Look Back in Anger: Act 1 Summary & Analysis

The play is set in a one-room apartment at the top of an old Victorian house. When the curtain rises, we see Jimmy Porter and Cliff Lewis, seated on opposite sides of he stage and reading newspapers. There are others beside them and between them, forming “a jungle of newspapers and weeklies.” Jimmy is smoking a pipe. A tattered stuffed bear and squirrel sit on a chest of drawers at the end of a double bed, which takes up most of the back wall. The furniture is simple and somewhat shabby.

In the first stage direction, Osborne describes Jimmy as “a disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice” and says, “to be as vehement as he is to be almost non-committal.” He describes Cliff as much more gentle—Jimmy tends to push people away, while Cliff draws them to him. Jimmy’s wife Alison Porter stands ironing clothes on the left side of the stage, near Cliff. She is wearing Jimmy’s shirt, and looks elegant in this working class apartment.

Jimmy complains that the Sunday papers are boring, and also that they make him “feel ignorant.” He taunts Cliff for not being smarter, then taunts Alison, asking her if the papers make her feel stupid, too, even though she’s not a “peasant” like Cliff. Alison says that she hasn’t read them. Cliff tells Jimmy to leave Alison alone while she works. Jimmy asks if “The White Woman’s Burden” makes it too hard for Alison to speak. He complains that his talk seems to bore them, and tells Alison to “go back to sleep.” Alison, still at her ironing board, finally snaps that she “can’t think,” and Jimmy says that she “hasn’t had a thought for years.”

Jimmy decides that he’s hungry, to which Cliff replies that he’ll get fat. Jimmy denies this: “people like me don’t get fat,” he says, “we just burn everything up.”

Cliff reaches up to grab Alison’s hand (she is still at her ironing board beside him). He says that she should sit down and join them. Alison smiles, and says she still has work to do. Cliff “kisses her hand and puts her fingers in his mouth.” He tells Jimmy that Alison is a beautiful girl. Jimmy responds, “that’s what they all tell me,” and his eyes meet his wife’s across the stage. Cliff says that he is going to bite off Alison’s “lovely, delicious paw.” Alison says not to—she’ll burn the shirt she’s ironing. Jimmy tells Cliff to “give her her finger back, and don’t be so sickening.” Then he asks more about what Cliff’s reading in the paper.

Letting go of Alison’s hand, Cliff says that he’d been reading a “moving” article by Bishop Bromley, who said that Christians should aid the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. Jimmy asks if this moves Alison, and she says that it does. He claims surprise. Reading the column himself, Jimmy announces that the Bishop denies any differences between working class people and others. He quotes from the article, in which Bromley argues that this idea is a lie propagated by the working classes, presumably for their own gain. Jimmy says that this sounds like the kind of argument Alison’s father, Colonel Redfern, would make.

Jimmy asks Alison to make some tea. She looks up at him, and asks if he wants tea. He says he doesn’t, and when Alison asks Cliff, Jimmy interrupts and says that Cliff doesn’t want any, either. Then Jimmy asks Alison how much longer she’ll be ironing. She says it’ll be a while longer.

Jimmy says that he hates Sundays. “Always the same ritual. Reading the papers, drinking tea, ironing…Our youth is slipping away.” When he realizes Alison isn’t listening, he says, “casually,” “damn you, damn both of you, damn them all.” Cliff suggests that they go to the movies. Alison says that she can’t, but that Jimmy might like to. Jimmy says no, and steers the conversation back to newspaper articles.

He launches into a speech blaming Cliff and Alison’s lack of intellectual interest on “sloth.” He says they’ll drive him mad with longing for a little “human enthusiasm” on their part. He suggests a game: “Let’s pretend that we’re human beings, and that we’re actually alive.”

Cliff brings the conversation back to newspapers. Jimmy summarizes another article that he says was written by a man like Colonel Redfern “casting well-fed glances back to the Edwardian twilight from his comfortable, disenfranchised wilderness.” Then he asks Cliff what’s wrong with the wrinkled trousers that Cliff is wearing—he looks like a “savage.” He asks what Cliff is going to do about them.

