Class hate into sexual hate in Look Back in Anger

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to consider John Osborne's Look Back in Anger from the point of view of the function of gender. This involves the playwright's depiction of gender contradiction which results from the need for the family members to re-adjust to the public and private roles they had before the war. In the play the male character's dilenmna lies in the fulfilment of expected social and sexual roles. He is the main focus of the play in a domestic setting where he can sublimate his sense of class hatred into sexual hatred. He is allowed enough space and tools to destroy his 'faninine' wife in an effort to rediscover his own potency. Thus, this thesis mainly focuses on the question of 'virility' along with the play's fundamental mysogynist and patriarchal nature which reflects the sexual hatred of the Angries generation and Osborne's sense of his time as a transition period, MLA style sheet has been followed throughout the thesis.