2. CONTENT
The poet is lodging in a room that once belonged
to a man called Mr Bleaney. As he observes the
bare furnishings, he draws intimate conclusions
about the former lodger. Although he may not
intend to, the poet himself is very much like or
perhaps turning into Mr Bleaney.
3. CONTEXT
• Mr Bleaney was written in 1955
• We can infer that it is set in the Midlands (due to
the manufacturing slang used - “the Bodies”),
which is where Larkin grew up
• During the 40s there was a manufacturing boom in
the Midlands, which explains Bleaney’s
employment in “the Bodies”
• Despite this period of economic progression,
Bleaney’s situation remained bleak
4. SETTING
“the flowered curtains thin and frayed”
• Gives an image of decay and dinginess
• Mr Bleaney lived in squalor; he couldn’t afford to change
his generic curtains that “fall to within five inches of
the sill”
“no room for books or bags”
• Basic, no room for anything personal
• He looks out of the window every day to see “a strip of
building land”; he would have watched this
development while his own life remained stagnant
6. NARRATOR
• After the mundaneness of the initial stanza, the poet’s decision - “I’ll take it” - is
almost comical, and the first indicator that he is like Mr Bleaney
• The poet is familiar with Bleaney’s habits, even though he never knew him
• These assured conclusions could mean that he himself resembles how he would
have imagined Bleaney to be
• Maybe he fears the person he is turning into, so is projecting these dreaded
characteristics onto a fabricated persona - Mr Bleaney
• The narrator seems to know some intimate things about Bleaney’s life, such as
that he visited “his sister’s house in Stoke” - is he describing his own life, or
making judgements, or does he really know Bleaney?
“The first two thirds of the poem down to ‘but if’ are concerned with my
uneasy feeling that I am becoming Mr Bleaney…The last third is
reassuring myself that I am not…yet there’s no doubt lingering too,
perhaps he hated it as much as I did” Philip Larkin
7. MR BLEANEY
• We never meet Mr Bleaney; we only know him through the imagination of the poet
• He lodged alone - we can infer that he didn’t own a house, nor many belongings, and
didn’t have immediate family
“telling himself that this was home”
• He has to convince himself that he belongs somewhere
• We don’t know why he has left the room, but he left with “one hired box”
• This could refer to a coffin that didn’t even belong to him, reinforcing his loneliness and
lack of possessions
• This could otherwise refer to the one box required to carry his belongings to his next
destination
• We feel sorry for him, yet we do not know anything about him; he really only exists in
Larkin’s imagination
• He was a gambling man - is it right that we feel sorry for him? Perhaps he brought his
deprivation on himself
9. STRUCTURE and GRAMMAR
• The rhyme scheme is ABAB, but is punctuated by
enjambment and caesura
• The poet begins by talking about an individual’s life and
concludes with a general message about “how we live
measures our own nature
• Ignorance, An Arundel Tomb and Dockery and Son follow
the same structure as Mr Bleaney; they move from a specific
situation to a gradual generalisation
• There are seven stanzas, each consisting of exactly four
lines of similar length. This could reflect the monotony of Mr
Bleaney’s life and the universality of the final message
10. PATHETIC FALLACY
“the frigid wind tousling the clouds”
• a strong force is controlling the clouds, reflecting Mr
Bleaney’s own vulnerability to the pressures of the world
“till they moved him”
• Mr Bleaney is at the mercy of more powerful people, just
like the clouds blown about by the wind
• The dim lighting and chilling wind mirror how dead, cold
and depressing his life is
11. THE BOTTOM LINE
“How we live measures our own nature”
• This statement is paradoxical
• How we live indicates the kind of person we are but the kind of
person we are dictates how we live
• The universal application of this statement is clear from the first
person plural pronoun ‘we’
• Other people also influence us, just like Mr Bleaney influences Larkin
• Larkin spends most of the poem worrying that he is turning into Mr
Bleaney
• Through following Bleaney’s way of living, perhaps this is the actual
destiny of his nature
13. Loneliness and isolation
“No more to show than one
hired box”
• Larkin implies how lonely Mr
Bleaney is, yet he is choosing
the same life as him
• Others merely tolerate him;
“The Frinton folk who put him
up”
• His only relationship is with his
landlady, who still refers to him
formally
• What is the definition of
home? Is it where we
live, or where we feel
safe, comfortable and
loved?
• Perhaps Larkin can
never class this room as
his home, because it is
irrevocably associated
with Mr Bleaney
Home
14. Freedom
• Mr Bleaney is at the mercy of
others
• He doesn’t have control over
his own situation, so is
seemingly weak
• He has no power to change his
dilapidated location
• Perhaps Bleaney gambles to
achieve freedom from his
dismal life, yet his perpetual
spending may be enchaining
him in a vicious circle of
poverty
• Mr Bleaney could have passed
away
• The room is associated with
Bleaney, yet he is no longer there.
This is a constant reminder of
absence and loss
• The flowers on the curtain seem to
have died, becoming “thin and
frayed”, perhaps due to neglect or
unhappiness
• Bleaney’s already dismal life is
further shadowed by the collapse of
the manufacturing industry in the
70s
Death and loss
16. Home is so Sad
• Bleaney’s home is only
ever described as a bleak
place
• It is “shaped to the
comfort of the last to
go”, as Bleaney seems to
remain in his room despite
having physically left
• Home also “withers”, like
the now lifeless flowers on
the curtains in Bleaney’s
room
• Theme of purpose
• Larkin reflects on how Dockery
has a son, and he himself has
“nothing”
• We get the impression that Larkin
is happy alone and doesn’t want to
be like Dockery
• Mr Bleaney had “at his age…no
more to show than one hired
box”
• Yet Larkin portrays this life
negatively
• Why does he not want to be like
Dockery but also not like Bleaney?
Dockery and Son
17. Self’s the Man
• Like he does with
Arnold, the poet infers a
lot about Mr Bleaney’s
habits and life
• Larkin seems to not
want to be like Mr
Bleaney, yet we see
from Self’s the Man that
he is proud that he
hasn’t got married
• What survives of Mr
Bleaney, sadly, is not
love
• His only legacy is a
few fantasies and a
name attached to a
lodging room
• Does this make his
life any less valid?
An Arundel Tomb
18. DEFINITIONS
• The Bodies - slang term for the car manufacturing
business in the Midlands
• Tussocky - clumped with dense patches of grass
• Four aways - people would predict the ‘four aways’
on the football polls; it was a form of gambling
• Tousling - to ruffle, make untidy
• Sixty watt bulb - very dim, old fashioned light bulb
19. Listen to Philip Larkin read Mr Bleaney:
http://poetryarchive.org/poem/mr-bleaney