Cliff grins, looks at Alison, and asks what he should do. She says that he should take his trousers off. Jimmy agrees. Alison says she can iron them now. Cliff agrees, and starts taking off his pants, emptying keys, matches, and a handkerchief from his pocket. Jimmy grabs the matches and lights his pipe. Cliff complains of the smell, but Alison says she’s gotten used to it. Jimmy says that Alison is “a great one for getting used to things.” She’d get used to it quickly even if he died, he claims. Cliff hands Alison his trousers and asks for a cigarette. Jimmy protests that the doctor said Cliff shouldn’t smoke, but then gives up—“they’re your ulcers.” Alison hands Cliff a cigarette, and they both light up. She continues to iron. Cliff sits down in his pullover and boxer shorts and begins to read.

Jimmy begins to scan the Radio Times for a concert, and finds one by Vaughan Williams. He says this is “strong” and “simple” British music. He says, “I hate to admit it, but I think I can understand how her Daddy [Colonel Redfern] must have felt when he came back from India…the old Edwardian brigade do make their brief little world look pretty tempting.” That picture was “phoney,” though, Jimmy observes: “it must have rained sometimes.” Now, Jimmy says, they’re all living in the “American Age.”

Neither Cliff nor Alison responds to his tirade, even when Jimmy gives Cliff a kick. Jimmy changes the subject, asking whether Alison’s friend Webster is coming over that night. Jimmy likes Webster—he speaks a “different dialect” but the “same language.” Webster, Jimmy says, has “enthusiasm.”

Jimmy begins to say that he hasn’t felt that enthusiasm since—and Alison interrupts him, saying that it was when he was with his old mistress, Madeline, whom he dated when he was eighteen. Cliff remembers Madeline—“was she the one all those years older than you?” Jimmy says that she was ten years older.

Cliff says that he’s sleepy, and doesn’t feel like going to work at the sweet stall tomorrow. Jimmy changes the subject back to Madeline—“she had more animation in her little finger than you two put together.” She took delight in “being awake.” Jimmy says that Webster, while not as thrilling as Madeline, is “all right…in his way.” He’s the only one of Alison’s friends that’s worth much, Jimmy says, and then stands to look out the window. Webster has both “guts” and “sensitivity,” unlike the rest, who have neither.

Alison asks Jimmy, “very quietly and earnestly,” not to go on. He turns from the window to look at her. Her “tired appeal” has made him pause momentarily, but then he gathers for a fresh round of insults on Alison’s friends. He walks to center stage and stands behind Cliff.

Cliff tries to get Jimmy to back off from the tirade, but Jimmy says that he couldn’t provoke Alison anyways, not even by dropping dead. He returns to his attack on her friends, saying that they’re “militant,” like Alison’s mother and Colonel Redfern, and also “arrogant and full of malice. Or vague.” Alison, he says, is “somewhere between the two.”

Jimmy turns his attack to Alison’s brother Nigel, saying that he “is just about as vague as you can get without being actually invisible.” Nigel wants to be a politician, and Jimmy thinks he’ll end up a success, though he and his political pals have been “plundering and fooling everybody for generations.” In order to keep this ruse going, Jimmy says that Nigel takes sanctuary in stupidity, which is what he learned at his fancy prep school.

Alison continues ironing—this is the only sound in the room. “Cliff stares at the floor.” Jimmy recovers from his tirade by again looking out the window. It starts to rain. Then Jimmy returns to his takedown of Alison’s family—Jimmy has “been cheated out of his response, but he’s got to draw blood somehow.” He says that both Alison and Nigel are “sycophantic, phlegmatic, and pusillanimous.” Cliff asks if he should put the Vaughan Williams concert on the radio.

Jimmy says that he looked up the word pusillanimous recently, and found that it’s a perfect descriptor of his wife. He calls her “the Lady Pusillanimous,” as if she is “some fleshy Roman matron.” Alison leans against the ironing board, closes her eyes, and says, “God help me, if he doesn’t stop, I’ll go out of my mind in a minute.” Jimmy encourages her to do so—“that would be something, anyway.”

Jimmy picks up a dictionary. He tells Cliff that if he’s pronouncing pusillanimous wrong, Alison will probably correct him publicly. He reads the definition out loud: “wanting of firmness of mind, of small courage, having a little mind, mean spirited, cowardly, timid of mind.”

Jimmy is watching Alison from across the room. Her “face seems to contort, and it looks as though she might throw her head back, and scream.” She doesn’t. The stage direction says that she’s used to Jimmy’s attacks, and won’t give him the reaction that he wants tonight. Jimmy crosses and turns on the radio—Vaughan Williams is playing. Jimmy sits back in his chair to listen. Alison gives Cliff back his ironed trousers.

