64 pages • 2 hours read
E. R. BraithwaiteTo Sir with Love
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1–3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Braithwaite rides a double-decker bus to his first day at Greenslade Secondary School. Among the other passengers on the bus are large “charwomen,” who remind Braithwaite “somehow of the peasants in a book by Steinbeck: they were of the city, but they dressed like peasants, they looked like peasants, and they talked like peasants” (5). These working-class women make inappropriate jokes to one another and the conductor, some of which regard the physical attractiveness of the narrator, especially in contrast to their husbands’ lack of sexual vigor. Braithwaite finds their commentary amusing.
Another woman, noticeably nicely-dressed and of higher class, boards the bus, and a boy offers her a seat next to Braithwaite. She declines to sit next to the narrator, and the conductor reprimands her, but she ignores him, content in her superiority, which impresses Braithwaite. Braithwaite gets off at the next stop, preventing the conductor from further engaging with the woman, much to the conductor’s annoyance. Braithwaite believes he has done the conductor a favor.
Braithwaite enters London’s East End, which appears radically different from its literary references. In place of his fanciful imaginings of the stomping ground of classical authors, he finds “nothing romantic about the noisy littered street bordered by an untidy irregular picket fence of slipshod storefronts and gaping bombsites” (9). But Braithwaite is most offended by the smells that emanate from the streets: “I felt sick and dirtied” (10). Braithwaite happens upon Greenslade amid these smells, abandoned garbage, bombed-out rubble, unruly weeds, and dirty children playing games. He first walks towards the boy’s outhouse, where he finds a student smoking a cigarette. Initially, the student tries to conceal his vice, but then points Braithwaite towards the headmaster’s office with the cigarette. Braithwaite finds amusement in this interaction.
Braithwaite meets Mr. Florian, who greets him warmly, much to Braithwaite’s pleasure. Florian offers Braithwaite a cigarette, expressing his happiness that Braithwaite is here. He tells Braithwaite to observe a few classes, after which he hopes that Braithwaite will decide to stay.
Chapter 2 Summary
Braithwaite leaves the headmaster’s office to stand outside his potential classroom. A girl runs out and almost knocks him over, offering a quick and half-hearted apology, which confuses Braithwaite. Braithwaite enters the room to find approximately forty unchaperoned and shoddily-dressed young men and women in various places around the room, staring at him. A girl tells him that the previous teacher, Hackman, has left. The rest of the students erupt in questions, and Braithwaite flees to the staffroom, horrified at the disorder of the classroom, which is so unlike what he remembers from school.
Braithwaite encounters the girl who ran into him, although she pays him no attention. He enters to staffroom to find Weston, who lazily asks if he’s the new teacher, joking about Braithwaite being “’another lamb to the slaughter—or shall we say black sheep”’ (15). Braithwaite ignores Weston’s rudeness and introduces himself, thinking that Weston is Hackman. Weston does not introduce himself but tells Braithwaite that he will be responsible for Hackman’s class and then leaves, much to Braithwaite’s chagrin.
While Braithwaite wonders what he has gotten himself into, both in terms of the students and the teachers, Mrs. Grace Dale-Evans enters the staffroom, and the two have a pleasant and reassuring conversation. She tidies up the staffroom and tells Braithwaite to tone down his dialect, extending a dinner invitation to him. Braithwaite inspects the general untidiness of the staffroom, looking out the window to see “the gutted remains of a bomb-wrecked church, squatting among a mixture of weed-choked gravestones and rubble” (17) as well as a small park, which are both separated from the school by a high brick wall. Braithwaite goes out into the courtyard, which is similarly littered with trash and walled off from the outside. Braithwaite finds the atmosphere to be “depressing, like a prison” (18). He thinks of how different this environment is from his old school in British Guiana.
The children erupt out of the classrooms for recess, interrupting Braithwaite’s thoughts, and he retreats to the staffroom. The teachers gather for tea, and Mrs. Dale-Evans introduces them to Braithwaite, adding her own asides about their various personalities, which makes Braithwaite uncomfortable. Braithwaite meets the “mannish” Josy Dawes and the “mousy” and childish Euphemia Phillips (19). Braithwaite wonders how Phillips manages such rambunctious students. Braithwaite finally learns Weston’s name, and Weston relays to the rest of the teachers that Braithwaite mistook him for Hackman, who he says must have run off, and who he doubts they’ll see again. Braithwaite meets Mrs. Drew, an elegant, “white-haired matron” who acts as Florian’s right hand, and the brash-but-friendly Vivienne “Clinty” Clintridge, the art and drama teacher (20). Lastly, he meets Gillian Blanchard, who he believes to be the ideal in terms of beauty standards. The other teachers talk amongst themselves, except for Dawes and Phillips, who sit off in a corner together.
Drew expresses her hope that Braithwaite will stay, as the high-turnover rate of male teachers has been hard on the students. Clinty jokes about the lack of male presence, flirting with Braithwaite, who laughs. Clinty also asks him to stay. The bell sounds, and the teachers go to their duties, all except Blanchard, who asks if this is Braithwaite’s first appointment. Braithwaite in turn asks her why everyone seems so concerned that he stays, and she says that she doesn’t know because she, too, is new. However, she does admit that “‘[t]here’s something rather odd about this school, something rather frightening and challenging at the same time’” (22), describing how the children are very grown-up and the school does not believe in corporal punishment. Braithwaite enjoys talking to her.
