George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier: an experimental ethnographic study with a novelist’s touch

Kristy Liles Crawley

english department, university of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, usA

ABSTRACT Although numerous critics identify The Road to Wigan Pier as George Orwell’s flawed depiction of working class life, Orwell’s memoir paints a picture of early ethnographic techniques in twentieth century England. This essay examines Orwell’s fieldworking process in terms of gaining access, representing informants, representing the self, and giving back to the community. In the essay, I acknowledge the flaws in Orwell’s fieldworking process while arguing that The Road to Wigan Pier should be labeled as an experimental ethnographic study. What readers consider flaws are in fact Orwell’s early attempts in experimenting and refining his fieldworking process, a process influenced by his work as a novelist. As a novelist and ethnographer, Orwell creates an intriguing vehicle for social change, for his vivid descriptions capture readers’ interest while the text calls attention to the working class’s living conditions.

Richard Hoggart’s “George Orwell and The Road to Wigan Pier” opens with the following statements: “The Road to Wigan Pier has been disliked by almost all commentators on Orwell. Tom Hopkinson calls it his worst book and Laurence Brander ‘his most disappointing performance’” (72). Likewise, other critics have voiced similar complaints about The Road to Wigan Pier and questioned its useful- ness. In his abstract accompanying “Revisiting Orwell’s Wigan Pier,” Robert Pearce recognizes that “George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) has long been con- sidered an important semi-documentary source for living and working conditions in the north-west of England during the 1930s. Yet exactly how important – and how accurate and useful – the book is has never been determined” (410). For the purposes of this paper, I would like to respond to Pearce’s question concerning the usefulness of Orwell’s text. In the sections that follow, I will examine Orwell’s approach to fieldworking and to writing an ethnographic text.

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KEYWORDS George orwell; The Road to Wigan Pier; ethnography; experimental nonfiction; fieldworking; ethnographic study