Cliff thanks Alison, and calls her “you beautiful, darling girl.” Then he “puts his arms round her waist, and kisses her. She smiles, and gives his nose a tug. Jimmy watches from his chair.” He doesn’t react. Alison suggests to Cliff that they have a cigarette, and offers one to Jimmy, too. He declines—he’s trying to listen to the concert on the radio. “Sorry, your lordship,” Cliff says.

Cliff returns to the newspapers, and Alison to her ironing. After a while, Jimmy snaps at both of them for making too much noise. His foot twitches. Then he gets up and crosses towards Alison to turn off the radio. He says he can’t focus with all the distraction. He tells Cliff that Alison is always clumsy with household tasks, drawing the curtains “in that casually destructive way of hers.” He compares it to launching a battleship. All women, he says, are as noisy and clumsy. He says it’s a good thing there aren’t many female surgeons, because they’d flip mens’ guts from their bodies in the same way that the take a powder puff out of its box.

The church bells begin to ring outside. Jimmy yells out the window at them to stop. Alison tells him to be quiet—she doesn’t want the landlord, Miss Drury, to come upstairs. Jimmy says he doesn’t care about Miss Drury, who is “an old robber.” Cliff closes the window. He suggests that they go out for a drink. Jimmy says the bar won’t be open on Sunday.

Cliff, fooling around, says to Jimmy, “well, shall we dance?” He begins to push Jimmy around the apartment floor, but Jimmy isn’t in the mood. Cliff attempts to banter with Jimmy, pretending that they are in a bar, and when Jimmy tries to get away, Cliff holds him “like a vice.” He says that he won’t let Jimmy go until he apologizes for being nasty to everyone.

Jimmy and Cliff begin to fight. They fall onto the floor in the center of the stage, near where Alison is ironing. Alison says that it’s getting “more like a zoo every day.” Jimmy pushes Cliff towards Alison, and the ironing board collapses beneath him. All three fall into a pile. Alison “cries out in pain.” Cliff stands up to ask Alison if she’s all right, and she snaps, “well, does it look like it?” She has burnt her arm on the hot iron. Jimmy apologizes, and starts to say that he didn’t do it on purpose, but Alison tells him to get out. Jimmy exits.

Cliff brings Alison to an armchair, where she sits. He says he’ll go down to the bathroom to get some soap to wash her wound. Cliff exits. Alison, alone on stage, takes a deep breath and looks up at the ceiling. She “brings her hands up to her face,” and “winces as she feels the pain in her arm.” She says, “in a clenched whisper,” “Oh, God!” Then Cliff comes back in with the soap.

Cliff kneels next to Alison and runs the soap gently over her arm. He says she’s a brave girl. She says she doesn’t feel brave, and that she doesn’t think she can “take much more.” Cliff puts his arm around her and massages the back of her neck. He says that he doesn’t think he’d “have the courage” to move out of their shared house. He’s “rough” and “ordinary,” and has become “fond” of the couple, in spite of their constant fighting. Alison says, “I don’t think I want anything more to do with love…I can’t take it on.”

Cliff says that Alison shouldn’t give up, and offers to put a bandage on her arm. He goes over to Alison’s dressing table to get one. As he walks away, Alison says that she’s forgotten what it’s like to feel young. Jimmy said something similar the other day, and Alison pretended not to listen to him, in order to hurt him. He “got savage, like tonight.” She says that it would have been easy to sympathize with him, but she didn’t: “It’s those easy things that seem to be so impossible with us.”

Cliff, his back to Alison, wonders aloud how long he can go on watching the couple “tearing the insides out of each other.” Alison asks if Cliff would leave the house, and he says no. He begins to bandage her arm. As he’s doing so, Alison begins to tell him something, then stops. He asks her what it was, and she says, hesitating, that she is pregnant. Cliff waits a few moments, then asks for the scissors. He goes over to the dressing table to get them, and asks when Alison found out. She says she’s known for a few days. They never intended to have a baby, she says, because they don’t have the resources to support it. Jimmy resented this aspect of their poverty. Cliff assumes that Alison hasn’t told Jimmy yet, and she confirms this.

Cliff finishes tying Alison’s bandage, and she gets up to fold the ironing board. Cliff begins to ask a question but isn’t able to make himself finish it, so Allison does: is it too late to have an abortion? She says that there may still be time to terminate the pregnancy. Cliff asks what she’ll do if it is too late, and Alison, her head turned away from Cliff, “simply shakes her head.”

