Before we can progress, by way of conclusion, from Dickens’ novel of 1861 to Orwell’s 1946 essay, we must first shift our focus to the class identity of the very writers whose works we have been discussing. When we move from novelists writing within the limits of their own class identities to the essays and memoirs and essays of adopted working class life by George Orwell, we see tobacco use cease to be a satiric trope as in Sterne or Pope, or a sign of hardiness and industriousness as in Gaskell and Dickens. It becomes instead a simple and terrible necessity for sustaining one’s existence. This uniting of writer and smoker then represents the final development of the image we have so thoroughly investigated: its transition from ideal to
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When a lazy pupil abandons him, he is “left with only thirty centimes and no tobacco” (Down and Out in Paris and London). With “nothing to eat or smoke” and “too hungry to put it off any longer,” Orwell must pawn his clothes to meet his most basic needs. As his hunger is the result of a lack of food and tobacco, Orwell recalls Cartwright’s argument about tobacco’s ability to suppress hunger. Even more tellingly, the utterly destitute Orwell becomes “hungrier and hungrier,” and assumes “a diet of dry bread.” Rather than lament this sad fact, his only complaint is “[s]ome days we had not even money for tobacco.” Indeed, back in England, a tramp named B. teaches Orwell all one needs to survive: “food, bed, [and] tobacco.” Thus, we see how smoking “ma[kes] everything tolerable” for a man out of work and three weeks from a bath. It does not reach as far as Joe’s claims of “giv[ing] refreshment to the workingman,” nor does it symbolise any sense of industriousness or productivity. The difference is subtle, but key: where Gaskell and Dickens’ fictional representations of smoking present a kind of wonder drug that silences hunger and allows a man to keep working and producing, Orwell simply portrays tobacco as a means of tolerating a hellish existence, often one of unemployment. The first is a fictional trope; the second is the …show more content…
As we have seen, the implications of the establishment of tobacco culture and the reconfiguration of English class hierarchy in the seventeenth century are largely co-dependent. They are most evident when we examine the image of the man and his tobacco as it progressed from a satire of the idle socialite in the eighteenth century to the proud status-marker of the workingman in the nineteenth century. In Orwell’s descent into abject poverty in the 1920s, tobacco use ceases to be a recurring image in fiction, and instead largely informs us of the miseries faced by thousands of English tramps and workingmen. After Orwell, it is easy for us to accept the image of the smoking man as it appears from Pope to Dickens as a sort of simulacrum: it imperfectly reflects a larger truth of the relationship between smoking and class identity. What it has also shown, however, is that the concept of upper, lower, and middle classes is likewise a simulacrum. Consider the workingmen addressed in “Books vs. Cigarettes.” Though they are certainly poor, and rely on tobacco to maintain their harsh existences, they are not at risk of starving like Down and Out era Orwell and his tramps, and think “nothing of spending several pounds on a daytrip to Blackpool” (1). Thus, the writer, the labourer, and the
When a lazy pupil abandons him, he is “left with only thirty centimes and no tobacco” (Down and Out in Paris and London). With “nothing to eat or smoke” and “too hungry to put it off any longer,” Orwell must pawn his clothes to meet his most basic needs. As his hunger is the result of a lack of food and tobacco, Orwell recalls Cartwright’s argument about tobacco’s ability to suppress hunger. Even more tellingly, the utterly destitute Orwell becomes “hungrier and hungrier,” and assumes “a diet of dry bread.” Rather than lament this sad fact, his only complaint is “[s]ome days we had not even money for tobacco.” Indeed, back in England, a tramp named B. teaches Orwell all one needs to survive: “food, bed, [and] tobacco.” Thus, we see how smoking “ma[kes] everything tolerable” for a man out of work and three weeks from a bath. It does not reach as far as Joe’s claims of “giv[ing] refreshment to the workingman,” nor does it symbolise any sense of industriousness or productivity. The difference is subtle, but key: where Gaskell and Dickens’ fictional representations of smoking present a kind of wonder drug that silences hunger and allows a man to keep working and producing, Orwell simply portrays tobacco as a means of tolerating a hellish existence, often one of unemployment. The first is a fictional trope; the second is the …show more content…
As we have seen, the implications of the establishment of tobacco culture and the reconfiguration of English class hierarchy in the seventeenth century are largely co-dependent. They are most evident when we examine the image of the man and his tobacco as it progressed from a satire of the idle socialite in the eighteenth century to the proud status-marker of the workingman in the nineteenth century. In Orwell’s descent into abject poverty in the 1920s, tobacco use ceases to be a recurring image in fiction, and instead largely informs us of the miseries faced by thousands of English tramps and workingmen. After Orwell, it is easy for us to accept the image of the smoking man as it appears from Pope to Dickens as a sort of simulacrum: it imperfectly reflects a larger truth of the relationship between smoking and class identity. What it has also shown, however, is that the concept of upper, lower, and middle classes is likewise a simulacrum. Consider the workingmen addressed in “Books vs. Cigarettes.” Though they are certainly poor, and rely on tobacco to maintain their harsh existences, they are not at risk of starving like Down and Out era Orwell and his tramps, and think “nothing of spending several pounds on a daytrip to Blackpool” (1). Thus, the writer, the labourer, and the