preference for tinned products and rejection of good food is part of their
food values and the bad habits that they have acquired. This has produced a strong effect on the
narrator who believes that the unemployed should change their habits and values so as to avoid such
wastage. Spending money on such a type of food, with a family budget of thirty shillings a week, is
damned impertinence. Consequently, he contends that a better management of their budget would
make the unemployed visibly better off.
In the North, particularly in Wigan, the governing class has adopted a technique, similar to the
development of cheap luxuries, as a mitigation of mass unemployment there. This strategy consists
in the cheapness of coal. Miners are allowed to buy coal directly from the pit at low prices in order
to sell it illicitly to the unemployed. Apart from the illegal trade of cheap fuel in the northern
industrial towns, there exists the “immense and systematic thieving of coal by the unemployed”
(RWP 90). The wretched people in the North, in order to satisfy their vital need for coal, spend all
day long over slag-heaps picking it. This fierce process of “scrambling for the coal”, that is, waste
coal, consists in “getting on to the train while it is moving; any truck which you have succeeded in
boarding while it is in motion counts as ‘your’ truck” (RWP 91). All men, women and children
participate in this operation, that is, loading their sacks with robbed dirt from trains. This recurrent
scene depicting the same “wild rush of ragged figures” (RWP 92) is undoubtedly very dangerous
and risky. In fact, coal-pickers sometimes have their legs cut off or they are likely to be prosecuted
for stealing coal. In case an accident occurs or a coal-picker is prosecuted, the situation of the
unemployed family will be further deteriorated. The mere reason is that: “In winter they are
desperate for fuel, it is more important almost than food” (RWP 92).

2-1-d Hideous Scenery on the Outskirts of the Industrial North

A close examination of the problem of filth and smoke in the North reveals the extent to
which the scenery has become hideous. In fact, the cruelty of the Capitalist system has great impact
not only on man but also on his environment. This socio-economic system with all its material
institutions has determined the relationship between man and nature that surrounds him. To what
extent has industrialism affected the environment? Also, how does this sinister picture contribute to
the general effect of the text? In other words, why does Orwell exclusively focus on the ugly side of
Capitalism?
Table 5: Hideous Scenery: Aspects and Effects
HIDEOUS SCENERY
ASPECTS EFFECTS

36
 Frightful landscapes on the outskirts of
mining towns
Dreadful environs of Wigan
Factory chimneys sending out their
plumes of smoke
Pools of stagnant water
Stench
Frightful patch of waste ground
Description of filth and smoke Blackness and sinister magnificence
on the outskirts of industrial Ugliness of industrialism
North Belching chimneys and stinking slums
Unfamiliar scenery of the North
Blackness of industrial towns
Beauty Vs ugliness of industrialism
Harmless industrialism if clean and orderly
Narrator’s view of ugliness of industrialism:
is it inevitable?
Narrator’s view of the importance of
ugliness of industrialism: does it matter?
Similar to the scenes created by the author to depict the hideous housing and working
conditions of the coal miners and the unemployed, he also tries to produce the frightful scenery to
reveal the ugliness of industrialism. The most obvious sign of filth in the industrial North is the
great number of slag-heaps standing like mountains:
A slag-heap is at best a hideous thing, because it is planless and functionless. It is something
just dumped on the earth, like the emptying of a giant dust-bin. On the outskirts of the mining towns
there are frightful landscapes where your horizon is ringed completely round by jagged gray
mountains, and underfoot is mud and ashes and overhead the steel cables where tubs of dirt travel
slowly across miles of country. Often the slag-heaps are on fire, and at night you can see the red
rivulets of fire winding this way and that, and also the slow-moving blue flames of sulphur, which
always seem on the point of expiring and always spring out again. Even when a slag-heap sinks, as
it does ultimately, only an evil brown grass grows on it, and it retains a hummocky surface…(RWP
94).

