Look Back in Anger

Though the play was written in the 1950s, the theme of sexism reads as a quite contemporary critique of Jimmy Porter’s character. Readers can find ample evidence that suggests the relationship between Alison and Jimmy, and the short-lived one between Jimmy and Helena, is rife with sexist undertones. In the first act alone, Jimmy begins an angry tirade about Alison and women in general. He makes a number of generalizations, such as claiming that all women are noisy, and calls their makeup and dressing table items “weapons” (24), suggesting that there is a war that pits women, their possessions, and their default noisiness against men and their desire for peace. He says that women are “refined butchers” (24) when they put makeup on in front of a mirror. He even adds a racist streak to his criticism when he likens a woman applying makeup to a “dirty old Arab” (24).

One of the main reasons for Jimmy’s attack on women is that he wants to get a reaction out of Alison, whom he says has become passive and boring. He repeatedly attacks her and women in general because he wants to make her angry or provoke her into lashing out. In this way, Jimmy is operating within an assumption that the male sex is above the female sex, and that not only is the male sex superior, it is capable of triggering women, who supposedly respond emotionally to provocation.