It is difficult now, 50 years after it was first published, to appreciate how revolutionary Alan Sillitoe’s first novel was. His depiction of post-war British working class life is unsurpassed and pitch-perfect; Coronation Street with brains.
The story revolves around Arthur Seaton, a feckless 22 year old Nottingham factory worker whose life is an endless round of gambling, drinking and married women. Work for Arthur is a sort of Faustian bargain that puts enough money in his pocket to pursue these destructive pleasures. He comes alive when he gets his glad-rags on each Friday night and heads for the pub.
At first Arthur’s lifestyle seems that of an thoughtless chancer, a jack-the-lad constantly on the look out for the next thrill. But he has a coherent, homespun philosophy forged in the school of hard knocks that was his working class upbringing. Life is a struggle for satisfaction in a world designed to do Arthur’s kind down.
Although set in the cold war years, with its vague threat of nuclear Armageddon, the enemy for Arthur is not the Soviet Union but the pettifogging authority and bureaucracy of home. Like Yeats’ Irish Airman, his world is bounded by family and friends living in the same mean streets as him. Beyond this is the menace of authority in all its forms; from the army to which he is still conscripted for a few weeks per year, to the factory supervisor whose job is to squeeze the last ounce of productivity out of him.
Nor is Arthur much impressed by the inevitable future that seems to beckon, if his family and friends are any guide: drunken, abusive husbands, downtrodden, permanently pregnant mothers and a lifetime of imprisonment in the Rayleigh factory to pay the bills.
It is against this backdrop that Arthur struggles to find his role in life. Unlike in many stories of working class youth, his aim is not to escape to a better life elsewhere – he is totally loyal to his community. He just wants to make the best of the hand that fate has dealt him. He feels, vaguely, that there must be something more to life…but that is a question that can be deferred – at least for a while.
It is Arthur’s weakness for married women that drives the plot. Fully aware that what he is doing is hardly honourable, he justifies it to himself on the grounds that he is only giving these women what their husbands have signally failed to provide; if they were better husbands he wouldn’t be needed. But in Arthur’s claustrophobic world everybody knows everybody else’s business and it is inevitable that his philandering’s will be exposed. Arthur knows this in his gut but cannot stop; he persuades himself that he will be able to deal with the consequences when the time comes.
The world that Sillitoe brilliantly evokes here certainly has its problems. But it is not the Dickensian Britain of workhouses and destitution. Things are much better than in the pre-war years – this is the time of McMillan’s ‘you never had it so good’ speech. There are plenty of jobs. Sure they are not the kind to make you rich, but everybody who is prepared to knuckle down can afford a cup of tea, a cigarette and a pint – maybe even a TV on the never-never.
But its that ‘knuckling-down’ that grates with Arthur – he seems to have more respect for his thieving, draft-dodging cousins than he does for his fellow workers. Perhaps it is this reluctant conformity in his working life that drives Arthur to take such risks in his love life. Things change when he gets his long expected come-uppance. He gradually starts to consider a future he had always derided. Is it a case of youthful cynicism being replaced by mature realism or is he just throwing in the towel?
The book is remarkable in its matter-of-fact portrayal of working class life warts and all. Some have seen it as a rallying call to the workers to throw off their shackles. Others have seen it simply as a young man’s gradual acceptance of reality. Whatever interpretation you put on the story, it is a viciously accurate and hilariously funny portrayal of working class life in the 1950’s. Read it!
Joe Brannan's Blog 
I really enjoyed this book. It is very descriptive and I loved Sillitoe’s use of words – he brings the characters and places to life. I did struggle a little with the dialect and got a bit frustrated with the constant use of ‘duck’ but appreciate that this helped with understanding that it was the 1950’s and it was based in the Midlands.
From the very start of the book where he describes Arthur taking part in a drinking competition and falling down drunk, I was there in the club and could envisage it all and it was like this throughout the book. The drunkenness prepares us for the character of Arthur – a rogue – who enjoys drink and women. Although no real plot we were taken through the life of Arthur, got to know his family and his conquests. For instance you got a real feeling of family life when the Christmas period was described, you understood he had a job, the aim of which was to earn money to spend at the weekend (and nothing more) and he enjoyed the company of women – a typical ‘jack the lad’.
It was all believable and felt real. Many times I felt nervous for Arthur – when he was in bed with Brenda and Jack was due home – I just wanted him to get out – and I always worried that Brenda’s children would say something to their father. At first I was not so convinced that Arthur could see two sisters at the same time and that only one of them knew about the other, but this successfully resulted in Arthur being found out as, although I suspect Jack always knew, it was obvious he was never going to say anything.
The way Sillitoe described the means of ending the unwanted pregnancy felt very real and makes me realise how far we have come – terrible to think this was quite common, I suspect, in the 1950’s.
Arthur clearly works to play – taking nothing too seriously – probably a reflection of his youth. It is not until he is beaten up that Arthur seems to change but I’m not sure if this is a result of the beating, the fact that he has met somebody who is not just someone for sex or whether he is in fact growing up. Although I have to say I’m not convinced this is a permanent change and that he won’t eventually revert back to his old ways.
All in all a really good read.
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I agree wholeheartedly with Anonymous’s comments about the believability of Arthur’s world. I was brought up in the Glasgow of the early 60’s and the whole atmosphere of the book reminds me of those times. From the men who drank away their wages before they got home on Friday nights to the fearsome wives they went whom to, to face the music later. The houses piled high with children, parents and grandparents squashed three or four to a room. I knew several Arthurs – although some of these blokes who were already married while I was going to university, but whom I would meet as they headed up town on a Friday night ‘on the pull’, wives left home changing nappies. It was good for some of these people while they were still young but even then I felt there was a dead-end desperation about their partying, a half-acknowledged recognition that they had better enjoy it while they still could. Was Arthur any different to this? I’m not sure. Some of his reflections – and his enjoyment of fishing and the countryside – suggest a mental hinterland richer than his jack-the-lad image. I think the tragedy of the story is that he knows there is more to life but he can’t reach it without betraying his roots; and that he will never do.
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