37
 In addition to this detailed description of slag-heaps, other significant elements of the
‘dreadful environs’ are mentioned. For instance, factory chimneys constitute another factor to the
pollution and ultimate destruction of the environment. This great number of chimneys belching out
large amounts of smoke in the air creates gloomy and dark scenes which can be easily perceived
between the mountains of slag. Then, there is the stench- this very unpleasant smell of sulphur, gas
and foul water. Moreover, you can add to this sinister picture the stinking slums-a common feature
of the northern mining towns such as Wigan. This set of elements are the constitutive parts of an
unfamiliar scene to the bourgeois reader.
However, the narrator does not believe that this ugliness is inevitable. He states that “I do not
believe that there is anything inherently and unavoidably ugly about industrialism. A factory or
even a gasworks is not obliged of its own nature to be ugly, any more than a palace or a dog-kennel
or a cathedral” (RWP 96). He further explains that this ugliness is essentially due to the old methods
and techniques of production in the North. The industrialists in the North are rather busy making
money. Thus, they are used to ugliness and they do not notice it, either. On the other hand, the
narrator stresses the point that, despite the widespread ugliness in the North, it is not actually so
important. He argues that “Though the ugliness of industrialism is the most obvious thing about it
and the thing every newcomer exclaims against, I doubt whether it is centrally important” (RWP
97). He further explains that the beauty or ugliness of industrialism hardly matters: “Its real evil lies
deeper and is quite uneradicable. It is important to remember this, because there is always a
temptation to think that industrialism is harmless so long as it is clean and orderly” (RWP 98).
To conclude, throughout the first part of the book, it has been shown that social relations are
economically determined. The narrator has created concrete scenes which manifestly illustrate the
plight of the workers, particularly the miners and the great number of unemployed people in the
industrial North. Many issues are discussed such as housing problem, hideous working conditions,
mass unemployment and the hideous scenery on the outskirts of the North. It has also been argued
that these appalling conditions are undoubtedly the result of an oppressive and cruel social system,
that is, Capitalism. Yet, the narrator believes that, though social relations are economically
determined, cultural determinism is much more significant. Therefore, the next section will deal
with the role of prejudices and assumptions in determining social relations.

2-2 Cultural Determinism:

The previous section has shown how appalling the two-sided picture Orwell has painted. On
the one hand he has described the plight of slum-dwellers which is strangely ignored by the

38
bourgeoisie. On the other hand, he has graphically described “Large parts of not only industrial
Britain but also of rural Britain as well. It explains the dreadful picture of life void of colour and
beauty” (Meyers 104). This picture, which is depicted by the narrator, has produced a depressing
feeling about the living conditions of coal-miners and the unemployed. These social conditions are
supposed to be directly determined by the general mode of production in England, that is,
Capitalism in the 1930s. The forces of production have generated typical relations between the
ruling class and the working class based on exploitation and oppression. This state of affairs has
made the lower classes suffer deprivation of their rights to job, food, lodging and so on.
The narrator has surely expressed the dilemmas and tension at this specific historical stage in
political terms. He has expressed his dissatisfaction not only with the British Imperialism as he saw
it and from which he dissociated himself, but also his discontent at seeing the lower classes being
cruelly exploited and deprived of their basic rights. Hoggart argues that “In trying to touch bottom,
Orwell most obviously was reacting against imperialism and against his own guilt as a former agent
of imperialism. He came to regard it as evil” (Williams 37). On his return home from Burma, India,
he found millions of people directly affected by unemployment. So, “he had to associate himself
with the oppressed half of England rather than with his own kind by birth and training. He had to
feel for himself the pressures the poor felt and suffer them; he had to get to know the victims of
injustice, had to ‘become one of them.’ He had to try to root out the class-sense within himself”
(Williams 38).
It is true that these wretched people are “typical victims of economic misfortune and social
injustice” (Crick 282). Yet, Orwell contends that social conditions are culturally determined. The
lower classes are victims of social prejudices and assumptions held by upper classes. So, how are
these cultural prejudices and assumptions expressed in the text? And what is the importance of their
role in determining both working class and upper middle class relations within the British social
formation?
The study of cultural background is very important. It involves examination of prejudices and
assumptions that govern people’s attitudes and thoughts. Class differences are based on examined
traditions of middle class and working class. Underlying the study of the issue of class assumptions,
the narrator believes that “Class differences are note simply economic, but cultural” (Hunter 47).
This implies that getting rid of class differences does not merely require giving money to the
working class. The narrator contends that “Class war is a deep-rooted matter that will take years to
work through and the immediate financial needs of the working class should be considered
separately in order to stop the advance of fascism that preys upon poverty” (Hunter 47). He further

39
explains that “class war is a matter of prejudice not simply of money, and what is more important
than questions of finance, culture or economy, is the matter of stance” (Hunter 47). Orwell is calling
for a real change of the status quo. This radical change requires from the bourgeois narrator not just
readjustment but essentially loss or denial of the self.
Therefore, in order to study the complexity of prejudices and assumptions, it is essential to
examine how the narrator sees things and defines them. In other words, focus will be on the
strategies of reassessment of prejudices and the possibility of lifting them. A table is drawn in order
to conduct the study of cultural prejudices and assumptions, the way they govern working class and
middle class thoughts and attitudes as well as their effects on the narrator and on the reader, too.
The main prejudices are namely dirt, smell, passivity and crowding.

