Themes — History, Sexuality & Class

Beyond the central educational debate, The History Boys explores three further themes that are essential for GCSE: history (what it is and who controls it), sexuality (desire, repression, and identity), and class (social mobility and the barriers to it). These themes are woven into the play's fabric and intersect with each other constantly.

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Theme 4: History — What Is It?

History as the Play's Subject AND Method

The play is unusual because history is both its subject matter (the boys are studying history) and its method (the play itself is a piece of historical storytelling, looking back on events from the future).

This creates a layered effect:

Level	What happens
Within the play	The boys study history (First World War, Holocaust, etc.)
The play itself	The play tells the story of the boys' education — itself a historical narrative
Bennett's context	Bennett writes in 2004 about the 1980s, looking back through the lens of the Iraq War

History as Debate

The play stages an explicit debate about what history is:

Mrs Lintott: "History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men."

Irwin: "History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It's a performance."

Hector: "It's subjunctive history. Might-have-been history. The historian's got to be part-Loss Adjuster... What if, how about, suppose..."

Each character represents a different historiographical tradition:

Character	Historical approach	Critical term
Mrs Lintott	Empiricist — history is what happened	Empiricism
Irwin	Relativist — history is constructed	Postmodernism / Relativism
Hector	Humanist — history is lived experience	Liberal Humanism

The First World War as Case Study

The most sustained historical discussion in the play concerns the First World War. This is not accidental — WWI is:

• The most commonly taught historical topic in British schools
• A subject where the gap between official narrative (heroism, duty) and lived experience (horror, waste) is starkest
• A testing ground for the Hector-Irwin debate: should we feel the suffering or analyse it?

The climactic moment — Posner singing Hardy's "Drummer Hodge" — resolves this tension temporarily. The poem does both: it makes us feel the reality of a young soldier's death AND it offers material for sophisticated literary-historical analysis.

History and Power

Bennett connects the teaching of history to political power. Irwin's future career as a government spin doctor makes explicit what the play implies: those who control the historical narrative control public opinion.

Examiner's tip: Connect this to AO3 (context). Bennett wrote during the Iraq War, when the UK government was accused of manipulating intelligence. Irwin's trajectory — from teaching boys to "spin" history essays to helping the government spin policy — is a deliberate parallel.

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Theme 5: Sexuality

The Play's Treatment of Sexuality

Sexuality is a pervasive theme in The History Boys. Bennett — himself a gay man who was reluctant to discuss his sexuality publicly for decades — uses the play to explore desire, repression, and the complex power dynamics of sexual attraction.

The Sexual Spectrum

The play presents sexuality not as binary but as a spectrum:

Character	Sexuality	Key detail
Hector	Gay / bisexual (married but attracted to boys)	Acts on desire covertly (touching on motorbike)
Irwin	Gay (closeted)	Attracted to Dakin but paralysed by fear
Posner	Gay (open)	In love with Dakin — unrequited and painful
Dakin	Heterosexual (sexually fluid)	Pursues Irwin; has affair with Fiona
Mrs Lintott	Heterosexual (but sidelined)	Subject to the Headmaster's unwanted advances

Hector's Misconduct

Hector's touching of the boys is the play's most morally challenging element. Bennett refuses to simplify it:

• It is wrong — an abuse of a teacher's position of trust
• But it is not violent — the boys describe it as embarrassing rather than traumatic
• The school knows and tolerates it — institutional complicity
• Hector's disgrace is triggered not by concern for the boys but by a parent's complaint that threatens the school's reputation

Examiner's tip: A Grade 9 response will address the complexity without excusing the behaviour. You might write: "Bennett presents Hector's misconduct not to normalise it but to expose the hypocrisy of an institution that tolerates abuse when convenient and condemns it only when reputation is at stake."

Irwin's Repression

Irwin's closeted sexuality mirrors his intellectual inauthenticity. Just as he performs confidence he does not feel, he conceals desires he cannot acknowledge. His paralysis when Dakin pursues him reveals the gap between his public persona (assured, clever, in control) and his private self (frightened, lonely, yearning).

Posner's Vulnerability

Posner is the character most damaged by the play's sexual politics. He is:

• Openly gay in a world that punishes homosexuality
• In love with someone who cannot love him back (Dakin)
• Doubly marginalised — as a Jew and as a gay man
• Destined to become another Hector — the epilogue hints that he repeats the cycle of lonely, inappropriate attachment

"I'm a Jew. I'm small. I'm homosexual. And I live in Sheffield. I'm fucked." — Posner

Dakin's Sexual Confidence

Dakin's pursuit of Irwin inverts the expected power dynamic between teacher and student. He is the pursuer, not the pursued — and he treats the relationship as another conquest, another exercise of power.

This mirrors his approach to everything: transactional, strategic, and devoid of genuine emotional engagement. His sexuality is an expression of his power, not his vulnerability.

Sexuality and the 1980s Context

The 1980s setting is crucial for understanding the play's treatment of sexuality:

Historical fact	Relevance to the play
Homosexuality partially decriminalised (1967)	But social hostility remained extreme
Section 28 (introduced 1988)	Prohibited "promotion" of homosexuality in schools
AIDS crisis (mid-1980s)	Increased fear and stigma around homosexuality
Gay rights movement nascent	Political activism was growing but far from mainstream

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Theme 6: Class and Social Mobility

The Boys' Class Background

The boys are from working-class and lower-middle-class families in Sheffield. Their grammar school education is their route to social mobility — and the Oxbridge examination is the gateway.

Bennett — who made the same journey from Leeds to Oxford — writes about this with deep personal understanding.

Education as Class Elevator

Stage of the journey	What happens
Grammar school	The boys are selected by ability and given an academic education
A-levels	They achieve excellent results — but this is not enough
Oxbridge preparation	They must learn to perform as if they belong at Oxford or Cambridge
The interview	They must demonstrate cultural fluency — the codes of the elite

The play reveals that academic ability alone is insufficient for social mobility. The boys must also acquire:

• Cultural capital — the literature, music, and references that Oxbridge expects (Hector's gift)
• Strategic thinking — the ability to present ideas with flair and originality (Irwin's contribution)
• Social confidence — the ability to perform as if they belong in elite spaces

Class and Language

Bennett uses language to mark class distinctions:

• The boys speak in Yorkshire dialect and colloquial English
• Irwin carefully modulates his accent — performing a classlessness that conceals his origins
• Hector speaks with deliberate erudition — using quotation and literary language as a form of class armour
• The Headmaster speaks in management jargon — the language of bureaucracy

Examiner's tip: Note how Irwin's lie about attending Oxford (he actually went to Bristol) is a class performance. He reinvents himself to fit the world he wants to inhabit — just as he teaches the boys to reinvent their arguments to fit what examiners want.

Rudge and the Myth of Meritocracy

Rudge's admission to Oxford — not through academic brilliance but because his father works as a college servant there — punctures the myth of pure meritocracy. The system is not as fair as it claims:

"My dad's a builder. Well, he's a college servant at Corpus Christi. It's the same thing." — Rudge

This moment reveals that social connections, not just academic merit, determine who gets access to elite institutions.

Sheffield and the North-South Divide

Sheffield represents the industrial North — a world of manual labour, economic decline, and limited horizons. Oxford and Cambridge represent the privileged South — a world of intellectual leisure, cultural abundance, and career advancement.