Pride and prejudice, or class and character: Room at the Top revisited

Abstract

Room at the Top was unique among British social-realist films, not only in its depiction of upward mobility as opposed to social immobilization, but also in its choice of genre – high tragedy over popular melodrama. Paradoxically, Joe Lampton’s working-class pride drove him to educate himself out of the working class, then compelled him to try to get a piece of the upper class. Tragically, the pride that enabled him to endure years of poverty and social humiliation is the same pride that undoes him spiritually in the end. In a sense, the class of his origin finally has its revenge on him for leaving it, while he proves that class is no barrier to someone with strength, ability and determination. But Joe pays a great price in order to prove his point – he ‘wastes’ the outsider Alice Aisgill for marriage to the moneyed Susan Brown. Alice may be the ‘tragic waste’ of this story, but one could argue that in killing herself she has also ‘killed’ Joe and thus had her revenge on him too. In short, far from cheapening its action by resolving it through melodrama, Room at the Top enriches that action throughout by consistently suggesting its tragic underpinnings. There are no black-and-white characters in the film, no heroes or villains, no defeat of the guilty and reward of the innocent: each of the central characters wins, and each one loses.