The Homecoming

Pinter was writing at a pivotal moment in the 20th century, in the middle of a decade that would become synonymous with social upheaval. Although The Homecoming does not deal explicitly with stereotypical tropes of swinging London, a sense of societal and generational change pervades the play, wreaking havoc on the characters and their family.

Pinter’s London is a place still pockmarked by bomb sites—as Joey says, “We took them [the police] to a bombed site” (67)—but one in which the privations of World War II are fading away. Rationing, for example, ended in the United Kingdom in 1954 after 14 long years. While that kind of progress was cause for celebration, it also marked the return to a society riven by class—by haves and have-nots. The experience of World War II, including the indiscriminate bombing of the Blitz, had created a sense of solidarity in the UK that led to advances like the National Health Service (founded in 1948). The development of a welfare state acknowledged the equal suffering of all during the war and attempted to distribute resources to everyone fairly.

The Homecoming, however, anticipates how efforts towards collective justice would shift towards a hunger for personal freedom in the late 1960s.