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History of English Literature

                     Notes         husband and wife, parent and child, between siblings and with the wider community. The family
                                   may also pull together in unity against outer forces that range from the rent-collector to rival
                                   families.
                                   Example
                                        Look Back in Anger
                                        A Taste of Honey
                                        The Glass Menagerie

                                   31.3.1  Discussion

                                   Kitchen sink dramas can be rather dismal and unrelentingly negative, so what is their value?
                                   Perhaps they may resonate with us as they remind us of our own humdrum lives. Perhaps they
                                   will wake us up and prod us to get out of the rut and see a wider world. Maybe they will make us
                                   grateful that we do not have to live in such social squalor.
                                   Kitchen sink dramas may also framed as ‘serious art’, intending to impress rather than entertain.
                                   They may capture social setting for posterity and gain admiration in later days by students of
                                   history. They may even be a cathartic act by their authors, expunging the traumas of a deprived
                                   childhood.
                                   This is a genre in which the British seem to specialize. Americans prefer their soaps and dramas to
                                   be a bit less dismal. There was in particularly a group of ‘angry young men’ in the 1960s UK
                                   playwright scene that specialised in such plays.
                                   31.3.2  Perspectives and Criticism

                                   The 1950’s through the 1970’s saw the rise of one of the most important movements in modern
                                   British theater: the Kitchen Sink drama. These types of plays had several characteristics that
                                   distinguished them as a break from the forms of theater before them. They can be compared
                                   against theatrical movements such as Avant Garde Theater, or the theater of the absurd, characterized
                                   by the plays of authors such as Samuel Beckett.
                                   Perhaps the first, and most notable, characteristic of these Kitchen Sink dramas was the way in
                                   which they advanced a particular social message or ideology. This ideology was most often leftist.
                                   The settings were almost always working class. The previous trend in Victorian theater had been
                                   to depict the lives of the wealthy members of the ruling classes. These classes of people were often
                                   conservative in their politics and their ideologies. This was not the case for Kitchen Sink Theater.
                                   The Kitchen Sink drama sought, instead, to bring the real lives and social inequality of ordinary
                                   working class people to the stage. The lives of these people were caught between struggles of
                                   power, industry, politics, and social homogenization.
                                   Another chief characteristic of the Kitchen Sink drama was the way in which its characters expressed
                                   their unvarnished emotion and dissatisfaction with the ruling class status quo. This can be seen
                                   clearly in the play considered to be the standard bearer of this Kitchen Sink genre: John Osborne’s
                                   Look Back in Anger. In Osborne’s play, Jimmy Porter plays the role of the Angry Young Man. He
                                   is angry and dissatisfied at a world that offers him no social opportunities and a dearth of emotion.
                                   He longs to live a “real life.” He feels, however, that the trappings of working class domesticity
                                   keep him from reaching this better existence. His anger and rage are thus channeled towards those
                                   around him. Osborne’s play is a study in how this pent up frustration and social anger can wreak
                                   havoc on the ordinary lives of the British people.
                                   Some critics have noted the irony in the term “Kitchen Sink drama.” The domestic world during
                                   this time was believed to be the domain of the feminine. Almost all of the major Kitchen Sink
                                   works which take place in the mid-twentieth century, however, are centered around a masculine
                                   point of view. These plays rarely centered around the emotions and tribulations of its women
                                   characters. The power dynamic between male and female often assumed to be masculine and is an
                                   unexamined critical component in many of these plays. Women are often assumed to serve the

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