Orwell by Jeffrey Meyers Page B

pragmatic and politic, and he hopes to improve conditions by clarifying common misconceptions in the light of first-hand experience: “You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring” (13). Orwell explodes a number of common prejudices by explaining them. Educated people fear workers because they do not understand them and despise beggars because they fail to earn a decent living. That “money has become the grand test of virtue” (126) is a major theme of
Keep the Aspidistra.
Tramps tramp because they are compelled by law to do so; they are too docile to be dangerous and too destitute to be drunk.
    Apart from improving the harsh and unfair laws governing tramps, Orwell also suggests making the casual wards more comfortable and finding suitable employment for the men, possibly through small farms attached to the workhouses. But all these are minor palliatives; the solution implicit in this book, though not stated until
Wigan Pier
, is Socialism; and it was Orwell's experience among the poor and outcast in Paris and London that made him aware of the need for that radical solution.
    Keep the Aspidistra
, like
Down and Out
, has a balanced structure. Paris and London, Boris and Paddy, the good and bad hotels, the castes of
plongeurs
and of beggars, and the summaries with practical suggestions at the end of each half are contrasted in the earlier book. The same kind of technique is also used in the novel, where it emphasizes the circular pattern of the book (the return to the advertising office) as well as the two phases of Gordon's life: before and after his drunken spree. McKechnie's and Cheese-man's bookshops, Mrs. Wisbeach's and Mrs. Meakin's rooms, the friendship of Flaxman and Ravelston, the love of his sister Julia and his girl Rosemary, 15 and the two sexual encounters with Rosemary are contrasted, though ironically. For the worse job and the dingier room seem “better” to Gordon; though he is closer to Ravelston and Rosemary, he finds it easier to accept help from Flaxman and Julia; and the lyrical seduction scene is a failure while the squalid one is all too successful.
    Several other structural motifs emphasize Gordon's resolution to return to the respectable middle-class moneyed world, symbolized by the indestructible aspidistra and the New Albion advertising company. At the end of the novel, Gordon and Rosemary have their wedding feast at the modest Soho restaurant that Ravelston had previously suggested they go to instead of the disastrously expensive Modigliani's (which parallels the fashionable country hotel); they live in a flat with a view of Paddington, from where they had left on their country outing; Gordon sprouts grey hairs to match Rosemary's (a symbol of his “mature” acceptance of life?) and she pulls hers out for the wedding ceremony; and as a comfortably employed writer and prospective father, he relinquishes his apocalyptic wish and no longer craves the destruction of London by bombs.
    Despite Orwell's evident care with the form of the novel, the plot has some serious weaknesses. The chance meeting with Rosemary in the open-air market seems too coincidental; and the mystery of how the previously unacquainted Flaxman and Ravelston, Rosemary and Julia, ever got together to “save” Gordon is never explained. Ravelston's inability to resist the “abominable adventure” with the whores seems incredible; and worst of all, Rosemary becomes pregnant after her first sexual encounter, in the archaic tradition of the Victorian novel.
    Nor is Orwell in full control of his style in this novel, which is repetitive to the point of boredom and exasperation (“Money, money, always money!”) and liberally sprinkled with poetic allusions (Gordon is, or was, a poet!) which are rather forced and banal: “Novels fresh from the press—still unravished brides, pining