Born in Captivity by John Wain

First published: 1953, in Great Britain as Hurry on Down (U.S. edition, 1954)

Type of work: Comic realism

Time of work: The late 1940’s

Locale: Various English towns and a Sussex country estate

Principal Characters:

• Charles Lumley, the protagonist, an aimless university graduate
• George Hutchins, a prig whom Lumley knew at the university
• Edwin Froulish, a would-be novelist
• Ern Ollershaw, Lumley’s partner in a window-cleaning business
• Veronica “Roderick”, the beautiful girl with whom Lumley is in love

The Novel

Born in Captivity is a picaresque novel tracing the adventures of Charles Lumley as he searches for his place in postwar English society. Rejecting the upper-class possibilities which would come to someone with even a mediocre university degree, turning his back on the middle-class upward scrambling of his family, Lumley turns over his life to chance, making decisions only when he must flee from personal danger or from what he perceives as the traps of convention.

After graduation, Lumley has disappeared for a period of contemplation, but when he reaches the end of his funds, he is still uncertain of his direction in life. Reluctantly buying a ticket home, he makes a fateful detour to see his girlfriend. Faced with the unpleasant middle-class aggressiveness of her relatives, Lumley insults them and flees without seeing her or his own family. Reborn in a working-class pub, Lumley begins his search for a mode of life in which he can be free.

In each of the careers which follow his new resolution, Lumley’s life falls into a pattern. At first, things go well; then some human relationship results in the end of his career and generally in his flight; surviving, Lumley is propelled by chance into another occupation and into the repetition of the pattern. Throughout his adventures, he is frequently endangered either by his own weakness for the opposite sex or by encounters with old schoolmates and university acquaintances.

In his window-washing business, for example, Lumley is contented both with his partnership with Ern Ollershaw, who can protect him, and with his dirty but cheap lodgings with the would-be novelist Edwin Froulish and his slatternly girlfriend. Unfortunately, Ern gets arrested and the girlfriend turns out be the mistress of a middle-class man—indeed, of one who had almost been Lumley’s brother-in-law. His principles propel Lumley out of his lodgings, and discretion distances him from the now-tainted partnership.

The next venture, delivering cars to the docks, begins well. Lumley, however, falls in love with Veronica “Roderick.” Because he needs more money, he gets involved in drug smuggling. Then because an old school acquaintance, an expose-seeking journalist, haunts Lumley, the criminals suspect him and very nearly kill him, ending that career and putting him in the hospital, where Lumley eventually finds work as an orderly. Unfortunately, a romance with one of the girls in the hospital once again makes it necessary for Lumley to flee. As luck would have it, a wealthy patient has offered him a job as a chauffeur, and for a time Lumley is satisfied with life in Sussex. Once again, the university intervenes. Hired to tutor the millionaire’s son, George Hutchins causes an accident to a Daimler, which is Lumley’s responsibility, and then frames Lumley for theft. Again, the pattern has prevailed.

At the end of the book, Lumley has not conquered society, but he has at least agreed to a truce with it. As a joke writer, he has a high salary and a three-year contract. He has not, however, abandoned the life of risk; on the final page, despite all of his hard-won wisdom, he accepts the renewed relationship with Veronica, once again risking all the disasters that love can cause.

The Characters

Charles Lumley is averse to violence, asking only to be left alone while he finds a way of life in which he will not feel trapped. His anger can be triggered, however, generally with comic results. Sometimes Lumley’s response is physical, as when he drenches the pushy relatives of his first girlfriend with dishwater. More often, it is verbal, but once out of control, Lumley goes so far beyond the tolerated limits of British upper-class nastiness that his targets are driven to violence, as when the infuriated medical students throw him out the door.

Lumley’s self-control also fails when he meets an appealing woman. Perhaps only the chance absence of his first girlfriend saves him from a trap. Alone with her detestable relatives, he sees her likeness to them and flees the relationship without seeing her. Later he almost settles down with a pleasant young woman from the hospital where they both work. Only his memory of Veronica and the delayed recognition that he does have intellectual needs prevent him from settling for a dull working-class existence. He does not escape Veronica “Roderick,” however, who later calls herself “Moll Flanders.” Even after he is forced to admit that her relationship with her uncle is as phony as her name, even though he realizes that a commitment to her will undoubtedly plunge him into new difficulties, Lumley chooses love and the beautiful Veronica.

If Lumley is irrational in his perceptions of women, he is clear-sighted in his observations of men, particularly of those whom he categorizes as “single-minded.” As he moves from adventure to adventure, his list of the single-minded lengthens: the pedantic social climber, the would-be novelist, the Americanized hairdresser, the crude medical student, the boy who loves motorcycles. With wonder, Lumley realizes that even though he often foresees the disasters which involvement with such people can bring, he cannot refuse them what they demand, for “a really single-minded person is always given what he wants.”

Because Wain’s focus is on Lumley’s thoughtful observations and responses, only Lumley is a fully developed character. The enticing women, the single-minded men, and the other characters in the novel are less complex, often brought to life by a brief description or a trick of language, in the way of the satirist. The emphasis throughout the novel is not on the characters who in one way or another invade each refuge which Lumley finds, but rather on the fact that such an innocent and irresolute protagonist inevitably attracts them.

Critical Context

With the publication of his first novel, the much-praised Born in Captivity, John Wain was thought by many critics to be the spokesman for the generation of “angry young men” who predicted the end of the old class structure in postwar Britain. Wain’s later novels, however, failed to fulfill his early promise, even though they repeat the individualist theme and the satiric technique of Born in Captivity.

Wain’s later reputation depends on his skill as scholar and critic. Whether his lack of development as a novelist is the result of his own loss of inspiration after the first brilliant novel or of the direction of social history, which substituted apathetic socialism for the energetic society predicted by the “angry young men,” the later novels lack both the bite and the comic brilliance of his first.

Bibliography

Booklist. Review. L (March 15, 1954), p. 280.

Burgess, Anthony. The Novel Now: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction, 1967.

Kirkus Reviews. Review. XXII (February 1, 1954), p. 76.

The New Yorker. Review. XXX (March 20, 1954), p. 125.

Salwak, Dale. John Braine and John Wain: A Reference Guide, 1979.

Sullivan, Richard. Review in Chicago Sunday Tribune. March 28, 1954, p. 8.

Wickenden, Dan. Review in New York Herald Tribune Book Review. March 21, 1954, p. 3.