Table 6: Prejudices, Assumptions and Effects

PREJUDICES AND ASSUMPTIONS AND EFFECTS
PREJUDICES EFFECTS
AND ASSUMPTIONS
Miners would not wash themselves properly
Narrator’s reaction : nonsense
Dirt Reason: acute house shortage and lack of baths
If they give those miners baths they only use them
to keep coal in
Smell Lower classes smell
Feeling of horror and hatred
Author’s attitude: natural equality between man and
man
Middle- class squeamishness

40
 Author’s attitude: having no feelings about that
Hostility mitigated
Inherent passive role of working class
Thieving nature of working class
Lazy idle loafers on the dole
Passivity They don’t want to work
Trade union: organized mendicancy
Dole-supported unemployment
A working man feeling himself a slave
Middle-class assuming that Lower Orders lived in
caravans from choice
Crowding Narrator’s reaction: I never argue nowadays with
that kind of person
Working class are only moaners

2-2-a Dirt

The first assumption concerns dirt. The narrator starts by stating the social prejudice:
“Middle-class people are fond of saying that the miners would not wash themselves properly even if
they could” (RWP 33). Given that this statement is false and impertinent, the narrator immediately
refutes the idea completely saying “But this is nonsense” (RWP 33). The condemnation of this
statement is based on logical arguments and discussion. In fact, the first argument is that wherever
there are pithead baths they are used by the miners:

At some of the larger and better appointed collieries there are pithead baths. This is an
enormous advantage, for not only can a miner wash himself all over every day, in comfort and even
luxury, but at the baths he has two lockers where he can keep his pit clothes separate from his day
clothes, so that within twenty minutes of emerging as black as a Negro he can be riding off to a
football match dressed up to the nines. (RWP 33)
Besides, the second argument deployed by the narrator to demonstrate that this commonly
held assumption is unfounded is that “The pit head baths, where they exist, are paid for wholly or
partly by the miners themselves, out of the Miners ‘Welfare Fund” (RWP 33-34). But despite all

41
this, old ladies in Brighton still claim that ‘if you give those miners baths they only use them to
keep coal in” (RWP 34).

2-2-b Smell

The second social prejudice, which is closely related to dirt, is that “The lower classes smell”
(RWP 112). This early-acquired prejudice is a significant mark of class distinctions in the West in
general and in England in particular. The immediate reaction of the narrator is that while these
frightful words, that is, the lower classes smell, were freely exchanged in the past, nowadays people
are chary of uttering them. He strongly believes that these words should not be uttered due to their
potential harm and to the great horror and hatred they may cause:
Here, obviously, you are at an impassable barrier. For no feeling or like or dislike is quite
so fundamental as a physical feeling. Race-hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of
temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion
cannot. You can have an affection for a murderer or a sodomite, but you cannot have an affection
for a man whose breath stinks-habitually stinks, I mean … if his breath stinks he is horrible and in
your heart of hearts you will hate him. (RWP 112)
In his discussions of this prejudice and its connectedness with dirt, the narrator tries to analyse
the reasons why lower classes are supposed to smell and why they are dirtier than the upper classes.
On the one hand, he argues that considering the circumstances in which the lower classes live, they
are bound to be dirty. Furthermore, due to the acute housing shortage and to the hideous living
conditions of a working class family, it is rather difficult to overcome the problem. Nevertheless,
the narrator argues that as they gradually acquire the habit of washing themselves daily, the English
are getting cleaner.
The narrator deploys the study of prejudice as a strategy to involve his reader, hence their
identification, and at the same time as a learning strategy for the re-assessment of his early-acquired
prejudices. That is why he often refers to his personal experiences, namely, his childhood, his
education and his imperial service in Burma. The narrator provides one example of his childhood
aversion to the ‘dreadful thing’ of drinking out of a bottle after a navvy in the train when he was
thirteen: “I cannot describe the horror I felt as that bottle worked its way towards me. If I drank
from it after all those lower-class male mouths I felt certain I should vomit; on the other hand, if
they offered it to me I dared not refuse for fear of offending them-you see here the middle-class
squeamishness works both ways” (RWP 114-115). Besides, just as the narrator has learnt from his
attitude to communal drinking, “rubbing shoulders with the tramps that cured me of it” (RWP 115).

