Such, Such Were the Joys

Orwell’s essay is typical of his style, a combination of forceful arguments and ironic anecdotes. Considering the period in which the essay was written, postwar Britain, gives important insight into the work’s purpose. Orwell was an explicitly political writer, and his chief interest in his essays was to move the political climate of Britain in a more egalitarian and democratic direction. One of the primary institutions that Orwell saw as perpetuating the long-existing state of Classism in Great Britain was the educational system, and it was his opinion that this institution should be one of the first to be reformed in a new government, for the sake of all classes in British society. To argue this point, Orwell presents a firsthand account of life at a preparatory school, detailing not only the abuses inherent in the system but also the lack of educational merit present in such schools.

Orwell utilizes point of view to achieve his goal. This technique is important, as it lends his overall argument weight. As a personal essay, “Such, Such Were the Joys” is nonfiction but portrays the author’s experiences in narrative form. The technique fosters a subtle sense of empathy for Orwell’s stance. By examining the inner world of both his own younger, vulnerable self and the underlying motivations of his preparatory school’s administrators, Orwell gives his essay a strong rhetorical basis that supports his overall argument. His depiction of his viewpoint as a child underlines the theme of A Child’s Worldview. His perception of events as a schoolboy is significantly more naïve than his adult perspective as an author.

When the essay presents instances of abuse, for example, it is always from the point of view of a vulnerable young Orwell. Personal details such as him “fall[ing] into a chair, weakly sniveling” and “[t]he horrible sensation of tears—a swelling in the breast, a tickling behind the nose” emphasize the emotional state of the victims of abuse so that its normalization by the school’s administrators seems even more repellent (368, 376). To add to this, Orwell also paints vivid images of the neglect present at the school. Descriptions of food bowls filled with “accumulations of sour porridge” and dormitory air filled with smells of “sweaty stockings, dirty towels, fecal smells” help underline the disregard for student well-being that preparatory schools encourage (382-83).

Such subtle touches also help to underscore another important theme of the essay: the preparatory school’s tactics of manipulation, indoctrination, and shame. The essay does not simply list the methods school administrators used to keep students in line but instead affords a direct insight into how such tactics work upon a young mind. As Orwell says in the essay, “Treacherous though memory is, it seems to me the chief means we have of discovering how a child’s mind works” (403). By utilizing his imaginative memory, Orwell conveys the conflicting senses of fear and desire that children in preparatory schools like St Cyprian’s feel so that when the essay describes the manipulative tactics of the school’s administrators, there is a better understanding of just how powerful their tactics were. When Flip, for instance, vacillates between “flirtatious” fawning and “deepset, accusing eyes” to get what she wants out of students (385), Orwell conveys the alternating feelings of joy and despair his young self feels. This direct insight into a preparatory school student’s mindset bolsters the essay’s main argument that such schools negatively influence British society as a whole.

Orwell reinforces his argument about the lack of educational merit present in preparatory schools in a similar manner, this time by affording a direct insight into the school administrators’ mindsets. The essay details how good scores on entrance exams to exclusive upper schools brought money and success to the administrators, sending them into “snobbish ecstasies” that rooted their methods ever more fully into the British class system (382). This focus on entrance exams, in turn, left students without the benefit of practical knowledge and offered no opportunity for developing critical thought. This is an important point of the essay, and it is perhaps the key feature of preparatory schools that Orwell feels is most pernicious: “I did not question the prevailing standards,” Orwell writes, “[b]ecause so far as I could see, there were no others” (395). For Orwell, then, it is this lack of actual education that makes preparatory schools a hindrance to both lower-class and upper-class British society.