Dale-Evans returns, saying that she must bath a girl who is dirty from wearing the same sanitary napkin for a week. She gives Braithwaite a tour of her domestic science department, admitting that many of her female students know more than she does. Braithwaite watches her interact with her class, impressed with how she handles them.
Chapter 3 Summary
Braithwaite and the other teachers eat dinner in the dining hall, which also serves as a gymnasium. The teachers sit separately from the children, and Florian quiets them merely by standing up. Braithwaite has tea in the staffroom with the other teachers, during which he hears swing music coming from the dining hall. Clinty explains that it is the midday dance session, which the teachers sometimes participate in. Calling Braithwaite “sunburned,” Weston says that the students’ dancing keeps them fit for “the more exciting pastime of teacher-baiting” (26), and that they are today celebrating Hackman’s exit. Clinty, Drew, and Dale-Evans try to diminish Weston’s cynicism, telling Weston not to discourage Braithwaite. Weston says he wouldn’t want to take over Hackman’s students, at which point Braithwaite remembers he must meet with Florian.
He exits but is intercepted by Blanchard, who calls the other teachers odd and confesses that she would have slapped Weston if he spoke to her the way he spoke to Braithwaite. Braithwaite and Blanchard watch the students dance, and Braithwaite is impressed. The girl who ran into Braithwaite earlier asks him if he can jive, and Braithwaite mutters a negative reply. Blanchard slips away without Braithwaite noticing, and Braithwaite must weave through the dancers to meet with Florian.
Braithwaite tells Florian that he will stay at the school. Florian explains the situation: the children who attend this school “could be generally classified as difficult” and lacking in respect for authority (28). The students are all poor and live in tense environments, factors which make it difficult for them to learn and nearly impossible to threaten with punishment. Braithwaite becomes frustrated with Florian’s constant assertion that these students’ lives are incredibly difficult, as they will never face the kind of prejudice that he has. Florian admits that the children smoke, curse, and are rude, saying that the teachers discourage these behaviors through affection. Though annoyed and slightly suspicious, Braithwaite is impressed by the depth of Florian’s empathy. Florian says he cannot tell Braithwaite how to teach, but he welcomes him to the school and hopes he will stay for a long time, stressing that the children are wonderful once Braithwaite gets to know them.
Braithwaite goes back to the staffroom, and the teachers offer their support and excitement, except the cynical Weston. Clinty speaks to Braithwaite’s masculinity, which Weston mocks, causing Clinty to question Weston’s manhood. Braithwaite shadows Drew for the rest of the day, “admiring the skillful [sic] way in which she blended patience with firmness” (32). On the trip home, Braithwaite is overjoyed at finally being employed, and his joy quells all worries of future problems.
Chapters 1–3 Analysis
These chapters present the racism that will reappear throughout the novel. However, there exist two different varieties of racism that Braithwaite will have to encounter: overt racism, such as the woman refusing to sit next to him on the bus, and subtler racism, such as can be found in the speech of Weston. Here, these varieties of racism are also further categorized as unspoken and spoken, respectively. Whereas Braithwaite can choose to ignore the overt, unspoken racism of the lady on the bus, Weston’s continuous spoken racism, which he tries to play off as a joke, becomes more difficult to ignore: micro-aggressions that burrow deep under the skin, indicating that it is not a singular instance of racism but rather the repeated exposure to it that tears people down.
These chapters also expose the narrator’s attitudes towards class. Braithwaite forgives the racism of the lady on the bus due to his perception of her class. He is so impressed by her culture and bearing that he does not think to question or repudiate her actions and beliefs. This refusal to engage with people of a high socioeconomic class indicates the narrator’s own prejudices as well as his upbringing. While his parents’ exact socioeconomic status remains unclear, Braithwaite’s education suggests that he grew up in a relatively wealthy household, as such a level of education would have been uncommon for a Black man in the late 1930s. One can assume that Braithwaite, as a highly-educated engineer, is not used to interacting with members of the poor, signaling potential trouble in his connections with the Greenslade students.
When Braithwaite speaks to Blanchard, who the audience also assumes comes from a similar socioeconomic class based on her speech, this interaction solidifies the sense of foreboding. Blanchard lays out the problems Braithwaite can except to face while teaching. Although Braithwaite feels invincible at the end of this section, the audience understands that this feeling of invincibility and initial relief at employment will not last long.
The juxtaposition between expectation and reality identifies the potential conflicts that may arise throughout the novel. In terms of the environment, Braithwaite’s expectations are tempered by his education; from what he has read of the East End, he expects a certain amount of culture and innovation that he does not find in the trash-filled, foul-smelling streets. Similarly, the school differs from the sunny institute of learning he remembers from his childhood: in place of warm, happy memories, he finds a bombed-out, neglected prison. Perhaps most foreboding are the attitudes of the students themselves, who clearly do not view schooling with the same zest and enthusiasm he remembers from his childhood. Rather, they seem already too set in their cynicism to learn anything, indicating a potential conflict between themselves and Braithwaite.