42
As a matter of fact, he has shared a bed with a tramp and has equally drunk tea out of the same
snuff –tin
Furthermore, thinking of his early-acquired class prejudice, the narrator found that the English
lower–classes were so much more repellant than Burmese natives. From his experience as a white
gentleman in Burma, he noticed that white men ‘had the most vicious colour prejudice’ against the
natives or the ‘Orientals’ as they were commonly referred to. (RWP 125) This five-year experience
allowed the narrator to make an analogy between the working class and the Burmese: “They were
the symbolic victims of injustice, playing the same part in England as the Burmese played in
Burma. He became aware of the nature of the oppressing regime, that is, capitalism and
Imperialism. In Burma “the whites were up and the blacks were down, and therefore as a matter of
course one’s sympathy was with the blacks”. He added that “I now realized that there was no need
to go as far as Burma to find tyranny and exploitation. Here in England, down under one’s feet,
were the submerged working class, suffering nurseries as bad as any an Oriental ever knows” (RWP
130).

2-2-c Passivity

The third class-prejudice, which is important in determining the relationship between the
lower and upper classes, is passivity. In fact, the narrator begins by the illusion that the passive role
of a working man is inherent in working – class life. The narrator further explains this bourgeois
attitude as follows: “A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive
role. He does not act, he is acted upon” (RWP 43). In the same vein, middle class people still talk
about ‘lazy idle loafers on the dole’ and even dare say ‘these men could all find work if they wanted
to’ but these people don’t want to work. (RWP 76) The narrator also, trying to further illustrate the
middle class opinion about unemployed people, reports what someone used to hear at a decent tea-
table a few years before “My dear, I don’t believe in all this nonsense about unemployment. Why
only last week we wanted a man to weed the garden, and we simply couldn’t get one. They don’t
want to work, that’s all it is!” (RWP 77).
The narrator’s reaction, when he first saw a fair proportion of “decent young miners and
cotton-workers gazing at their destiny with the same sort of dumb amazement as an animal in the
trap”, was very strong (RWP 76). This state gave him a shock of astonishment. He was taught to
look at those idle young tramps and beggars as ‘cynical parasites’ (RWP 76). However, when he
first mingled with them, he realized that they were actually brought up to work and idleness was
merely enforced upon them. They did not understand what was happening to them. But as the

43
unemployment dramatically increased during the period between the two world wars and
particularly in the years ensuing the Great Depression of 1929, 2310 both the lower and upper classes
became aware that unemployment actually existed. The real point was that “People are ceasing to
kick against the pricks. After all, even the middle classes…are beginning to realize that there is such
a thing as unemployment” (RWP 77). Therefore, when you have a whole population settling down
to a lifetime on the P.A.C. (Public Assistance Committee), as the narrator argues, the quarter of a
million unemployed cease to be ashamed. Drawing the dole is no longer shameful though still
unpleasant.

2-2-d Crowding

The fourth and final cultural prejudice assumed by the bourgeoisie is crowding. Middle-class
people pretend that lower classes don’t mind living in Caravan-dwellings. The narrator deploys the
same strategy as used for the previous prejudices. He first states the assumption clearly,
demonstrates that it is unfounded by means of logic, arguments and examples and usually the
rejected prejudice is substituted by an alternative one.
The narrator poses the statement as follows: “No doubt there are still middle-class people who
think that Lower Orders don’t mind that kind of thing and who, if they happened to pass a caravan-
colony in the train, would immediately assume that the people lived there from choice” (RWP 56).
This statement has a great impact on the narrator. That is why he does not hesitate to demolish it
saying: “I never argue nowadays with that kind of person” (RWP 56). In his process of examining
210
Commenting upon the general public’s opinion about unemployment during the inter-war period,
Stevenson writes:
…as unemployment became familiar to many of
the depressed areas and the percentage of long-term
unemployed grew, there was a tendency for people, in Orwell’s
phrase, to ‘settle down’ [RWP 78] to unemployment. Unlike
many other countries, Britain had become accustomed to
depression during the 1920s, so that unemployment was
familiar in the depressed areas. The descent into mass
unemployment was no sudden thing in 1929-31 as it was in
Germany and the United States, but an intensification of
conditions already present. The effects were therefore partly to
accustom people to settling down to life on ‘fish and chip’
standard, ‘making do’ in all sorts of ways. (Stevenson 293)
10

