Look Back In Anger Settings

 Settings of look back in anger 

Look Back in Anger takes place in the Porters' one-room flat, a fairly large attic room. The furniture is simple and rather old: a double bed, dressing table, book shelves, chest of drawers, dining table, and three chairs, two shabby leather arm chairs. The drab setting of the play emphasizes the contrast between the idealistic Jimmy and the dull reality of the world surrounding him. The apartment is located in the Midlands, a region in the centre of Britain sometime during the early 1950s. The play opens in April, which is a reference to T.S. Eliot's line from The Waste Land: “April is the cruellest month."  Eliot is mentioned several other times in the play and is used as a definitive English cultural reference for Jimmy.

ENGLISH MIDLANDS

English Midlands are the central region of England in which the play is set. Midlands counties contain the country's major industrial cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Leeds. Factories dominate their urban landscapes, and their residents are largely working-class. Historically, the Midlands have often been viewed with condescension by more cosmopolitan residents of London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Relatively few literary works prior to the 1950s were set in the Midlands. 

PORTERS' FLAT

Porters' flat is described as "a fairly large attic room, at the top of a large Victorian house," the one-room apartment of Jimmy and Alison Porter, is an example of the trend derided as "kitchen-sink realism" by some critics during the 1950s and 1960s. In stark contrast to the stylish and elegant upper-and middle-class settings of then-popular plays by Noël Coward and others, Osborne's setting is economically downscale. Its furniture is "simple and rather old," including two "shabby" armchairs. A double bed takes up much of the space along the back wall. The mere presence of the young married couple's bed on stage connotes a certain frankness about sexuality that was considered daring for its time - as does

Alison's  being seen wearing only a slip during the second act. Books crowd the shelves and cover the  chest of drawers, indicating that Jimmy Porter, though of working-class background, is educated, in contrast to virtually all working-class characters depicted in literature earlier. The fact that on Sundays he reads the "only two posh papers," which are strewn about the room, also indicates his level of intelligence and interest in the larger world, though he complains that the London-based book reviews all sound the same. The ironing-board symbolizes Alison's unfortunate status in the marriage and the domestic subordination of women in the 1950s, though her parents are more middle-class than her husband's. 

UNIVERSITY

University. It is an unnamed institution of higher learning that Jimmy apparently attended but left early. He alludes to a university that is "not even red brick, but white tile." In contrast to Oxford and Cambridge, where England's social and intellectual elites are educated amid buildings of centuries-old gray stone, "red brick" universities were primarily twentieth century institutions that were morenaccessible to the public. White tiles are associated with public toilets.