35 pages • 1 hour read
George OrwellKeep the Aspidistra Flying
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1936A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Gordon finds there is little to do at his new job except read. Although Gordon is diligent, Cheeseman is suspicious that Gordon is stealing from him. Meanwhile, Gordon has moved into another tenant house worse than Mrs. Wisbeach’s. Nonetheless, he prefers it since there “[is] no mingy lower-middle class decency here, no feeling of being spied upon and disapproved of” (207). Even so, Gordon is dismayed when the landlady, Mrs. Meakin, gives him a dying aspidistra.
Gordon’s new lodgings horrify Ravelston. He argues Gordon is wrong in “thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself” (211). Although Ravelston says he understands why Gordon will not go back to New Albion, he says he needs to find a way to use his talents to find a better job. However, Gordon does not think he will write poetry again. In fact, he finds it impossible to finish London Pleasures.
Julia and Rosemary also try to convince Gordon to go back to New Albion. Rosemary even goes to Mr. Erskine and convinces him to give Gordon his old job back. The couple argue again, with Rosemary raising the possibility of ending the relationship if Gordon keeps refusing the job. After the fight, Rosemary returns to Gordon and they make love for the first time. However, Rosemary only feels “dismayed, disappointed and very cold” (221).
Chapter 11 Summary
Months later, Gordon has not written poetry and now only reads cheap newspapers. Rosemary has stopped visiting him but appears at his shop one day saying she is pregnant. When Rosemary raises the possibility of getting an abortion, Gordon offers to marry her and take his job at New Albion back. Gordon also goes to a lending library and gets a book on pregnancy, as well as newspapers with ads. These cause Gordon to make up his mind to return to his old job. He feels “relief” and discards his copy of London Pleasures down a sewer drain (237).
Chapter 12 Summary
Gordon and Rosemary get married with Ravelston as the only witness. Gordon has gotten his old job at The Albion back and is about to get a raise. He buys an apartment for him, Rosemary, and the baby. They are happy, but they also have their first fight as a married couple. Gordon insists on getting an aspidistra despite Rosemary’s objections.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
Gordon continues to sabotage himself and his career since he “like[s] to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning” (203). However, his relatives and friends, including Julia, Ravelston, and Rosemary, act to try to save him: “There is always something that drags one upwards. After all, one is never quite alone; there are always friends, lovers, relatives” (209). Community is both Gordon’s greatest means of support and a rebuttal to his argument that money determines everything: Ravelston and Rosemary both intervene to help Gordon without any kind of financial self-interest.
In fact, it is Rosemary’s pregnancy that prompts Gordon to give up his war on money, although Gordon thinks “something else would have forced his hand” sooner or later (237). In doing so, Gordon adjusts his philosophical outlook. Living within the capitalist economic system does not rob people of what makes them human. As Gordon concludes, “Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler” (239). Rosemary’s pregnancy has also made Gordon aware that there are aspects of middle-class life that transcend the competition for money—specifically, family.
Nevertheless, questions and tensions remain at the end of the novel. To begin with, a Marxist analysis would deny that Gordon’s family life (or family life in general) actually does exist outside of capitalism; in fact, Marxists tend to view the nuclear family as critical to maintaining capitalism. From this perspective, Gordon is buying into a false and distinctly middle-class view of the family as apolitical. More broadly, it’s fair to question whether Gordon is “selling out” by settling down and taking a job as a copywriter. One potential counterargument to this is that living in a capitalist society necessarily requires some sort of moral compromise—or, as Ravelston puts it earlier, [O]one [can’t] live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself” (211).
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