| 'The
present system means joyless drudgery, semi-starvation, rags
and premature death; and they vote for it and uphold it. Let
them have what they vote for! Let them drudge and let them
starve!'
There is no other novel quite like The Ragged
Trousered Philanthropists. George Orwell called it 'a wonderful
book'; its readers have become a living part of its remarkable
history.
Tressell's novel is about survival on the underside
of the Edwardian Twilight, about exploitative employment when
the only safety nets are charity, workhouse, and grave. Following
the fortunes of a group of painters and decorators and their
families, and the attempts to rouse their political will by
the Socialist visionary Frank Owen, the book is both a highly
entertaining story and a passionate appeal for a fairer way
of life. It asks questions that are still being asked today:
why do your wages bear no relation to the value of your work?
Why do fat cats get richer when you don't? Tressell's answers
are 'The Great Money Trick' and the 'philanthropy' of an unenlightened
workforce, who give away their rights and aspirations to a
decent life so freely.
Intellectually enlightening, deeply moving and
gloriously funny (complete with exploding clergyman), The
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a book that changes lives.
All Customer Reviews
5 out of 5 - Aug 2, 2005
I first read this for a hight school English
essay and I can honestly save that this is one of the finest
novels I have ever read. It is a story that really draws you
in and challenges (and changes) your views on society. The
basic plot involves two socialist workmen, the bitter, passionate
Frank Owen and his enigmatic young friend, Barrington, attempting
to persuade their fellow workers that they can change the
world and do away with the terrible poverty that they experience.
What this book achieves so well (and few books have done so
as well as this one) is to create a world that seems real
to the reader, you begin to care about the many characters
that you are reading about. There points that make you want
to cry and others that make you laugh out loud. Aside from
the two socialists and their loved ones there are other workers,
such as the borderline alcoholic Easton, the ignorant foreman
Crass and religious hypocrite Slyme, as well as their familes
and bosses (including the infamous Mr Hunter/Nimrod). This
book is written with immense passion, because Tressell experienced
what he wrote about and wanted to change it (he actually wrote
this in his spare time and died in a workhouse before it was
published, at one point he dispared and attempted to burn
the manuscript on the fire before his daughter restrained
him). This book succeeds in illustrating the contradictions
of capitalism better than most scholorary works. It is simple:
the workers toil and live in want and destitution, while those
that employ them do not work and live lives of abundance and
luxury. In terms of passion and emotion it outdoes even the
great American working class novel The Grapes of Wrath, as
well as Zola's Germinal. In terms of its poitics they are
overt to the extreme, but this should not put people off,
it is a novel first and foremost. Besides, this is how politics
(especially socialism) should be written about, accessible
to all and conveying not just the objective reasons for something,
but the emotive ones too, which are just as important; I was
a liberal before reading this novel, now I am a socialist.
It is good to see so many new editions of this novel appearing,
if more people read it then the we might not be stuck with
the stale, reactionary and xenophobic politics of our time!
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