44
ideas and prejudices, the narrator argues that “It is not that slum-dwellers want dirt and congestion
for their own sakes, as the fat-bellied bourgeoisie love to believe” (RWP 62). After denouncing the
middle-class opinion, the author immediately suggests an alternative. He suggests a twofold
solution. First, people should be given a decent house. If they are provided with a decent dwelling,
they will make it decent. Second, living in a decent house will bring about self-respect and
cleanliness. Their children will start life with better opportunities. (RWP 62)
Consequently, the previous study has shown how the class- issue is significant for the
understanding of the working class. The narrator believes that in order to understand social reality,
priority should be given to the problem of class distinctions rather than to the economic situation.
He explains that the relationships between the lower and upper classes are primarily determined, not
by financial questions, but essentially by culture. In fact, cultural prejudices govern people’s
attitudes and ideas. They are deployed by the bourgeoisie to impose its false beliefs and ideas, that
is, its ideology, on the lower classes and ultimately to dominate as well as oppress them. The
author’s strategy of re-assessment has revealed the falsity of his and the middle class’s prejudices
and assumptions, hence the necessity of their condemnation and demolition. The hegemonic
governing class uses this set of class prejudices as a method of escape and protection from the fear
of revolution from the dominated and oppressed working class. Therefore, any real and radical
change requires the emancipation from these false cultural prejudices and assumptions.

2-3 Socialism as an alternative:

The previous section has revealed that the relationship between the working class and the
middle class is primarily based on false and unexamined prejudices .The analogy between the false
bourgeois prejudices and the false joke of Wigan pier may be of great significance. Hunter argues
that the narrator refers to Wigan pier as “a joke based on knowledge that it does not exist. The joke
provides an analogy for all the assumptions that he has broken down. They, too, were founded on
no substantial reason, and when understood are themselves a joke” (Hunter 55-56). Thus, after
expressing his like of people in Wigan and his dislike of its scenery, the narrator states that “the
celebrated Wigan pier, which he had set his heart on seeing…Alas!…had been demolished, and
even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain” (RWP 66).
Given that the bourgeois prejudices are merely a false joke and that, by analogy, Wigan pier is
similarly a false joke, it is therefore necessary to seek an alternative road-Socialism. Yet, Socialism,
as a system, is wrongly viewed by bourgeois Socialists themselves. That is why the problem should
be tackled from various perspectives. First, how are Socialist types and propaganda analysed? Also,

45
what is the nature of socialism? Then is it necessary to discard all one’s class standards? In order to
resolve these problems, focus will be on the process by which the narrator has criticized Socialism
as presented by bourgeois socialists and the negative effects of wrong propaganda. Apart from this,
emphasis will be put on the impossibility of getting rid of one’s cultural traditions without
neglecting communication between the lower and the middle classes.

2-3-a Socialist Type Analysis And Socialist Propaganda:

The narrator has adopted a strategy which consists in the establishment of the Socialist type.
His strong criticism of bourgeois socialist grotesque manners and attitude toward the working class
is manifest especially in the second part of the book. He believes that Socialists have caused much
harm to Socialism in many ways.
First, the narrator contends that a bourgeois Socialist, merely wearing the mask of Socialism,
does not necessarily imply his adoption of proletarian manners. It makes no difference since the
bourgeois Socialist’s habits, manners and tastes often remain the same without any real change: “
His tastes in food, wine, clothes, books, pictures, music, ballet, are still recognizably bourgeois
tastes; most significant of all he invariably marries into his own class” (RWP 119). The narrator
affirms that he listened so many times to bourgeois Socialists’ attacks on their own class but they
still cling to their manners. This is due to the fact that “In his heart he [the Socialist] feels that
proletarian manners are disgusting. So you see he is still responding to the training of his childhood,
when he was taught to hate, fear, and despise the working class” (RWP 119). Many bourgeois
Socialists endorse Socialism and even idealize the proletariat but still their habits only very little
resemble the working class manners. The narrator says: “I have listened by the hour to their tirades
against their own class, and yet never, not even once, have I met one who had picked up proletarian
table-manners” (RWP 119). Thus, the narrator, just as he calls for recognition of unemployment as
existing reality, he similarly calls for a change in bourgeois habits. His claim is therefore for
middle-class recognition of proletariat and for sharing their habits and opinions.
Furthermore, similar to his caricatured picture of the working class, namely, the Brookers and
their typical lodging-house, the narrator equally denounces the comic grotesque manners of the
middle-class Socialists. Richard Hoggart in his “Introduction to The Road to Wigan Pier”
summarizes the reasons for the narrator’s intemperately violent attack on all left-wing intelligentsia,
literary intellectuals and middle-class Socialists as follows:
…at bottom his attack was probably inspired as much as anything by his puritanical mistrust
of self-indulgence, physical or mental. His great antagonism to the left-wing intelligentsia was

