Keep the Aspidistra Flying
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying (first published 1936) is a novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London and the surrounding countryside.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying was filmed in 1997 (released in the USA under the alternative title of A Merry War) by Robert Bierman based on a screenplay by Alan Plater and starring Richard E. Grant and Helena Bonham Carter.
Summary
The protagonist, Gordon Comstock, is an aspiring poet who has "declared war" on what he sees as an overarching dependence on money.
Gordon lives in a one-room flat in London, earning barely enough money to keep him alive in a small bookshop owned by a Scot, McKechnie. He subsists on a lifestyle which he is simultaneously content with and distasteful of (in that he lives without financial ambition and the need for a "good job" but his living conditions are uncomfortable and restrictive)
Gordon sees a pervasion of money behind social relationships (even going to the extent of sex) too, in that he feels that women will find him more attractive if he was better-off. At the beginning of the novel, he feels that his only girlfriend, Rosemary, is somehow dissatisfied with him because of his economic status.
Philip Ravelston, a publisher of the magazine AntiChrist, a Marxist, and friend of Gordon, agrees with Gordon in principle, but is considerably more well-off than he and thus seems to have little sympathy with the practical miseries of Gordon's life. Ravelston has always endeavoured to publish a lot of Gordon's work. Throughout the novel, Gordon considers his magnum opus, London Pleasures, to-and-fro-ing between admiration of himself and his work and self-loathing. Gordon also works on a poem which distils his ideas on money, in which he personalizes the idea of a "Money God", representing the pursuit of money and material success.
The aspidistra is a spiny houseplant that at the time was widely considered a symbol of dull middle-class British taste, and seems to follow Gordon throughout the novel. The aspidistra in his apartment, which he tries to kill, never dies - it seems indestructible.
When Gordon sends off a poem to a United States publication, he receives a cheque which ends up with him being endowed with ten pounds - a considerable amount. Honourably, Gordon sets aside half for his sister Julia, who has always been there to lend him money and support. He treats Rosemary and Ravelston to dinner, which begins well, but deteriorates as the evening proceeds. Gordon, well-drunk, tries to force himself upon Rosemary, with whom he has not yet slept (Rosemary would not because Gordon could not provide for the child that might possibly result - money again). She rebukes him, and leaves him with Ravelston. Gordon then picks up a couple of prostitutes, and tries to get Ravelston to come along with him. Ravelston complies, but reasons he will pay the woman but not have sex with her. It transpires that later Gordon assaults a police sergeant, and ends up in jail.
Ravelston ends up bailing out Gordon, much to his protest, and whilst in court, a reporter hears about his case, and writes about it in the local papers. Gordon's job at the bookshop draws to an end, his relatively "comfortable" lifestyle ended also. As Gordon tries to get another job, at another bookshop, his life is also slowly degrading; his poetry stagnating.
In the interim Gordon begins a job at another book shop, this time owned by the odius Mr Cheeseman, for even less money. Determined as he is to sink to the lowest level of society, to a world without money or moral obligation, Gordon takes a run-down room in a slum area and reaches his economic and spiritual nadir.
In an apparent gesture of faith, Rosemary comes back to him, to his new, even dingier apartment, and they make love, but it ends coldly.
Later, Rosemary discovers she is pregnant, and tells Gordon, who is presented with the choice between leaving her to a life of social shame, and returning to the "proper job" at the New Albion advertising firm (which he gave up in his war on money) in order to finance their marriage and life together.
Eventually he returns to the New Albion, the 'good' job he so deplored in the beginning of the book, and they marry. He demands an aspidistra to decorate their new home.
External links
- [Keep the Aspidistra Flying] - Searchable, indexed e-text.
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