A.Living on a low wage
1.Cycle of debt. Note
how possessions are regularly pawned (‘pop shop’), so regularly that Harry comes to realise that the customers are
just renting them back.
2. Luxuries are beyond
reach. Note how the inhabitants are painfully aware of luxurious lifestyles
they cannot afford. This awareness may come from: a brief honeymoon (living for
a week at the rate of £750 a year); from window shopping (as Harry and Helen do
when they first plan to get married); from a windfall betting win (as enjoyed
by Harry); or, for a woman, from being the mistress of a philanderer such as
Sam Grundy and enjoying a temporary affluence (as Sally does at the end of the
novel).
3. Embarrassment
Those who aspire to or
cling to a notion of respectability (such as Mrs Hardcastle) create a role for
Mrs Nattle and her ilk, the intermediaries who - for commission – pawn goods on others’ behalf.
4. Lack of culture or
awareness of non-materialist elements in the quality of life. Sally has
difficulty understanding what Larry means when he talks (3-2-2) of having to do ‘without the things that
make life worthwhile’. She thinks ‘There’d be enough for food, rent and
clothes, surely. What else was there?’ Larry, unusually, enjoys rambles, reading
and birdwatching; but he is a skilled man on 45/- a week (compare with the 10/-
which Harry starts on at Marlowe’s or the 18/- which Sally earns).
5. Lack of educational
opportunity. Larry is clearly self-educated and someone who has suffered the
additional hardship of being denied access to the sort of educational
opportunity that would have enabled him to progress.
1. The health services, before universal health
care, are based on the charity hospitals. We get a view inside when Larry is in
the ironically named Esperance infirmary:
The tunnel – like arches gave on to flights of worn stone steps leading to higher floors: by their sides , the open doors of the ground floor wards revealed rows and rows of iron beds, some concealed by red screens where a patient was either dead or dying. If he or she were dead they would remain screened until the witching hour, when a couple of porters, pushing a long truck hooded like an American pioneer’s covered wagon, would remove the body to a mortuary.
Mrs
Hardcastle is frightened ‘by the unearthly groans of a man dying unattended in
some remote part of the ward’ (3-12).
2.
Funeral
costs are a major problem. Sally, though she is in work, has to lower herself
to borrow £5 from Sam Grundy in order to meet the cost of Larry’s funeral.
3. Opportunity for exploitation. As the poor
are exploited in life, so this continues in death. Larry’s worldly possessions
fetch only £5 – little more than two weeks’ worth of his comparatively good
wages. Mrs Dorbell gives a graphic
illustration of the profit level with her example (3-13) of the 15/6 she
received for the harmonium of a deceased lodger which had cost £8-10s.
3. Opportunity for theft. Mrs Dorbell fantasises
(3-14) on finding Mrs Nattle dead and being able to help herself to the secret
store of money which she knows is in the house somewhere.
4. Dying as release. Mrs Bull tells Sally (3-13):
All me life Ah’ve lived, lass, Ah’ve bin waitin’ for
summat that’s never come. Ah don’t wish a day of it back agen. There’s nowt for
the likes of us t’ live for, Sal.
1. We see that the legalised theft of pawnbrokers
such as Mr Price is legitimate and enables him to do well. Harry, who works for
Price at the start and therefore knows the business, calculates that the
overalls his mother buys him cost the business 2/7 but cost his mother twice
that – a mark up of 100% (1-4), though Price includes in 5/4 a ‘discount’.
Price is also shown trying to short change his customers (1-4):
‘Six an’ seven it leaves, if Ah’m not
mistaken,’ corrected Mrs Nattle………
‘My
mistake,’ replied Mr Price gruffly.
Price has his code
based on the letters in the phrase ‘shun poverty’, advice which, the author
tells us, he himself follows but ‘lacking it in others there would not have
been a Mr Price’. Furthermore, as Mrs Dorbell explains to Mrs Nattle, Price
takes in pension books though this is specifically against the law ‘an’ him
being a churchgoer and a magistrate’.
Perhaps implicitly
Greenwood is telling us that Mrs Nattle can hardly be condemned for her
profit-making activities with her work as an intermediary for pawning goods and
her reselling of spirits illegally at 3d a nip.
2. Bill Simmons and Tom Hare turn to theft as a
way to alleviate poverty. They are caught and punished (3-11) but, on release,
are found steady and well paid jobs on the buses by the court’s Probation
Officer or Court Missionary (3-15). For the law abiding Harry, there is
apparently no way past the East City Buses’ sign stating bluntly ‘No
Vacancies’.
3. Sally’s selling of herself to Sam Grundy is
immoral but nets jobs for her brother and her father and a glimpse of a better
living for herself.