46
founded in his feeling that they were intellectually and imaginatively self-indulgent. He sombrely
hated what seemed to him moral shallowness. He thought them prim and out of touch with decent
ordinary life. He thought they wanted to have things both ways, to get socialism on the cheap whilst
remaining undisturbed in their own fundamental attitudes and habits. He thought they wanted to
remain dominative or at least distantly paternal in their attitude towards the workers rather than to
recognize the need for a radical change of outlook…(Hoggart 43-44)
The narrator explicitly expresses his opinion about the dishonest behaviour of the middle-
class Socialists and their refusal of any change of the evil state of affairs. He puts that “We all rail
against class distinctions, but very few people seriously want to abolish them. Here you come upon
the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret
conviction that nothing can be changed” (RWP 138). As an illustration of this prevailing attitude
among the socialists, the narrator gives an example, namely, that of the writing of John Galsworthy
whose ideas are strongly denounced by Orwell. Galsworthy’s view of he world seems paradoxical
and contradictory. He presents the world as “divided into oppressors and oppressed, with the
oppressed on top like some monstrous stone idol which all the dynamite in the world cannot
overthrow” (RWP 138). Apparently, he is setting himself out a champion in his fight against
tyranny and injustice; however, Galsworthy, in his interior, is deeply convinced that the current
state of the world is totally immovable. The narrator comments upon Galsworthy’s insincere beliefs
and ideas saying that: “All his opinions change into their opposites at the first brush of reality”
(RWP 139). As a matter of fact, this type of Socialist will probably end to be a sentimentalist and to
be converted into a fascist. Thus, the inevitable fate of this type of bourgeois Socialists will be
obviously fascism.
Not only does the narrator attack the bourgeois Socialists’ attitude about the unjust capitalist
system, he also strongly denounces the typical left-winger’s attitude toward British imperialism. He
criticizes every left-wing intellectual’s ‘advanced’ opinion about being anti-imperialist. Every
Socialist “claims to be outside the empire-racket as automatically and self-righteously as he claims
to be outside the class-racket” (RWP 139). However, the narrator immediately rejects this feeble
and ineffective argument exclaiming “a thoroughly flabby, boneless attitude it is” (RWP 139). He
refutes this excuse for the mere reason that no Englishman at the bottom of his heart wants the
English Empire to disintegrate “For, apart from any other consideration, the high standard of life we
enjoy in England depends upon our keeping a tight hold on the Empire” (RWP 139-140). This
presupposes that millions of natives will live on the verge of starvation and deprivation so as to
provide comfort for a minority of an oppressive imperialist system.

47
 Therefore, the narrator’s opinion about the unreality of the Socialists’ attitude toward the class
issue is lucid: “All such deliberate, conscious efforts of class-breaking are, I am convinced, a very
serious mistake. Sometimes they are merely futile, but where they do show a definite result it is
usually to intensify class prejudice” (RWP 142). In fact, as soon as a middle-class Socialist is forced
into real contact with a proletarian, he immediately swings back to the “most ordinary middle-class
snobbishness” (RWP 143). On the other hand, if a proletarian rises to an upper class especially via
the literary intelligentsia, this immediately arouses antagonism between the working class
intelligentsia and the bourgeois culture. This antagonism will have a great effect on both parties.
The proletarian intellectual, expecting “a wider freedom and greater intellectual refinement”, all he
finds is a ‘dead’ and bankrupt bourgeoisie (RWP 143). As for the bourgeois, he will be terribly
faced by the danger of the proletarian cant and his spurious opinions. Feeling his beliefs challenged,
the bourgeois Socialist is driven back to conservatism. Thus, the result of the meeting between
proletarian and bourgeois Socialists is that “They lay bare a real antagonism which is intensified by
the ‘proletarian’ cant, itself the product of forced contacts between class and class. The only
sensible procedure is to go short and not force the pace” (RWP 147).

2-3-b Socialism Vs Fascism

The previous discussion was about the analysis of the Socialist type: how he hinders
communication and creates antagonism between both working and middle classes. In this section,
focus will be on Socialism itself as an inevitable alternative to an anachronistic and unjust class
system. Close examination of Socialism and its assumptions which alienate certain people from it
will be carried out in detail. The first assumption concerns the connection between Socialism and
machinery while the second deals with mechanization and its negative effect. However, a close
examination of Socialism and its different concepts seems necessary before the study of its
underlying assumptions.
Given the rising number of unemployed people and the fears of the menacing future,
particularly fears from growing totalitarian and fascist regimes, the narrator believes that the only
way out is Socialism. This world system seems the best alternative to avoid the cruelties of an
anachronistic capitalist system as well as to prevent an imminent disaster. Yet, despite the urgent
need for this system, Socialism has failed in its appeal. Instead of gaining ground it is rather losing
it. So, the narrator poses the following problems. Why has Socialism failed in its appeal? Besides,
what makes it inherently distasteful? Moreover, how to remove this distaste?

