Raul Laszlo-Louro( K, 22-) squares up to the‘ Money-God’
The Wykehamist
Aspidistral Dismalness
Raul Laszlo-Louro( K, 22-) squares up to the‘ Money-God’
George Orwell’ s 1936 novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying is often overshadowed by the looming silhouettes of 1984 and Animal Farm, yet it remains perhaps his most visceral exploration of the internal mechanics of class and capital. Here, Orwell presents a world where every individual is inextricably bound to their social class by income alone. One’ s weekly wage is not merely a means of survival; it is the ultimate determinant of one’ s future, romantic prospects, and the very architecture of the soul. In the grey, soot-stained streets of pre-war London, Orwell’ s characters do not merely live; they worship at the altar of the‘ Money-God’.
Written in the heavy, humid wake of the Great Depression, the text is permeated with a sense of drowsiness and defeat. It is as if hopelessness has been woven into the very fabric of the air the characters breathe. Our protagonist, Gordon Comstock, is a man defined by his refusal to participate. Earning a meagre wage of £ 2 a week( pre-decimalisation), Gordon’ s life is mired in a self-imposed ideological‘ war against money’. He views his poverty not as a tragedy to be escaped, but as a fortress to be defended. Gordon is a fascinating study in contradiction: a stoic to the point of self-martyrdom, yet a rebel against a system whose pecuniary chokehold he finds utterly repulsive.
To an extent, all classes are represented and critiqued in Orwell’ s novel, but it is the way he reconciles these disparate social tiers that provides the novel’ s most biting insights. Orwell writes Gordon Comstock as a man loathing his own social class— those on the‘ shabby-genteel’ cusp of poverty. These are the people who can barely afford the rent but will sacrifice a meal to maintain a facade of‘ decency’. This‘ decency’ is the glue of the middle class, a desperate adherence to respectability that Gordon finds more offensive than outright destitution.
Central to this loathing is the houseplant that gives the book its title: the Aspidistra. While a modern reader might view a houseplant as a benign bit of greenery, Orwell imbues it with a suffocating symbolic weight. The Aspidistra is the‘ flower of England’, a hardy, leathery plant that thrives in the dim light and stale air of lower-middle-class parlours. It represents the tenacity of the boring, the survival of the mundane, and the absolute surrender to domestic safety. For Gordon, the Aspidistra is the flag of the enemy. It demarcates defeat in the ideological war against money. Its presence in a window is a signal that the inhabitants have‘ made good’, settled down, and ultimately, stopped fighting.
Yet, as the narrative unfolds, Gordon’ s inability to avoid the plant— and the life it represents— becomes the novel’ s central tragedy. Why is it that Gordon, despite his venomous hatred for the‘ Money-God’,
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