Lucky Jim 153actually fishing or even discussing fishing. Just as he
has a romanticized view of “Merrie Old England,”
he has a certain condescending attitude toward the
rural life. Likewise, Bertrand is never seen without
his blue beret. Although Welch’s fishing hat suggests
some practical purpose, Bertrand’s beret is simply
faux artistic pretension. Upon seeing the beret, Dixon
wonders, “If such headgear was a protection, what
was it a protection against? If it wasn’t a protection,
what was it? What was it for? What was it for?”
Ultimately, the criticism of the class represented by
the Welches falls to the pragmatic aspect, and the
symbolism of the hats is reinforced by the concluding
scene when Dixon and Christine spy the Welches
on the street; they are wearing the hats, but now
Bertrand is wearing the fishing hat and the professor
is wearing the beret, as if they are interchangeable.
Welch’s other son, the conspicuously absent Michel,
who is usually denigrated as the “effeminate writing
son,” is finally present and is wearing, in contrast,
a pale corduroy cap. While the reader is never sure
about Michel, this detail suggests that he somehow
differs from his father and brother and is perhaps
actually cultured and artistically sensible.
In contrast to the Welches, who represent the
worst of the aristocratic class, Christine suggests
that there is not a simple opposition between the
classes. When Dixon first meets Christine, he reacts
ambivalently, put off by his own class consciousness:
“The sight of her seemed an irresistible attack on
his own habits, standards, and ambitions: something
designed to put him in his place for good.” Yet she
turns out to be the most earnest character in the
novel. While Dixon assumes she’s associated with
the ballet, in fact she works in a bookshop, and her
dress is consistently plain and unostentatious. Like
her uncle, Gore-Urquhart, she avoids the excesses of
the upper-class society while maintaining the most
genuine claim.
Eric Leuschner
WOrk in Lucky Jim
Set in the period immediately following World War
II, Lucky Jim witnesses the transformation of the
concept of work in British society. Primarily, Kings-
ley Amis contrasts the ineffectual, elitist idea of aca-
demic work with the more real work of business and
industry. In the 1980s, David Lodge, one of Amis’s
literary heirs with the academic novel, picks up the
contrast between types of work with his aptly titled
novel Nice Work (1988) as he describes the interac-
tions between a university professor and an engineer.
As Lucky Jim follows the exploits of Jim Dixon,
a junior lecturer of history at a provincial British
university, Dixon’s academic work is characterized
as marginal and worthless. Dixon has little inter-
est in the research he is engaged with, describing
its “niggling mindlessness” and “its funereal parade
of yawn-enforcing facts.” For Dixon, the problem
is so far removed from any real concern that it is
essentially a “non-problem.” Yet it is in line with all
the other published research he is familiar with, all
“convinced of its own usefulness and significance.”
Even Dixon’s superior, Professor Welch, cannot
judge the work on its own merits and must rely
on its acceptance in an academic journal, no mat-
ter how obscure, for a sense of worth. One subplot
of the novel concerns Dixon’s attempts to forestall
the demands of one of his students, who repeatedly
pesters him about an upcoming seminar. Dixon’s
avoidance stems from his own uncertainty about
his capabilities on the subject as well as his disdain
for the work itself. The irony of his academic work
is revealed when the research project on medieval
shipbuilding techniques he submitted to a journal
is plagiarized by the journal’s editor, who uses it to
be hired as a department chair at another university.
In a similar way, Professor Welch represents the
elitist idea of the university and its work. Welch
promotes himself as a cultural connoisseur, hosting
weekends at his country home, where visitors par-
ticipate in impromptu madrigal singing. Despite his
bluster about traditional, ruralized England, Welch’s
work habits are less than hardy. At the beginning,
Dixon wonders how he achieved and maintains his
position at the university, as he neither teaches well
nor publishes. Even academic work is absent from
Welch. Welch’s seeming hypocrisy runs the other
way as well, as symbolized by the fishing hat that
he wears even though he does not do the work of
fishing, either. The characterization of Bertram,
Welch’s eldest son, also suggests Amis’s critique of
work. Asked by Dixon about his “work,” Bertram,
the socially superior, cosmopolitan-styled artist,