48
 The narrator, in order to tackle these problems, has rather adopted a paradoxical procedure.
Instead of searching for solutions, he seeks objections to Socialism, hence his role of advocatus
diaboli (or, the devil’s advocate). Thus, he thinks that “the worst advertisement for Socialism is its
adherents” (RWP 152). Socialist adherents have different underlying motives and consequently
various conceptions of Socialism. Each distinct conception generates particular effects.
On the one hand, Socialism is a theory which is totally restricted to the middle-class. The
typical bourgeois Socialist is rather ‘a youthful snob-Bolshevik’ who is not ready to drop his social
position (RWP 152) and who may have vegetarian leanings as well. On the other hand, there exists
“the horrible-the really disquieting-prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together”
(RWP 152). Socialists of the last type have eccentric things such as vegetarian diet. In fact,
eccentricity may be a significant factor in alienating decent people from Socialism since for an
ordinary man “a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank” (RWP 153). Finally, the
narrator mentions a third type of adherents whose theoretical and apparent claim is a classless
society but in reality they “cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige” (RWP
153). The narrator, who attended an I.L.P meeting where these ‘mingy little beasts’ were present,
had strong sensations of horror. This effect is similar to that produced by the second type, that is,
Socialist cranks. The narrator argues that those middle-class Socialists “bore the worst stigmata of
sniffish middle-class superiority. If a real working man, a miner dirt from the pit, for instance, had
suddenly walked into their midst, they would have been embarrassed, angry, and disgusted; some, I
should think, would have fled holding their noses” (RWP 153).
Therefore, in order to combat the spreading scare of the fascist movement in Europe and in
England in particular, the narrator calls people to endorse Socialism as the only way out. Given the
desperate present situation and the inability of the capitalist-imperialist regimes to improve the
conditions under the present economic system, the urgent action is to combine for the underlying
ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. That is why the narrator insists that “Unless Socialist
doctrine, in an effective form, can be diffused widely and very quickly, there is no certainty that
Fascism will ever be thrown. For Socialism is the only enemy that Fascism has to face” (RWP 188).

2-3-c Cultural Understanding and Communication

Based on the previous discussion, the narrator’s task in this section consists in establishing a
strategy to get rid of the prejudice against Socialism and to solve the vexed issue of class
assumptions. The narrator takes his personal experience as an example so as to add weight to his
argument. Thus, engaged in this polemic, the narrator poses the following problems in an attempt to

49
provide possible and adequate answers. First, what is the most effective form for the diffusion of
Socialism facing Fascism? Besides, how to move those millions of normal decent people toward
Socialism and further away from threatening Fascism? Also, how to make a reconciliation between
Socialism and its intelligent enemies?
The discussion of these intricate issues will be founded on two main axes: the first concerns
the process whereby the prejudice against Socialism can be broken down while the second main
axis is about the way class distinctions can be dropped within the framework of the narrator’s
personal experience. Concerning the first reason for people’s recoil from Socialism, it is based on a
false presupposition. The narrator contends that their reason is not valid since they presuppose an
alternative which actually does not exist. An enemy claims that “I object to mechanization and
standardization – therefore I object to Socialism”; which means that “I am free to do without the
machine if I choose” (RWP 192). The narrator’s immediate reaction is the total rejection of this
false assumption against Socialism saying it is just ‘nonsense’. He argues that:
We are dependent upon the machine, and if the machines stopped working most of us would
die. You may hate the machine-civilization, probably you are right to hate it, but for the present
there can be no question of accepting or rejecting it. The machine civilization is here, and it can
only be criticized from the inside, because all of us are inside it. (RWP 192)
Therefore, the prejudice against Socialism is not based on a serious objection since most
people are repelled not by Socialism as such but primarily by Socialists. The narrator emphasizes
that “For the moment the only possible course for any decent person…is to work for the
establishment of Socialism” (RWP 193). He adds that “Nothing else can save us from the misery of
the present or the nightmare of the future. To oppose Socialism now, when twenty million
Englishmen are underfed and Fascism has conquered half Europe, is suicidal” ( RWP 193). So the
urgent need is to fight for the cause of justice and liberty along with the necessity to get rid of the
prejudice against Socialism.
Furthermore, the narrator equally reminds his reader of the necessity for all left-wingers to
drop their differences and unite together. He contends that the main point is to keep the essentials
and sacrifice the externals. On the one hand, real supporters should fight for justice and liberty since
Socialism itself means ‘the overthrow of tyranny at home and abroad’ (RWP 195). On the other
hand, while keeping the essentials of the Socialist movement in the foreground, the externals should
all be dropped. Also, the phrase ‘expropriation of the expropriators’ or the disgusting term
‘Comrade’ ought to be got rid of. Left-wingers had better sacrifice all this and realize that their real
cause is Socialism.

