Such, Such Were the Joys

The main concern of the essay is an exposure of the negative aspects of classism in Britain through the lens of one of its chief institutions, the preparatory school system. Classism, broadly defined as a system of societal discrimination based on economic status, was a key feature of British society and was particularly influential during the Edwardian era, in which the main action described in the essay takes place. Orwell’s concern is to illuminate not only how classism operates in preparatory schools but also how such schools help to institutionalize and perpetuate it.

In a key passage of “Such, Such Were the Joys,” Orwell uses a typical conversation between students about holidays and expensive cars to highlight how deeply rooted classism is in preparatory school life. This conversation’s purpose is to uncover “boys of doubtful social origin” so that students from the British upper classes can isolate and demean students from a lower class (394). The author compares the social hierarchy at the school to the Indian caste system. Its three ranks consist of aristocrats at the top, “the unaristocratic rich” in the middle (369), and middle-class “underlings” at the bottom (373). This obsession with social position is encouraged by the school’s administrators, who join the conversation to reaffirm the classist assumptions underlying it.