Explore how Larkin presents men and their experiences

In this essay I intend to discuss how Larkin presents men and their experiences of others in "Mr Bleany" and "Self's the Man". In both poems Larkin presents men as down trodden, nagged and controlled by women although it is in a different way. The women have different relationships with the men and they play different roles in each of their lives. In "Mr Bleany" the woman is the narrators landlord and we see her trying to manipulate him as soon as the second stanza even though she has just met him, " Mr Bleany took my bit of garden properly in hand".

We see this again in the forth stanza, "I know his habits- what time he came down, his preference for sauce to gravy". She is trying to turn him into her last tenant Mr Bleany by dropping these hints trying to get him to do what she wants. In "Self's the Man" the women is Arnold's wife and we see her nagging and controlling him perhaps more so than the landlady does in Mr Bleany.

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" Put a screw in this wall". I think the nagging is worse for Arnold because the landlady can't nag her tenant in the same way a wife can her husband.

The women in the two poems have the upper hand in the relationships and with their nagging make the men feel that they live a slavish existence. Nothing in either poem suggests anything to do with happiness in their lives. Larkin portrays men as trapped, unhappy, and unfulfilled.

The description of Mr Bleany's life and room is very empty and bare, " bed, upright chair, sixty watt bulb, no hook behind the door". The bareness reflects both Mr Bleanys life and the narrators. The narrator life is now becoming exactly like Mr Bleany's.

And we can see from the poem that Mr Bleany's life was bare and stuck in a routine. He went on holiday every year to the same places, came down to dinner at the same time everyday. In Self's the man Arnold's life is also quite bare. His life is reduced to mundane tasks this is shown with the repeating of the word "and" in the forth stanza, this is used emphasise the boredom in his life. He is trapped in an unhappy existence "the money he gets for wasting his time on work she takes as her perk".

Another example that he is no longer in control of his life and the lack of freedom he has. He works to give all his money to his wife, does everything she demands of him and he is stuck in the same routines. Arnold and the tenant are both trapped in their lives. Arnold is trapped in his loveless marriage reduced to mundane tasks and the tenant is now trapped in Mr Bleany's life having to live exactly as he did. It is not just the men who are portrayed like this all the people mentioned in his poems all seem to be lonely and isolated.

The landlord is obviously quite a lonely person and a person who perhaps has a mundane existence. She tries to manipulate the tenant to have the same routines and jobs to do as Mr Bleany had. She talks of him straight away and the narrator knows a lot of him when they have only just met. The first thing she says is, " This was Mr Bleany's room" it seems she is obsessed with Mr Bleany which suggests she is quite a lonely woman who only seemed to have Mr Bleany in her life because she never mentions anyone else.

She is quick to try and get back what she has lost with Mr Bleany by trying to get the same routine with her new tenant. If she has the same routines with the next tenant she may not feel so lost without Mr Bleany. The wife in "Self's the Man" is described as making Arnold's life a misery by making him do all the jobs around the house and taking all his money for the "kiddies' clobber and the drier and the electric fire". But we get a sense of her life probably being unhappy aswell. There is no mention of love in their marriage he complains that "now she's there all day".

If he feels oppressed by her but she must feel the same. She has no job as we see from her having to relay on him for money for the house and kids. It looks like she has the upper hand in the house and the relationship as Arnold does everything she says but this is probably the only place she has any control. Both poems are narrated by men and are in dramatic monolog form. The men are talking to us in a conversational tone telling us something about themselves and about their lives.

Because it is coming from them themselves it helps to understand their feelings more and perhaps feel more sympathy for the individuals. The narrator uses colloquial speech and an informal conversational tone in both the poems. In Mr Bleany the words, "fags", "jabbering" and "stuffing". In "Self's the man" he uses, "kiddies clobber", "nippers" and "swine". I think he uses these words to tell us abit about the narrators, it tells us that they are working class people because of the slang words used. This helps the reader to identify more with the characters in the poems.

Larkin also uses imagery to tell us more about the individual's lives. The title "Mr Bleany" itself suggests bleakness also "he was at the bodies, til they moved him" and the image of the "box" I the last stanza suggests death and almost a funeral. The words create an image of death, which suggests sadness and loneliness. The landlord has lost Mr Bleany. The description of Mr Bleany's room is used as imagery to tell us more about My Bleany's life. The bareness reflects the bareness of his life and now the life of the narrator.

The words used such as, "frigid wind" and "fusty bed" gives us an image of a cold and hostile place, and this is where he has to live and is "telling himself that this was home". In this essay I have discussed how Larkin has portrayed men and their experiences of others in "Mr Bleany" and "Self's the man". In conclusion I have found that Larkin portrays people in the two poems as unhappy, lonely, isolated with unsatisfactory relationships. All the individuals in the poems seem to be leading a mundane existence, with the same routines day after day, going about their lives without any real happiness.