Setting (Scottish Highers English): Revision Notes
Setting
Historical and geographical context
Men Should Weep takes place in Glasgow's East End during the 1930s, a period marked by severe economic hardship and widespread poverty across Britain. The Depression created mass unemployment, making it extremely difficult for working-class families to survive. The play reveals how ordinary people struggled to maintain their lives in deeply deprived circumstances.
The Great Depression of the 1930s was one of the most devastating economic downturns in modern history. In Glasgow's industrial heartland, unemployment rates soared as factories closed and traditional industries collapsed. Working-class communities bore the brunt of this crisis, with many families struggling to afford even basic necessities.
The Morrison family lives in cramped tenement housing where multiple families shared limited space. Poor sanitation was standard, and disease spread easily through these overcrowded buildings. Without the National Health Service, families had to purchase medicines they could barely afford. This explains why Bertie's tuberculosis goes untreated until it becomes severe, and why Maggie is suddenly prevented from bringing him home from hospital.
While some conditions depicted in the play are specific to the 1930s, such as tuberculosis being widespread, parallels exist with modern life. Poverty remains a pressing issue today. Many children still grow up in poor, damp housing with little chance of escape.
The play also provides insight into daily life in 1930s Glasgow. Without computers, mobile phones or televisions, children played outdoors while women chatted from tenement windows and listened to the wireless. Shopping on Sauchiehall Street was considered a special treat. Men queued hoping for work, often ending their days in the pub.
The tenement as physical space
The Morrison home is entirely inadequate for a family of nine. Most scenes occur in the kitchen, though Maggie frequently disappears behind a curtain partition to check on sleeping children or to comfort Bertie in the back parlour. Jenny describes "sleeping in a bed-closet in aside a snorin aul wife", emphasising the lack of personal space and privacy.
The setting is consistently described as untidy and chaotic. Stage directions note that "Nappies hang on a string across the fireplace and the table, dresser etc, are in a clutter". This disorder is reinforced through action. Edie searches unsuccessfully for a flannel to wash her neck. Both Maggie and Edie must hunt for a comb when head lice are suspected. Objects cannot be found when needed because there is no proper place to keep anything.
Textual Analysis: "Maggie's muddle"
When Lily first enters the Morrison home, "She stands in the middle of the kitchen and surveys Maggie's muddle, sighs, takes off her coat and ties a towel round her waist, rolls up her sleeves and wonders where to start".
The phrase "Maggie's muddle" carries double meaning:
- Literal meaning: The physical disorder of the home
- Symbolic meaning: The chaotic, overwhelming nature of Maggie's existence
Lily's immediate preparation to help, without even greeting Maggie first, demonstrates their close relationship. However, her uncertainty about "where to start" suggests the problems are so numerous and complex that she cannot identify a beginning point.
The setting as reflection of Maggie's life
Throughout Act I and Act II, stage directions repeatedly place the audience "in the same tenement, in the same kitchen, looking in on the same family, in the same oppressive circumstances". This repetition emphasises the monotonous, unrelenting nature of Maggie's daily existence. Nothing changes. The family remains trapped in identical conditions.
The playwright's deliberate use of repetitive stage directions creates a sense of entrapment for the audience. By experiencing the "same" setting repeatedly, viewers understand the cyclical nature of poverty and the impossibility of escape that the Morrison family faces.
Act III presents a transformation. The setting remains the same tenement kitchen, but it has improved significantly because John has found work. Now the stage directions describe a space that is "clean, tidy and festive". Maggie wears a new dress, and even Granny "smiles now and again". This change reveals how quickly poverty can drain people, and how even small financial improvements can create clarity from chaos.
A direct connection exists between the setting and Maggie's physical appearance. While inhabiting a messy tenement, Maggie herself looks dishevelled. Lily describes her as looking "half-deid", though Maggie explains she has no time to attend to her looks.
This parallel reaches its full realisation in Act III. When Maggie makes her first truly independent decision by accepting Jenny's money, this assertive action is reflected in the potential move to a "better and larger house that is more equipped to deal with a family of five young children". As Maggie takes control of her circumstances, both she and her environment can improve.
The tenement community
Despite its hardships, tenement life fostered a strong sense of community that many argue is absent from modern society. When Maggie goes to the hospital, neighbours come to look after Granny, demonstrating a co-operative society where people support those in distress. Neighbours also visit for tea and to ask for "a wee tate this or that" - small borrowings that kept households functioning.
However, this closeness has negative aspects. Maggie finds the constant presence of neighbours trying. They interfere and gossip about her circumstances: "Problems! she hasnae hauf got them, Puir Maggie". She worries that they continually judge her family, particularly regarding Alec's criminal past. She observes that "Mrs Harris and Mrs Bone- and yon Wilson wumman – everytime her an Alec comes face tae face, I can see her rememberin".
The Dual Nature of Tenement Community
Privacy is impossible in the tenement setting. Alec's actions cannot be hidden. As the text states, "Folk know your business and you know theirs". Because so many people live in overcrowded conditions, gossip spreads through the closes as quickly as infection and infestations like head lice. Despite cramped living quarters, the Morrisons' lives are exposed to the entire neighbourhood.
John resents these intrusive women. When they arrive in Act I, he says sarcastically, "Come in ladies, come in. It's aye open hoose here". This bitterness may stem from feeling assessed by a cohesive female group who might judge his behaviour as husband and father.
Maggie understands this lack of privacy as yet another consequence of poverty. She explains, "It's only rich folks can keep theirselves tae theirselves. Folks like us hev tae depend on their neighbours when their needed help". Poverty removes choice. Maggie cannot escape her neighbours any more than she can escape her other hardships. Economic circumstances define how people live, removing autonomy over even basic aspects of privacy and independence.
Key Points to Remember:
- The 1930s Glasgow setting establishes poverty, unemployment and poor living conditions as central to understanding the characters' struggles
- The cramped, untidy tenement reflects Maggie's overwhelmed state - both improve when circumstances change in Act III
- Repeated stage directions emphasising the "same" setting throughout Acts I and II highlight the monotonous, trapped nature of the Morrisons' existence
- The tenement community provides essential support but removes all privacy, with gossip spreading as quickly as disease
- Poverty shapes every aspect of the setting, from lack of space to dependence on neighbours, demonstrating how economic circumstances control people's lives