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A Re-reading of Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables: A Post-war State-of-England Double Bill on Class and Sexuality

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2014, 27(2), pp.85-119
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Heebon Park-Finch 1

1계명대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper reassesses Terence Rattigan’s 1954 double-bill, Separate Tables, comprising the self-contained yet closely linked Table By the Window and Table Number Seven, and attempts to reappraise Rattigan and his dramatic work as chronicling the turbulent times of post-war society in Britain, leading up to the so-called 1956 revolution on the English stage. Rattigan was an acclaimed British playwright from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, but his plays were neglected and even disregarded for the next two decades, mistakenly seen as advocating the kind of middle-class values symbolized by his invention of a representative audience member, ‘Aunt Edna.’ However, this study argues that Rattigan’s two one-act plays describe the prejudices and sweeping changes taking place within the shaken society of post-war Britain. In so doing, Separate Tables exposes deep-rooted emotional repressions and the hypocrisy of sexual taboos, while functioning as a plea for social tolerance of aberrational behavior. Separate Tables realistically portrays the battle of the sexes, class tension, social alienation, loneliness, and the emotional damage and pain of social outcasts living in a morally inflexible and restricted society, and dramatizes the disguises, evasions, and distractions devised by alienated members. Rattigan also highlights an underlying commitment to personal integrity, as he focuses on the interdependence of individuals and society, suggested refreshingly at the close of each play by mutual reconciliation on the basis of common sympathy and humanity. Building on renewed academic and popular interest in his work since the 1970s, when his craftsmanship and dramatic insights began to be re-appreciated, this paper concludes that Rattigan should be re-read, not only as a major twentieth century dramatist, but also as a sounding board for the mid-century British theatrical renaissance.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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