MR BLEANEY Philip Larkin

CONTENT

The poet is lodging in a room that once belonged to a man called Mr Bleaney. As he observes the bare furnishings, he draws intimate conclusions about the former lodger. Although he may not intend to, the poet himself is very much like or

perhaps turning into Mr Bleaney.

CONTEXT

• Mr Bleaney was written in 1955

• We can infer that it is set in the Midlands (due to the manufacturing slang used - “the Bodies”), which is where Larkin grew up

• During the 40s there was a manufacturing boom in the Midlands, which explains Bleaney’s employment in “the Bodies”

• Despite this period of economic progression, Bleaney’s situation remained bleak

SETTING

“the flowered curtains thin and frayed”

• Gives an image of decay and dinginess

• Mr Bleaney lived in squalor; he couldn’t afford to change his generic curtains that “fall to within five inches of the sill”

“no room for books or bags”

• Basic, no room for anything personal

• He looks out of the window every day to see “a strip of building land”; he would have watched this development while his own life remained stagnant

CHARACTERS

NARRATOR

• After the mundaneness of the initial stanza, the poet’s decision - “I’ll take it” - is almost comical, and the first indicator that he is like Mr Bleaney

• The poet is familiar with Bleaney’s habits, even though he never knew him

• These assured conclusions could mean that he himself resembles how he would have imagined Bleaney to be

• Maybe he fears the person he is turning into, so is projecting these dreaded characteristics onto a fabricated persona - Mr Bleaney

• The narrator seems to know some intimate things about Bleaney’s life, such as that he visited “his sister’s house in Stoke” - is he describing his own life, or making judgements, or does he really know Bleaney?

“The first two thirds of the poem down to ‘but if’ are concerned with my uneasy feeling that I am becoming Mr Bleaney…The last third is

reassuring myself that I am not…yet there’s no doubt lingering too, perhaps he hated it as much as I did” Philip Larkin

MR BLEANEY • We never meet Mr Bleaney; we only know him through the imagination of the poet

• He lodged alone - we can infer that he didn’t own a house, nor many belongings, and didn’t have immediate family

“telling himself that this was home”

• He has to convince himself that he belongs somewhere

• We don’t know why he has left the room, but he left with “one hired box”

• This could refer to a coffin that didn’t even belong to him, reinforcing his loneliness and lack of possessions

• This could otherwise refer to the one box required to carry his belongings to his next destination

• We feel sorry for him, yet we do not know anything about him; he really only exists in Larkin’s imagination

• He was a gambling man - is it right that we feel sorry for him? Perhaps he brought his deprivation on himself

LITERARY TECHNIQUES

STRUCTURE and GRAMMAR

• The rhyme scheme is ABAB, but is punctuated by enjambment and caesura

• The poet begins by talking about an individual’s life and concludes with a general message about “how we live measures our own nature

• Ignorance, An Arundel Tomb and Dockery and Son follow the same structure as Mr Bleaney; they move from a specific situation to a gradual generalisation

• There are seven stanzas, each consisting of exactly four lines of similar length. This could reflect the monotony of Mr Bleaney’s life and the universality of the final message

PATHETIC FALLACY

“the frigid wind tousling the clouds”

• a strong force is controlling the clouds, reflecting Mr Bleaney’s own vulnerability to the pressures of the world

“till they moved him”

• Mr Bleaney is at the mercy of more powerful people, just like the clouds blown about by the wind

• The dim lighting and chilling wind mirror how dead, cold and depressing his life is

THE BOTTOM LINE

“How we live measures our own nature”

• This statement is paradoxical

• How we live indicates the kind of person we are but the kind of person we are dictates how we live

• The universal application of this statement is clear from the first person plural pronoun ‘we’

• Other people also influence us, just like Mr Bleaney influences Larkin

• Larkin spends most of the poem worrying that he is turning into Mr Bleaney

• Through following Bleaney’s way of living, perhaps this is the actual destiny of his nature

THEMES

Loneliness and isolation

“No more to show than one hired box”

• Larkin implies how lonely Mr Bleaney is, yet he is choosing the same life as him

• Others merely tolerate him; “The Frinton folk who put him up”

• His only relationship is with his landlady, who still refers to him formally

• What is the definition of home? Is it where we live, or where we feel safe, comfortable and loved?

• Perhaps Larkin can never class this room as his home, because it is irrevocably associated with Mr Bleaney

Home

Freedom

• Mr Bleaney is at the mercy of others

• He doesn’t have control over his own situation, so is seemingly weak

• He has no power to change his dilapidated location

• Perhaps Bleaney gambles to achieve freedom from his dismal life, yet his perpetual spending may be enchaining him in a vicious circle of poverty

• Mr Bleaney could have passed away

• The room is associated with Bleaney, yet he is no longer there. This is a constant reminder of absence and loss

• The flowers on the curtain seem to have died, becoming “thin and frayed”, perhaps due to neglect or unhappiness

• Bleaney’s already dismal life is further shadowed by the collapse of the manufacturing industry in the 70s

Death and loss

LINKS TO OTHER POEMS

Home is so Sad

• Bleaney’s home is only ever described as a bleak place

• It is “shaped to the comfort of the last to go”, as Bleaney seems to remain in his room despite having physically left

• Home also “withers”, like the now lifeless flowers on the curtains in Bleaney’s room

• Theme of purpose

• Larkin reflects on how Dockery has a son, and he himself has “nothing”

• We get the impression that Larkin is happy alone and doesn’t want to be like Dockery

• Mr Bleaney had “at his age…no more to show than one hired box”

• Yet Larkin portrays this life negatively

• Why does he not want to be like Dockery but also not like Bleaney?

Dockery and Son

Self’s the Man

• Like he does with Arnold, the poet infers a lot about Mr Bleaney’s habits and life

• Larkin seems to not want to be like Mr Bleaney, yet we see from Self’s the Man that he is proud that he hasn’t got married

• What survives of Mr Bleaney, sadly, is not love

• His only legacy is a few fantasies and a name attached to a lodging room

• Does this make his life any less valid?

An Arundel Tomb

DEFINITIONS

• The Bodies - slang term for the car manufacturing business in the Midlands

• Tussocky - clumped with dense patches of grass

• Four aways - people would predict the ‘four aways’ on the football polls; it was a form of gambling

• Tousling - to ruffle, make untidy

• Sixty watt bulb - very dim, old fashioned light bulb

Listen to Philip Larkin read Mr Bleaney: http://poetryarchive.org/poem/mr-bleaney