Down and Out in London and Orwell

About

This essay was first published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations

Essay Excerpt

"Unlike much literature of the nineteenth-century, that seeks a safe centre in which the artist and the audience can be comfortably together, the work of Jack London and George Orwell specialises in a tendency to extremes, a tendency to seek the social peripheries of experience, to dwell in regions of discomfort and confrontation, and, perhaps most fundamentally, to language the body into existence. London’s 'People of the Abyss' (1903) and Orwell’s 'Down and Out in Paris and London' (1933) transpose personal experience, notably involving their own bodies and 'tramp' identities, while disclosing the body as an image of both depth and surface, of deep mysterious interiors and often codified exteriors. In effect, London and Orwell further the early twentieth-century project of bringing the body and its senses more overtly into the ethical and social realm, what such critics as I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, and T. S. Eliot called 'cultural health.' Both writers try to imagine and render such health in the form of the body’s boundaries—alternately, as permeable, shifting, and open to fusion with the environment, and as rigid, closed, and resistant to social appropriation."

Recommended Reading

"People of the Abyss" by Jack London - The seminal work discussed in Dow's essay, offering firsthand insight into London's experiences with poverty.

"Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell - The seminal work discussed in Dow's essay, providing Orwell's account of living in poverty.

"The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell - Another of Orwell's works that explores the conditions of the working class in England.

"The Iron Heel" by Jack London - A dystopian novel by London that explores themes of social justice and class struggle.

"Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell - Orwell's account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, providing further context to his socio-political views.