The Homecoming by Samuel Pinter (1964-5)

60s’ historical context

Home politics: “Law of the Pendulum”

Britain oscillates between Conservative and Labour governments.
-Harold McMillian (1957-1964, Conservative)
-Harold Wilson (1964-1970, Labour)
-Edward Heath (1970-1974, Conservative)

Home affairs: the economy

Economic recovery from the aftermath of WW2. translated into more employment and growing
wages.
· 1954: end of food rationing
· 1958: end of coal rationing
· More employment
· Growing wages
· The middle class is able to afford holidays abroad for the first time
· Spread of television and media, leading to mass advertisement, leading to mass consumption.
- 1936: launch of the BBC
- 1939-46: BBC television service interrupted due to WW2
- 1955: launch of ITV
- 1966: launch of BBC Two
- 1967: beginning of color transmission on BBC Two

The sort of circulating images with these ads, very strongly distributed, was a reproduction of the
idea of women being tight to the domestic sphere and of consumption (to be a good housewife, you
need to buy this…).

Mid-late 1960s: “The Swinging Sixties”

· The Homecoming was written during the middle of the sixties, the turning point of the decade
when more things started to change.
· The first and second half of the sixties are very different. In the U.K., the sixties were known as
“The Swinging Sixties”, London being at center (“Swinging London”).
· A youth-driven cultural revolution emphasizing modernity through music, art, fashion and
politics.
· One of the products of this youth culture was the “Baby Boom Generation”, consequent to the
growing economy.

· 1960: abolition of National Military Service for young men.

· In terms of fashion, there is the revolution of the mini-skirt, tied to this youth culture. The
mini-skirt has been seen, simultaneously, as both a signifying:
1. The social and sexual liberation of women.
2. The objectivation of the female body.
In The Homecoming, this should be analyzed through the duality of the character of Ruth: is she
sexually liberated or objectified?

Migration from the former colonies

· A total of 500.000 Commonwealth citizens were invited to migrate to the U.K. between 1948 and
1970 towards a post-imperial multicultural society.
· June 1948: arrival of the SS Empire Windrush at Tilbury Dock, Essex (Caribbean migrants): it
was the most important arrival of migrants, marking the beginning of post-war mass migration.
· Consequently, those who arrived during the 60s and 70s have been called “The Windrush
Generation”.
· When they first arrived, they were citizens of the Commonwealth and needed no VISA. They
simply received a document saying they had landed in the U.K.
· At some point, however, these documents weren’t given anymore, and restrictions were
implemented by creating a hostile environment for “illegal” immigrants (with no documentation):
universities, landlords, doctors, etc. being forced to constantly check for documentation.
· Because they weren’t given any, those who arrived during the Windrush migration couldn’t
provide documentation and were deported back to the Caribbean.

“In April 2018 it was publicly revealed that the UK Home Office had wrongly classified hundreds
of people from the so-called Windrush generation as illegal immigrants, leading to the deportation
of more than eighty of them to several countries in the Caribbean. People targeted by the Home
Office and affected by the Windrush scandal were part of several waves of migration from the
Caribbean that started with the arrival, in 1948, of the ship Empire Windrush. They had been
granted full citizenship under the 1948 British Nationality Act, which guaranteed people who had
come to Britain from the Caribbean imperial birthrights and the privileges and protections of full
citizenship, including public benefits, employment, and the permanent right to remain in the
country. As colonial subjects that had a legal right to live and work in the UK, they were neither
required nor given any documents upon entry. The classification as immigration offenders by the
Home Office mainly affected citizens who had arrived as children and teenagers between the fifties
and the seventies and were given indefinite leave to remain on arrival under the British Nationality
Act, but could not provide documental proof thereof. Furthermore, it was later revealed that in
2010 the Home Office had destroyed thousands of landing card slips that recorded these arrivals
when it closed its office in Croydon and moved to another site. As a result, most have lost their jobs,
became homeless or were deported to countries they left as young children, forced to leave their
families behind in the UK.” (Massana and Alsina 2020, p. 231)
Counterculture Youth Movements
· Appear against mainstream politics, sexual norms, etc.
· Youth subcultures: rockers and mods
· Protest movements
- 1957: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
- 1954-68: American Civil Rights Movement (28 Aug. 1963: “I have a dream” speech by Martin
Luther King)
- 1967: International Alliance of Women (IAW) conference held in London (IAW was
founded in 1902 by U.S. suffragists)

