Angry Young Men

By the end of the 1950s what I term a 'working-class moment' in British culture had begun to emerge. This 'working-class moment' is most commonly associated with the democratising tendencies of the 1960s and the success, and cultural significance, of working-class figures such as The Beatles, David Bailey, George Best, Michael Caine and Terrence Stamp, but its origins are firmly rooted in a pattern of commodification of working-class masculinities that emerged in 1950s Britain. This chapter utilises Raymond Williams's concept of 'structure of feeling' (1954: 21) to trace the origin of that commodification to the emergence of new discourses of masculinities from the 'Movement' novels of Kingsley Amis and John Wain, through the so-called 'Angry Young Men', before focusing upon a less easily distinguishable, but discrete and significant, pattern of (largely) Northern realism in British fiction. 'Structure of feeling' is a key concept within the academic project of Raymond Williams, initially deployed in Preface to Film (1954) its genesis is contemporaneous with Wain's Hurry on Down (1953) and Amis's Lucky Jim (1954), as such the concept itself belongs to a structure of feeling in which the standards and conventions of British culture and society were being challenged. 'Structure of feeling' remains a contentious concept, due, at least in part, to the fact that the concept and its definitions have remained elusive and ambiguous. However, there are three distinct phases in the development of the concept, which, whilst not entirely discrete, are recognisably different. Williams's original use of the concept in Preface to Film clearly indicates his intention to provide an alternative interpretative framework for Marxist cultural analysis. It demonstrates a direct challenge to the existing orthodox Marxist formula in which cultural production is understood to be a superstructural corollary of the economic base, and presents as the foundational stage of a cultural hypothesis that seeks to break down the perceived barriers between 'culture' and 'society', between the 'social' and the 'personal'. The term itself, which Williams acknowledges is 'difficult' (1977: 132), with its inherent contradiction between the definite 'structure', and the intangible 'feeling' points us toward this conclusion. Williams further developed the concept of 'structure of feeling' in The Long Revolution (1961), a text which continues the inquiry begun in Williams's Culture & Society: 1780-1950 (1958). This second phase in the development of the concept is contemporaneous with the texts studied here, Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and David Storey's This Sporting Life (1960), and marks the genesis of what would eventually become the practice of 'cultural materialism' (1977: 5). In The Long Revolution Williams describes the difficulty of 'get[ting] hold of' the 'felt sense of the quality of life at a particular place and time: a sense of the ways in which the particular activities combined into ways of thinking and living' ([1961] 1965: 63). Williams recognises the value of Fromm's concept of 'the "social character"' and Benedict's concept of 'the "pattern of culture"' in attempting to 'restor[e] the outlines of a particular organization of life', but notes that in each case the "way of life" that is recovered is 'usually abstract' ([1961] 1965: 63-4). Williams continues to suggest that it may be possible to 'gain the sense of a further common element, which is neither the character nor the pattern, but as it were the actual experience through which these were lived' ([1961] 1965: 64). Williams states that when 'the arts of a period', are 'measured […] against the external characteristics of the period' there can still exist 'some important common element that we cannot easily place', this is precisely what Williams terms 'structure of feeling' ([1961] 1965: 64). According to Williams, 'structure of feeling' is a concept that 'is as firm and definite as "structure" suggests, yet it operates in the most delicate and least tangible parts of our activity' ([1961] 1965: 64). The key element of this phase of the concept is the recognition of the central position the arts occupy in the analysis of culture as a whole way of life, and how the arts enable us to understand changes within the system of social reproduction. It becomes apparent in the study of the arts that a structure of feeling is not formally learned, but emerges from generationally specific reactions, and interactions, to, and with, the culture and society that is in existence in a particular time and place. As Williams states, '[o]ne generation may train its successor, with reasonable success, in the social character or the general cultural pattern,

isara solutions, 2019

The present paper describes and analyzes the mood of anger in John Braine’s Room at the Top. The novel shows that the Welfare State fails to turn Britain into a true democratic country in the fifties, since the rich men have continued to rule the country. The deep-rooted rigid social class discrimination remains a force hindering the new working class citizens from achieving themselves. The Welfare State ensures full employment for the working class population. Still, there is an atmosphere of poverty and injustice. Room at the Top is a realistic novel; it reproduces an authentic picture reflecting the disturbances that have prevailed in post-war II Britain.

Cultural and Social History 11:3 (September 2014): 367-384

This article aims to bring Oxford and Cambridge back into the debate about elite masculine socialization in eighteenth-century England. The ancient universities in this period have too frequently been described by historians as bastions of moral stability and man making. This article seeks to complicate such assumptions, presenting a view of the universities’ role in shaping the identities of young men in the eighteenth century which takes into account the significant effect of rising student ages, generational and class tensions. In particular, the article traces the characteristics and development of foppish masculine styles among Oxbridge undergraduates, highlights their opposition to book-learning and academic regulations, and analyses the increasing suspicion which they incurred from the university authorities against the background of the American and French Revolutions.

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2001

Student Revolt, City, and Society in Europe: From the Middle Ages to the Present (ed. Pieter Dhondt and Elizabethanne Boran), 2017

This essay seeks to explain and to place in context a surprising demonstration of student anger and expression of generational identity which took place in the famous Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford during a graduation ceremony on 28 June 1843. Violent and riotous behaviour are not traditionally associated with students at Oxford and Cambridge by historians; they are generally treated as belonging to a wealthy, elite cadre who took little interest in politics or in challenging the status quo. However, such a view neglects the very important role which students played in supporting one of the most radical movements in Oxford’s history - the high-Anglican Tractarian (or Oxford) Movement, most closely associated with the figure of John Henry Newman. As this essay will argue, when placed against the background of the American and French Revolutions, in particular, the growing fears of the university authorities about student rebellion and their attempts to clamp down on students’ freedom of movement and reading material, a growing sense of anger and generational solidarity becomes readily understandable. What is sometimes viewed as a strange blip in the history of Oxford University, will be explained here as the climax and culmination of a long process of generational tension and structural changes (most importantly, the rising age of students) over a number of decades.

1992

Working Lives website, University of Sydney, 2002

Why did a generation of young men and women from privileged backgrounds, or trained in universities for privileged lives, became labour intellectuals in the first part of the twentieth century? Using a biographical approach I intend to discuss two Australian men from the same generation but from different class backgrounds. I will focus on the way labour intellectuals could draw on two modernist traditions of intellectual life - the dissenting and movement traditions – in order to understand and critique their relation to modernity. To use a term of Ron Eyerman, whose general approach I am following, I am interested in ‘the self-referential location of intellectuals’, that is, how they assessed the opportunities for intellectual labour in this period of discontent with modernity. The moment of shifting one’s allegiance, of becoming labour intellectuals throws these alternative traditions into greater relief.