North and South: Two Landscapes of Alan Bennett

North and South: Two Landscapes of Alan Bennett DAPHNE TURNER "A writer is usually in two minds," said Alan Bennett in a lecture he gave on BBC television on December 26th 1992. In his own work, two landscapes occur again and again, each claiming love and loyalty, each celebrated, each mocked, each with its self-satisfied prejudices, each with its own sadness. loneliness and its own version of being cast out of paradise. each with its characteristic languages and characteristic forms of comedy. The landscape of northern England is that of the working class. It is predominantly, to use Bennett's word, "naturalistic ," and its comedy arises from accurate observation of speech and behaviour . The landscape of southern England is that of privilege, of the upper middle classes and aristocracy. It is a world with the money and leisure for grace and play, and its comedy comes from parody and the play of language and ideas. Neither wins his full assent. Bennett is in two minds about the North. It is limited and depressing, yet its trivia are honoured as real and the dull lives of its inhabitants are celebrated. He is also in two minds about the South. The southern landscape is seductive, but exclusive, unjust and deceptive. They are complementary as well as opposed, as they represent the different sides of the geographical, class and value lines along which England is split, seen by a writer who was born into the northern working class and who now lives as a member of the southern professional one. He has created in his plays a full picture of what "England" means and the complex state of his loves and loyalties to it. 1shall deal first with the northern landscape, through an overview of the northern plays, especially of Enjoy (1980), and then with two versions of the southern: the first, affectionate and gently mocking, in Forty Years 011 (1969); the second, much more critical, in The Old Country (1978). The northern landscape belongs mainly to his television plays. They use the northern speech which Bennett grew up with and were shot on location, so they are visibly set in real places. The southern landscape is that of plays written for the stage, which are more highly coloured and dependent on an audiModern Drama, 37 (1994) 551 552 DAPHNE TURNER ence's ability to create a landscape imaginatively. But both are landscapes of the mind with which Bennett associates particular values and feelings. The television plays are set in Lancashire and Yorkshire - Morecambe, Leeds, Halifax, Scarborough. If, as in One Fine Day (1979), a play is set in London, the places we hear about are Acton, Cricklewood, Tottenham and Harlesden, not places where Sir Anthony Blunt or the Headmaster of Forly Years On would be likely to live. In these places the characters live in small, ordinary houses: back-to-back, terraced and semi-detached. Their inhabitants work for the council, in offices and factories. They may be unemployed, pensioners in church halls and social clubs or geriatric homes. They visit launderettes, men's clubs with snooker rooms, the back room of a small shop. They travel by bus. For holidays, they choose a caravan at Skipsea, a boarding house in Morecambe, a bus tour. Education in these plays is offered at the local comprehensive school. Though the headmaster in Illlensive Care (1982) has some comic features in common with the headmaster of Forty Years all, he has no spare staff to fill up gaps on the timetable when a teacher has a family emergency. There is no mention of public schools or Oxbridge. Hopkins in Me, I'm Afraid ofVirginia Woolf(1978) teaches English at the polytechnic ("where they think you teach woodwork," his mother complains of the public).' Health care comes on the NHS, not by way of Harley Street. Hopkins discovers that an "oul-paliellls' {clinic] in Halifax is nol IIze besl place 10 read Virginia Woolf" (71). The hospital in Aftemoon Off (1979) is inadequately staffed and the staff nurse speaks a broad West Indian English that the hero cannot understand. There is nowhere comfortable for the families of patients in Inlensive Care to spend the night...