전후 영국노동계급소설과 교육, 계급적 정체성: 데이비드 스토리의 『패스모어』, 레이먼드 윌리엄즈의 『접경지역』, 『제2세대』
Education and Class Identity in the Post-war British Working-Class Fiction: David Storey’s Pasmore and Raymond Williams’s Border Country and Second Generation
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In the period of mid-1950s to late ’60s which witnessed the renaissance of working-class literature, unprecedented number of working-class novels were produced by the writers who were themselves working-class. One of the recurring theme in many of these novels was education and its effects. This is not something to be wondered at; education was the fulcrum of the entire postwar British social project which aimed for welfare state, getting over class division and social inequality. As educational opportunities expanded, social mobility considerably increased. Still in so far as education system remained class-bound, the effects of education for working-class people were complex and ambiguous. Especially those individuals who managed to move out of their own roots through education were likely to suffer from identity crisis and alienation, being torn between two conflicting worlds. Being haunted themselves by these experiences, many working-class writers explored the personal, social implications of educational opportunity throughout their novels. In view of this problematic of education, social mobility and class identity, this paper successively examines David Storey’s Pasmore and Raymond Williams’s Border Country and Second Generation. Each of these novels presents the spiritual crisis of a young academic who, having moved beyond his working-class background, has to go through painful renegotiations with his roots. Pasmore focuses on the confusion, anxiety, alienation and self-division resulting from the thoughtless pursuit of the upward movement through education. On the other hand, Williams’s novels interrogate the ambivalent nature of education and probe the complicated ‘return’ journey of the protagonist, which turns out to be essential, though fraught with tension, for the future of his working-class community as well as for the integrity of his being.
Abstract
In the period of mid-1950s to late ’60s which witnessed the renaissance of working-class literature, unprecedented number of working-class novels were produced by the writers who were themselves working-class. One of the recurring theme in many of these novels was education and its effects. This is not something to be wondered at; education was the fulcrum of the entire postwar British social project which aimed for welfare state, getting over class division and social inequality. As educational opportunities expanded, social mobility considerably increased. Still in so far as education system remained class-bound, the effects of education for working-class people were complex and ambiguous. Especially those individuals who managed to move out of their own roots through education were likely to suffer from identity crisis and alienation, being torn between two conflicting worlds. Being haunted themselves by these experiences, many working-class writers explored the personal, social implications of educational opportunity throughout their novels. In view of this problematic of education, social mobility and class identity, this paper successively examines David Storey’s Pasmore and Raymond Williams’s Border Country and Second Generation. Each of these novels presents the spiritual crisis of a young academic who, having moved beyond his working-class background, has to go through painful renegotiations with his roots. Pasmore focuses on the confusion, anxiety, alienation and self-division resulting from the thoughtless pursuit of the upward movement through education. On the other hand, Williams’s novels interrogate the ambivalent nature of education and probe the complicated ‘return’ journey of the protagonist, which turns out to be essential, though fraught with tension, for the future of his working-class community as well as for the integrity of his being.
참고문헌 (17)
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