Look Back in Anger: Act 3, Scene 2 Summary & Analysis

The scene opens just a few minutes later. Jimmy is playing his jazz trumpet across the hall. Helena is standing at the table pouring tea. Alison sits in an armchair. She bends to pick up Jimmy’s pipe, and drops the ash from it into an ashtray. She notes that he still smokes the pipe, and says that she had come to miss it. Last week at the movies, she sat behind a man who was smoking the same pipe. Helena brings her a cup of tea and says that it should help. Alison takes it, and thanks her.

Alison says that she must be “mad” to show up at the apartment, and apologizes to Helena. Helena says that Alison, of all people, doesn’t need to apologize. Alison protests that it was “unfair and cruel” to return. She has adopted Jimmy’s sense of dramatic timing, she says, but it is in “bad taste.” She says that she has often prevented herself from coming, but that today, she finally made it. She says that she has often thought of the apartment, but that it seemed like another world. She says that Helena makes a good cup of tea, then covers her face. “You must all wish me a thousand miles away,” she says.

Helena says that Alison has “more right” to be there than Helena does. Alison protests, “Helena, don’t bring out the book of rules,” and Helena says that Alison is Jimmy’s wife, and that she has never forgotten her friend’s “right” to him. Alison says that she “gave up believing in the divine rights of marriage long ago. Even before I met Jimmy.” Now, she says, it’s a constitutional monarchy. You are where you are by consent.” She, on the other hand, has been displaced.

Alison says that she regrets coming here, and that she didn’t intend to break up Helena and Jimmy. Helena says that she believes that, but that it makes things seem even worse. Alison “should have been outraged,” but wasn’t. Helena says that she feels ashamed, and that Alison sounds like she is “quoting” Jimmy. “At last, I still believe in right and wrong,” Helena says. “Even though everything I have done is wrong, at least I have known it was wrong.”

Alison says that Helena wrote that she loved Jimmy, and Helena confirms this. Alison says that she couldn’t believe this at first, but then she realized that Helena used to say lots of very harsh things about Jimmy, and that made it easier to believe. Helena agrees that she was “over-emphatic.”

Helena says that she has discovered “what is wrong with Jimmy…He was born out of his time.” Alison agrees. Helena says that there’s no place for him in the world now, but that he should have been in a time like the French Revolution. This means that he’ll never get anywhere. Alison says that he’s an “Eminent Victorian.”

Helena says that she sees now that it’s “over” between her and Jimmy. Alison’s presence reminds her how wrong the situation is. She says, “he wants one world and I want another, and lying in that bed won’t ever change it! I believe in good and evil, and I don’t have to apologise for that.” By her own moral code, her actions have been unconscionable. She’s leaving, and she thinks Alison would be a “fool” to stay, but she won’t stand in her way. Alison protests that Jimmy will be all alone. Helena says that Jimmy will find another woman. “I know I’m throwing my book of rules at you,” she says, but Alison won’t be happy without it. Helena has tried living that way, and “it just doesn’t work.”

Helena says that seeing Alison at the door made everything come clear to her, and that she “didn’t know about the baby…It’s like a judgment on us.” Alison says that she “lost the child. It’s a simple fact. There is no judgment, there’s no blame.” Helena says that she still feels it, and that though it isn’t “logical,” it’s “right.” Offstage, “the trumpet gets louder.” Alison says that Helena shouldn’t leave Jimmy, because he needs her. He wants something specific from women, she says—a “cross between a mother and a Greek courtesan, a henchwoman.” Helena tells Jimmy to stop his “damned noise.”

The trumpet eventually stops, and Helena calls Jimmy to speak with them. Jimmy asks if Alison is still there, and Helena says that he shouldn’t be stupid. Alison is worried that he doesn’t want to see her, but Helena tells her to stay. Jimmy enters. He says that Alison should sit down, because she looks “ghastly.” Helena begins to explain, but Jimmy says that she doesn’t have to “draw a diagram.” He can tell that Alison has had a miscarriage. Helena asks if that means something to him, and Jimmy says that he isn’t glad to think of anyone being ill or in pain, and that it was his child too. But, he says with a shrug, “it isn’t my first loss.”

Alison replies that it was her first loss. Jimmy looks at her, then looks back at Helena. She crosses to him, and says that it isn’t Alison’s fault. Jimmy asks what she means. Helena says that she doesn’t “want a brawl,” and Jimmy tells her to get on with it. Helena says that she is “going downstairs to pack [her] things.” It was her own decision, but she realized that she couldn’t be happy doing something “wrong” and hurtful. She says that she won’t love anyone else like Jimmy, but “I can’t take part—in all this suffering. I can’t!” Jimmy “looks down at the table, and nods.”

Helena says that she’ll get Alison a hotel room. Jimmy says that he always knew that Helena would eventually leave him when the going got too tough. “It’s no good trying to fool yourself about love,” he says. “You can’t fall into it like a soft job, without dirtying up your hands. It takes muscle and guts.” If Helena doesn’t want to dirty her soul, he says, she could become a saint—“because you’ll never make it as a human being.” As he says this, he takes a dress out of the closet, crosses the room, and gives it to her. Helena takes it, and exits. The church bells begin to ring outside, and he curses them.

Alison says that she’s sorry, and Jimmy says that she never sent any flowers to Hugh’s mum. She starts to move, but stops when he speaks. He says that the world is full of injustice, with “the wrong people dying.” Alison moves again, and he turns to her. He says that “the heaviest, strongest creatures in this world seem to be the loneliest.”

Jimmy asks if Alison remembers the first night they saw each other. He said that she seemed to have “a wonderful relaxation of spirit…You’ve got to be really brawny to have that kind of strength—the strength to relax.” He says that once they married, he realized he had misread her. “In order to relax, you’ve first got to sweat your guts out,” which Alison had never done. Alison lets out a cry, and moves to lean on the table. Jimmy says, “I may be a lost cause, but I thought if you loved me, it needn’t matter.”

Alison is crying. She yells out, “it doesn’t matter! I was wrong, I was wrong! I don’t want to be neutral, I don’t want to be a saint. I want to be a lost cause. I want to be corrupt and futile!” Jimmy watches “helplessly.” She says that the “human being inside [her] body” has gone. She had never known pain like that—she wanted to die. She thought of Jimmy. “This is what he’s been longing for me to feel…I’m in the fire, and I’m burning.” She says that the cost was the child, and all her future children, but that it was worth it, because this was what Jimmy had wanted. She looks up at him, and says, “don’t you see! I’m in the mud at last! I’m groveling! I’m crawling!” She collapses on the floor. Jimmy kneels to her. He says, “Please don’t…I can’t,” and tells her that she’s all right. She “relaxes suddenly.”

Jimmy says “with a kind of mocking, tender irony,” that they’ll go be happy in their bear’s cave and squirrel’s drey. They’ll write songs, and live on honey and nuts, and she’ll help him stay clean. He’ll see that she keeps her tail looking nice, and that he’ll watch her, because she’s beautiful and “none too bright,” so they have to be careful of traps. “Poor squirrels,” he says. “Poor bears,” Alison says, and then, tenderly, “Oh poor, poor, bears.” She embraces him. The curtain falls.