I found D. H. Lawrence’s Tickets, Please, first published in The Strand Magazine in 1919, to be a rather dark short story about working on the tram system in the English Midlands, set at the backdrop of World War I. At face value, the story dips and dives into issues surrounding gender roles, social dynamics, and shared humiliation and pain, but under the surface, Lawrence’s short story supposes that when traditional gender roles collapse, predator-prey dynamics arise, leaving everyone diminished, the ultimate result being neither equality nor liberation, but mutual dehumanisation. Before continuing, I must state clearly that I have read only the original 1919 version, and not the edited 1922 reprint in England, My England.
Firstly, before diving into the plot, I’d like to provide some context for the short story. World War I left many a city and town without men to fill labour vacancies, creating an enormous demand for women to fill the now-empty roles necessary to keep society running, including traditionally male-dominated jobs. Conductors on the tram line were responsible for collecting fares from the passengers which could be a physically demanding job with long hours and little thanks, often subjecting the women to hard-headed obstinacy from passengers, as well as harassment, exposure to the elements, and long commutes in the dark. Even the mere title, Tickets, Please is a demand masquerading as a polite request (if one considers the abrasiveness associated with imperatives in the English language in Britain, particularly at this time). It’s a weary and cold command to a passenger likely to argue with whom they see as an enforcer, perhaps signalling the detached nature the conductors need to develop to get through the workday.
Meanwhile, men unable to be assigned to the frontline faced fears of emasculation and temptation to assume power over women in the absence of the majority. The changing roles, subtly indicated by the length of the women’s skirts, directly challenged the previous societal status quo that had men placed in demanding roles and women typically as homemakers and caretakers. In most cases, the men left behind in the war were those unfit for military service, and so, one needs to question why our leading male, the apparently vigorous and able-bodied John Joseph (as he was named in the original publication) is not on the frontline.
John Joseph is a rather arrogant playboy, a tram inspector who serially seduces the female conductors hired to replace men who’ve now left for the frontline. (Rather telling of his character is the fact that Lawrence renamed him as John Thomas in the later publication, which is British slang for the male member). One such conductor on whom he set his sights is Annie Stone, a “suspicious” girl who, at first, resists John Joseph’s charms, forging a game of cat and mouse, so to speak; Lawrence makes no secret of the recurring predator-prey theme in his short story. Throughout the narrative, the author uses language to evoke a sense of ferality, almost dehumanising the characters, painting them as undomesticated beasts, which serves to illustrate how the violence of war is felt also at home.
Eventually, the persistence of John Joseph wears Annie down, and she begins to believe herself special as his attention and interest in her intensifies, evidently succumbing to the notion that she is different from his other blatant conquests. Upon realising, after their rather subtly charged date at the fairground, that he had moved on from her and was now pursuing new prey, the experience of heartbreak and humiliation propels Annie into a vengeful wrath as she begins rallying the other jilted girls into a karmic retribution plot. To the waiting room of the depot, after hours, Annie lures John Joseph where he smugly and naïvely meets six other conductresses with whom he’s toyed. The girls corner him, mock him, and, in a frenzy, attack him, tearing from his shirtsleeves, pinning him down prone and powerless, and savagely forcing him to choose one of them as his wife. The waiting room scene is perhaps the most suggestive, perhaps even Freudian, moment of the story, with the women’s behaviour described with animalistic carnality. Previously, throughout the story, the narrator had commented on the clothing, mannerisms, body parts, and appearance of the women, already signalling a recurring theme of objectification and sexuality.
Ultimately, John Joseph calls out Annie’s name when demanded to settle by the women. “I don’t want him,” she spits out, the final humiliation. Does Annie reject John Joseph because she has genuinely moved on from her pain? Or is it an attempt to inflict a wound the shape and size of her own? Now that John Joseph says he wants to commit to Annie—and the narrator has told us he likes her more than the others—she no longer wants him. Left battered, bruised, and broken on the floor, the girls calm and begin to preen and ready themselves for work as though nothing happened, leaving the demolished man to retrieve the scraps of his clothes from the floor and flee into the night. It’s as though Lawrence makes a subtle commentary about a man who doesn’t take responsibility, as John Joseph didn’t, putting him in the same emasculated category (in Lawrence’s view) of the men unfit for military service. A man who treats women as objects, and exploits them instead of protecting them, is, as the story seems to imply, not a man, and eventually is treated as a mere object—or as prey—himself.
The story questions the erosion of what had long been the established order of things as it addresses and questions the changing roles of men and women in society. Do the changing social values lead to moral looseness? Does this disruption lead to depravity? Do women become vulnerable without men to defend them? Or do they become hardened, aggressive, and competitive? War leaves behind only the men considered invalid, elderly, or those who wriggle out of taking responsibility—who is left to protect the women from the latter? With the women left to defend themselves, must they not become like men? Does the focus on survival reduce humans to animals? John Joseph an ape conquering females to spread his seed, and the women competitive bonobos using collective social power to dominate? Lawrence seems to argue that when women adopt the predatory logic that men have used against them, they don’t undo oppression but reproduce it; the inversion of gender roles during war creates an upheaval in the social order which doesn’t serve to forge better relations between men and women, but fosters a struggle for dominance with no victors. Annie’s transformation from a hopeful, almost girlish, lover into a calloused ringleader encapsulates the idea that reforming oneself from a victim to an executioner, from bullied to bully, does not help one to reclaim their humanity, but instead further isolates oneself from the very being one sought to defend.
What is clear is that the ‘war of the sexes’ has ensured mutual destruction, with no resolution, no victors, but instead a hollow retribution that clearly didn’t bring happiness to anyone. The women chose revenge, to sadistically inflict upon the man what they themselves experienced, which paints an image of women reflecting the depravity of men back towards themselves, and that perhaps the man maketh the woman. The women have morphed into the personified cruelty and injustice they themselves have experienced, something that deeply troubled and conflicted Lawrence who, on one hand, admired the resolve and toughness of the new workingwoman, yet feared how the new roles were affecting the balance of social harmony, casting a sceptical eye on the possibility of reconciliation between the sexes.