Cliff suggests that Alison tell Jimmy now —“after all, he does love you. You don’t need me to tell you that.” Alison leans down to fold the clothes that have fallen off the ironing board. She says that it might be okay for a night after she told Jimmy the news, but then he would start to suspect that she got pregnant out of malice, “as if I were trying to kill him in the worst way of all.” She says that Jimmy has “his own private morality,” which Alison’s mother would call “loose,” but which is also “harsh.”

Alison tells Cliff, to his surprise, that she and Jimmy didn’t sleep together before marrying. Once they were married, Jimmy taunted Alison for being a virgin, and felt deceived. Alison says, “He seemed to think an untouched woman would defile him.” Cliff says that Jimmy would be “quite pleased” to hear Alison talk about him this way, and she agrees.

Alison gets up, holding the folded clothes. She asks Cliff whether he thinks Jimmy is right about “everything.” Cliff responds that he and Jimmy are both working people, and that they therefore think alike about some things. Jimmy’s mother’s relatives were “pretty posh, but he hates them as much as he hates yours. Don’t quite know why.” But Jimmy and Cliff get along because they’re “common.”

Alison asks if she should tell Jimmy about the baby. Cliff puts his arm around her and says that it’ll be all right. He kisses her. Jimmy enters, and “looks at them curiously, but without surprise.” They don’t acknowledge that they notice him. Jimmy sits down in the armchair next to them. He begins to look at the paper. Without looking at Alison, he asks how her arm is. She says that it’s fine. Cliff says that Alison is beautiful, and Jimmy says, “you seem to think so.” Cliff and Alison have their arms around each other.

Cliff says he doesn’t know why the hell Alison married Jimmy, and Jimmy asks if the two of them would have been better off together. Cliff says that’s he’s not Alison’s type, and Alison says she’s not sure what her type is. Jimmy says that they should sleep together—“I can’t concentrate with you two standing there like that.”

Cliff says that he thinks Alison is beautiful, and that Jimmy does too, but is “too much of a pig to say so.” Jimmy says that Cliff is just being flirtatious (a “sexy Welshman”). He says that Alison’s parents are already scandalized that he’s married to their daughter, and that they’d “collapse” if they saw her flirting with Cliff, too. They might “send for the police.” Then he asks if Alison has a cigarette.

Alison goes to look for one in her handbag. Jimmy, “trying to re-establish himself,” begins to tease Cliff, who is getting “more like a little mouse every day.” Alison says that Cliff is indeed a mouse, and Cliff plays along, squeaking and dancing around the table saying, “I’m a mouse, I’m a randy little mouse.” He starts to tease Jimmy back, calling him a “horrible old bear.” Cliff grabs Jimmy’s foot, and they begin to fight. Alison watches, “relieved and suddenly full of affection.”

Alison discovers that she doesn’t have any more cigarettes, and Jimmy yells to Cliff (who is “dragging Jimmy along the floor by his feet”) to go buy some. Cliff agrees, drops Jimmy’s legs, and takes some money from Alison. He kisses her forehead on his way out, and says, “don’t forget.” Then he pauses at the door to yell back to Jimmy, “Make a nice pot of tea.” Jimmy says that he’ll kill Cliff first, and Cliff says, grinning, “That’s my boy!” Cliff exits.

Jimmy stands beside Alison, who is still rummaging in her purse. “She becomes aware of his nearness, and, after a few moments, closes it.” Jimmy holds her arm and asks her how it feels, and she says that it’s fine. “All this fooling about can get a bit dangerous,” Jimmy says. Then he holds her hand, and apologizes. She accepts his apology. He says that he hurt her on purpose, and Alison says, “yes.”

Jimmy says that he can hardly get through a moment without feeling attracted to Alison, and that because of that, “I’ve got to hit out somehow.” Even after four years living together in close quarters, he says, “I still can’t stop my sweat breaking out when I see you doing—something as ordinary as leaning over an ironing board.” “Trouble is you get used to people,” Jimmy says, and then all their smallest traits become simultaneously “indispensable” and “a little mysterious.”

Jimmy puts his head against Alison’s stomach, but she is “still on guard a little.” Then he looks up, and they kiss, “passionately.” Jimmy asks what they should do tonight. Alison asks what he wants to do (“Drink?”) and Jimmy says that he knows what he wants to do now (implying that he wants to have sex). Alison “takes his head in her hands and kisses him,” then says that he’ll have to wait until “the proper time.” Jimmy says there isn’t any proper time, and Alison reminds him that Cliff will be back soon.

