Love On The Dole Analysis

Harry Hardcastle's understanding of masculinity is inextricably linked to employment. At the beginning of Love on the Dole, he dreams of escaping his job writing tickets for Mr Price (the local pawnbroker) and working at the nearby factory. Mr Price is portrayed as a frail, snivelling figure with a 'death-mask-like appearance' and 'skeletonic fingers'. This language of death and decay is juxtaposed with the descriptions of the industrial workers, who are 'muscular', 'hulking' and move with 'swagger'. Thus, Greenwood quickly establishes a dichotomy between the cold, lifeless pawnshop and the 'tongues of flame' that illuminate the virile, active factory. Mr Price protects every inch of his flesh from the outside world with gloves, leggings, and galoshes, while the workers'

It is very important to be aware that it is Harry rather than an impartial narrator who sees the workers as powerful and superior men, as it reveals to us that his desire to work at the factory is really a desire to become a man. By offering the reader a heightened image of Marlowe's factory that is undeniably Harry's subjective creation, Greenwood highlights the fact that the act of becoming an industrial worker is not a pragmatic decision but an act of identity-formation. Early in the text, Harry replicates the pose of a wrestler in his mirror, and this fantasy later manifests itself in reality when he likens the physique of one of the workers to that of 'a Mongolian wrestler'. This man is a palpable example of the standard of masculinity that Harry childishly emulates, and securing a job at Marlowe's seems to provide him with the route to becoming a wrestler-figure