50
 Moreover, the narrator believes that there is a close relation between Socialism and the issue
of class. He states that it is necessary to raise the vexed problem of class distinctions. For the
narrator, the class issue is distinct from the economic status. For instance, in England,
“economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor, but socially there is a
whole hierarchy of classes” (RWP 197). He further explains that “The manners and traditions
learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but- this is the essential point-
generally persist from birth to death. Hence the anomalous individuals that you find in every class
of society” (RWP 197). That is why social status cannot be determined solely by income. It is
essentially overdetermined by other cultural factors such as class distinctions. As the narrator puts it
“It is in fact very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born”
(RWP 198).
In order that his argument carries weight, the narrator resorts to his personal experience. He is
very aware of his social status and he puts it in a straightforward language: “Here am I, for example,
with a bourgeois upbringing and a working-class income. Which class I belong to? Economically I
belong to the working-class, but it is almost impossible for me to think of myself as anything but a
member of the bourgeoisie” (RWP 198). But there are millions of English people similar to the
narrator, that is, with middle class origin yet with low income the same as that of the working class:
“All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are
being robbed and bullied by the same system” (RWP 198). Thus, economically, the narrator is on
the same ground as the miner or any other labourer but culturally, he is totally different from them.
The narrator argues that it is necessary to drop the ‘misleading habit of pretending that the
only proletarians are manual labourers’ (RWP 200). For the term Socialism actually embraces
clerks, engineers, commercial travellers, working men and so forth. All of these categories of
people are proletariat. They can only cooperate on a common basis of interests. They should stick to
the central point that “all people with small, insecure incomes are in the same boat and ought to be
fighting on the same side” (RWP 199-200). The essential fact for them is that ‘poverty is poverty’.
Therefore, the narrator defines ‘intelligent propaganda’ as follows: “Less about, ‘class
consciousness’, ‘expropriation of the expropriators’, ‘bourgeois ideology’ and ‘proletarian
solidarity’;…and more about justice, liberty, and the plight of the unemployed. And less about
mechanical progress…” (RWP 202-203).
Intelligent propaganda is based on two essential concepts, namely, that ‘the interests of all
exploited people are the same’ and that ‘Socialism is compatible with common decency’ (RWP
203). Fighting side by side and the fading of class issue is a common hope for all real Socialists.

51
Finally, “the ‘ists’ and the ‘isms’ should be discarded for a communication between actual people”
(Hunter 68).
To conclude, the analysis of the Orwellian text RWP, based on the Marxist materialist mode,
has revealed the significant role of the social dimension for the understanding of the literary work.
Studying a literary text out of its historical context is not sufficient to have a full understanding of
the book. A close examination of the text from a materialist perspective has revealed that social
relations, as represented in a creative way by the narrator, are not only determined by the economic
conditions, but mainly by cultural elements. These cultural structures include a whole set of class
prejudices and assumptions which are the product of an unjust class system. Thus, the narrator’s
strategy, which is based on his personal experience, is the re-examination of these prejudices which
could impede Socialism. A real change necessitates the adoption of Socialism which can provide
liberty and justice as well as understanding and communication between all the social strata.

CONCLUSION

The analysis of George Orwell’s text The Road to Wigan Pier from a Materialist Historical
perspective has revealed the validity of the new definition of the notion of fictionality. In fact, the
application of this theory to literature, with its prominent figures Eagleton and Bakhtin, has not only
put in question the conventional ways of defining literature and fictionality, but also provided
another contribution from a different field of research. The deployment of the materialist strategy
has revealed the external elements of the text, that is, its social and cultural dimension. The
subversive nature of the novel, especially through the character of the narrator himself, has shown
to what extent language can contribute to social change. Orwell’s challenge of the status quo is a
strategy to liberate himself from the cultural prejudices and assumptions which enslaved and kept
him pinned up to bourgeois snobbishness. However, Orwell’s discussion of class issue has revealed
that he is not ready to completely sacrifice and drop out his cultural bourgeois traditions. He
52
strongly claims that, while preserving one’s distinctive class habits, both lower and upper social
classes could find channels and common grounds for communication and mutual understanding.

Consequently, as the novel has been subversive at both levels of form and content without
completely discarding literary norms, similarly its author has been challenging throughout his text
and his writings in general. In his attempt to gain a voice and take a firm political position, Orwell
has always been a committed writer during his literary career.

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