Bennet goes to great lengths to undermine this character to make it very clear to the audience

that the headmaster is nothing more than a twat. The plot elements prove this for example he
tries to sack Hector for groping the boys but he himself gropes Fiona, also he acknowledges
Mrs.Lintott's efforts to give the boys good A-Level results only to take them off her and hand
them over to the young and inexperienced Irwin.
Tones of Address- We first meet the headmaster in the staffroom, Headmaster- Mrs. Lintott,
Dorothy and Mrs. Lintott replies - Headmaster? Mr Lintott refers to the headmaster by his
professional title, the most formal title possible, in sharp contrast to this the headmaster refers to
Lintott as Dorothy. Not only do these terms clearly identify the power dynamic in this
relationship, the headmaster the superior. This quote also portrays the sexism within the play,
the headmaster refers to all characters in the play by their surname except from Mrs.Lintott and
this archaic form of address referring to males with their surnames but females with their
Christian names clearly has its roots in male superiority over women, which highlights a major
theme women being treated differently to men.
Sentence structure- Bennnet portrays- The headmaster as an almost subhuman caveman like
primitive being, he speaks in short phrases , here we see the headmaster being portrayed as a
fool unable to put a simple sentence together, this compared to the sophisticated and verbally
delightful scenes with Hector following this, careful scene placement, primal and unintelligent. In
the following scene the boys speak in incredibly fluent french, even the audience couldn't keep
up. Structural juxtaposition- the careful placement of scenes used to exaggerate the difference
between two characters. We have just seen the headmaster's primal primitive speech of the
headmaster and then straight after see the eloquent and articulate communication of the boys,
he comes across as laughable
He presents the headmaster as moronic, the chief enemy of all culture in a school is the
headmaster, political context, margie thatch 1979-198, alan bennet was not a fan the history
boys can be seen as a satirical attack on on thatcher's impact on education with the headmaster
acting as a symbol of thatcherite views. Simply she began to treat education as a business
where schools competed for students and to attract pupils and the funding by performing well at
examinations. In 1988 Thatcher brought in an education reform act introducing the national
curriculum which specified the subjects and content a school must teach. This meant
assessment was introduced, which leads us to the system we have today where you're judged
by your exam results, and schools become merely exam factories. In the history boys we see
the headmaster embodying this ideology "league tables, open scholarships reports to
governors" not motivated to see students succeed for their own benefit rather, to improve the
school's reputation thus improving his. Pull us up the table, the headmaster who is a perfect
representation of thatcherite vision, is focussed purely on exam results and on the quantifiable
data which can be used to attract pupils and funding to the school in the future. All of the
quotations we ah e loked a cpkme gfrom the first 11 pages of the book and there are two
purposes of this early character assassination it makes clear the headmaster should not be
taken seriouskly and it allows us to write off the head master and allows us to place more of our
attention to other teachers such as Hecotr ,Irwin, Mrs. Lintott these three are more interesting
and subtle than the headmaster and have a range of postive nad negatice attributes.