Jimmy asks what Cliff meant by saying “don’t forget,” when he left the room. Alison says vaguely that it was about “something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Jimmy kisses her again, and remarks that Alison is fond of Cliff. She agrees. Jimmy says that Cliff is his only friend—people seem to always be disappearing from his life. Then he remembers Hugh’s mum, who he says has also been a good friend to the couple. She is letting Jimmy pay her back for his sweet stall in his own time, and she has always been “fond” of Alison. Jimmy says he doesn’t know why Alison hasn’t returned the affection.

Alison is worried by “this threat of a different mood,” but Jimmy goes on to call her “a beautiful, great-eyed squirrel.” Alison “nods brightly, relieved.” Jimmy begins to compare her further to a squirrel, with shiny fur and a bushy tail. Alison plays along, pretending to munch nuts, and shouting, “Wheeeeeee!” Jimmy says that he envies her. Then she calls him a “jolly super bear.” He agrees that bears and squirrels are “marvellous.” Alison begins to do a squirrel dance, complete with “paw gestures.” Jimmy asks what she’s doing, and she says it’s “a dance squirrels do when they’re happy.”

Jimmy asks why she thinks she’s happy, and Alison says, “everything just seems all right suddenly.” Then she begins to return to the topic of her pregnancy, but Cliff comes back and interrupts the moment. He says that Miss Drury stopped him before he could leave the house, and that someone named Helena is on the phone for Alison. Alison thanks him, and leaves to take the call.

Jimmy’s mood has changed. Cliff jokes that Jimmy was supposed to makes some tea, and when he doesn’t respond, asks what the matter is. Jimmy says “that bitch,” referring to Helena. Cliff asks who she is, to which Jimmy replies that she is one of Alison’s old friends, and one of Jimmy’s “natural enemies.” He also comments that Cliff is now sitting in his chair. Cliff tries to change the subject to where they are going out for a drink, but Jimmy is stuck on Helena. He wonders why she would call, and says that it can’t be for any good reason.

Jimmy remarks that just a few minutes ago, things seemed to be going well. Quoting Shakespeare, he says that he’s “just about had enough of this ‘expense of spirit’ lark, as far as women are concerned.” Referring to French novelist Andre Gide, who was homosexual, he says, “I almost envy old Gide and the Greek Chorus boys.” Jimmy says that while gay men have a hard life, “plenty of them do seem to have a revolutionary fire about them, which is more than you can say for the rest of us.”

Jimmy says that Webster, who he thinks is gay, is one example. He believes that Webster doesn’t like him, and says it’s because Jimmy doesn’t treat Webster differently as a result of his sexuality. Webster is like a man with a birthmark who always wants to show it off to horrify people, Jimmy says. Jimmy himself has his own “strawberry mark,” but it isn’t homosexuality.

As he speaks, Jimmy has been picking through Alison’s handbag. Cliff asks him if that isn’t Alison’s private property, and Jimmy says that it is, but that living with his wife has made him “predatory and suspicious.” He wants to look through her things for signs of betrayal. In the handbag, he finds a letter from Alison’s mother, in which, Jimmy says, “I’m not mentioned at all because my name is a dirty word.” Alison enters. Speaking both to his wife and to Cliff, Jimmy says that Alison responds to her mother with longs letters that also don’t mention Jimmy. Then he throws the letter at her feet.

Jimmy asks Alison what Helena wanted. Alison says that Helena is coming over. Helena is working with an acting company nearby, and has nowhere to stay. Jimmy asks if Helena is bringing her “armour,” as she is “going to need it.” Alison asks him, “vehemently,” to shut up.

Jimmy says to Alison that he hopes she will one day learn suffering. He wants something to “wake [her] out of [her] beauty sleep.” He wishes that she would have a child, but that it would die. The baby would form a “recognisable human face,” and when it died, he says to Alison, “you might even become a recognisable human being yourself. But I doubt it.” Alison is stunned, and retreats to the stove. Jimmy stands “rather helplessly” alone.

Jimmy says, ostensibly to Cliff but also partly to himself and Alison, that he has “never known the great pleasure of lovemaking when I didn’t desire it myself.” Alison has some passion, he says, but it is “the passion of a python.” She eats him whole, the way a python eats its prey. He points to her stomach, and says that he himself is “that bulge around her navel…smothered in that peaceful looking coil.” Though he’s “indigestible,” he says, eating him whole doesn’t bother Alison’s indigestion. She could go on sleeping and eating until Jimmy completely vanished. Alison throws her head back as if about to speak or scream, and then stands open mouthed until the curtain falls on Act I.