· Rise of feminism as an organized movement: starts to grow in the U.K. in 1967 and becomes
strong in the 70s.
Therefore, when Pinter writes The Homecoming, feminism as an organized movement has not
emerged yet.

Atmosphere of protests in the U.K.

The result of these counterculture movements is an atmosphere of protest worldwide.
· 1964: Labour victory, a revival of the left.
· Ideologically diverse, often confused and unfocused politics.
· Emergence of the hippy movement.
· Anti-authoritarian stance: rejection of the social, sexual and racial norms of the 50s.

Changes in gender-sexual norms and family life

The context matters to understand changes in gender, sexual norms and family life, which were
disrupted during WW2.
WW2
· Disruption of conventional gender roles and family life.
· Met at war: women go out to work, thus disrupting the male-breadwinner family model.
· Rise in the divorce rate.
1950s
· The nuclear family and traditional gender roles presented as the cornerstones of social
reconstruction, as one of the ways to recover the nation.
· That’s why many historians say that nuclear families and traditional family values were “invented”
in the 50s (they already existed, but there was a strong cultural push).
· Tension regarding the family and gender and sexual roles grew as the 50s turned into the 60s.

“The boundaries of male and female roles became uncertain and disputable, problematizing
marriage and the heterosexual relation in all aspects. […] The 1950s produced few feminists […] but
gender relations were by no means untroubled”
(Alan Sinfield, Literature, Culture and Politics in Postwar Britain. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, pp.
207-208)

Alan Sinfield’s “Faultline”

“Tension regarding the family and gender and sexual roles grew as the 1950’s turned into the
1960s’s.”
“The boundaries of male and female roles became uncertain and disputable, problematizing
marriage and the heterosexual relation in all aspects. […] The 1950s produced few feminists […] but
gender relations were by no means untroubled”
(Alan Sinfield, Literature, Culture and Politics in Postwar Britain. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, pp.
207-208)

Alan Sinfield wrote about these changing paradigms and stated that there were contradictions in
the social order, which he called “faultline”. The term was then used by Pinter in The Homecoming.
Faultline: divisive issue with differences of opinion leading to conflict.

a) On one hand, society came from the redistribution of gender roles because of WW2.
b) On the other hand, it experienced a push towards the domestic.
And here lies the contradiction, with very strong contradictory discourses with which Pinter tried
to engage.
The war re-shaped the distribution of gender and space. But when men came back from the war,
women were pushed back to the domestic.

From the moment feminism became an organized movement (67’), there were counter-discourses
against this.
· Early 1960s: contraceptive pill
· 1967: Abortion Act
· 1967: Act partially decriminalizing homosexual practices
· 1969: Divorce Reform Act
· 1970: Equal Pay Act

“In sum, tension and contradictions regarding sexual and gender roles and the traditional family
structure were becoming increasingly visible over the 1960s, especially in the second half of the
decade.”
Eruption of faultlines (social contradictions)
· January-August 1968, Prague
- Rebellion against Soviet rule and domination.
- The Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in ‘68, putting a violent end to the rebellion.
· 4th April 1968: assassination of Martin Luther King (precedent: assassination of Kennedy 22nd Nov
‘63)
· May 1968, Paris
· Protests against Vietnam War

1968 was “a psychological, if not social, economic and political, watershed” (Bigsby 1981: 31).