4. Ned Narkey’s brutish and bullying behaviour is
what creates the situation in which a vulnerable Grundy offers to secure him
well paid and steady employment in the police force. We learn (3-13) that
Grundy needs his contacts in the force as ‘Ony last week they booked a couple
o’ my men an’ it cost me ten quid in fines’. Grundy’s betting business operates
on the very edge of the law.
1. We see (3-9) Larry’s hopes of marrying Helen on
45/- a week dashed by his dismissal: ‘He stood staring at the floor; felt
himself diminishing in stature; felt a helpless fool, utterly negligible’. Hope is displaced by despair, harmony
between the lovers by conflict.
2. We see (3-14) Harry thrown out by his father
for getting Helen pregnant. He becomes estranged from his parents as a result
(3-15): ‘Mother, father and sister were as strangers.’ He and Helen end up
renting Mrs Dorbell’s damp spare room, ‘Wermin and all’ (3-14). Harry’s 2/6
grocery voucher is taken by Mrs Dorbell to sell to Mrs Nattle for half price
before subtracting her commission for showing him how to claim it; she hints
that this commission might be 100% (3-16): ‘If ‘e thinks ‘e’s gunna get any
change out o’ this arter all trouble Ah’ve took … well , he’s sadly mistaken……’
Mrs Bull tells Sally ((3-13):
Ah do know that there ne’er was parson breathed what preached sermon about resurrection on an empty belly , an’ mine’s bin empty many a time. S’easy for them as live house an’ light free an’ a regular wage comin’ in ……..
F Lack of power over own
lives
Power
derives from spending power in Dole. Harry feels empowered when he first starts at
Marlowe’s; even Larry is persuaded to marry on the security of his steady 45/-
a week. However, there is no power over employment or employment practices;
those who attempt to raise the workers’ awareness of this risk finding
themselves out of work, as happens to Larry (3-7) when Ted Munter reports him
for the lesson he gave on the workings of capitalism. Harry falls victim to the practice of taking on a fresh cycle of
relatively cheap apprentices at the end of the seven year cycle. His only
option is to seek new work, but we are shown the futility of this as we
accompany him on his thankless round of the local works (3-4).
The
political demonstration is turned away; its leaders are beaten up and arrested.
Returning
from his holiday with Helen, Harry realises, ‘money would solve the problem;
with this they could prolong their stay here as long as the money lasted…Wages
controlled their lives; wages were their masters, they its slaves. Staggering!’ When Helen tells him of Sam Grundy’s
advances to her (3-2), he thinks:
It was common knowledge that Sam had kept women up and down the place….Money, it seemed, could do anything.
When
Helen decides to become Grundy’s mistress, she muses (3-17) ‘Money, change of
life. Money, the fast conveyance in the search of forgetfulness….’
Mr
Hardcastle has to swallow his (moral) principles to accept Sally’s money
(3-18), ‘The source of her present income was corrupt……….He felt weak; as
powerless as a blind kitten in a bucket of water.’
G
Irrelevance of politics
The
inhabitants are so preoccupied with the here and now that they do not look
beyond their immediate situation. Sally uses his politics and councillor
connections as an accusation against Larry when he is sacked (3-9): ‘Why don’t
them Labour Councillors as’re allus makin’ a mug out o’ y’ find a job for y’?’
Mrs Bull, excusing Sally’s affair with Grundy, observes (3-18), ‘ when y’ get
as owld as me y’ll have learned thata there ain’t nowt worth worritin’ y’ head
about save where next meal’s comin’ from.’
Can
the self-seeking individualism expressed by Sally be compared in any way to
Bitzer’s outlook? She says (of Grundy), ‘An’ he’s got it an’ by God Ah’ll mek
him pay. Ah’m gonna tek things easy while Ag’ve got chance.’
Helen
resents Harry’s involvement in the demonstration (3-11):
To her way of thinking their own difficulties of the present were serious enough to engage his whole attention.
Possible
areas of comparison and contrast.
1.
types
of hardship (material / immaterial) and areas of impact (self-esteem, sense of
purpose, happiness, family life, work, other relations between people)
2.
possible
solutions (inc role of church, parliament and individual action)
3.
type/class
of main characters
4.
influence of setting and environment
5.
techniques
(contrast levels of realism; use of stream of consciousness/empathy; role of
humour; compare the relentless pushing of an idea such as utilitarianism or the
amorality of capitalism to an extreme conclusion)
6.
overall
view of society, inc the way in which theories can have real impact on
individual lives (eg Sissy, Bitzer, Harry, Sally).
7.
Ways
of coping (inc dreams, hopes, partners/love)
8.
Presentation
and role of females.