Brideshead Revisited
The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, *Brideshead Revisited* looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.
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What an odd book. A more apt title would be Brideshead and Casual Racism Revisited. My my but all the references to inappropriate turns of phrase which I need not repeat here. Some books age well. Some don't. This one hasn't. This book is steeped in a culture that really no longer exists, and because it was written from the perspective of one who lived through such a time with such people, there's no room for explaining it to the rest of us. Particularly us "boorish Colonials". So even though I've heard this is a poignant and oftentimes funny and charming book, brimming with nostalgia and tragedy, I didn't get it. Too much of it seemed frivolous and silly. The people in it hardly seemed people, but caricatures of the uselessly wealthy. They were all the type of people who know how to act and talk but it all comes to nothing. There's no realness beneath their fancy facades. Plus, I felt the narrator to be a callous, grasping fellow. Oh, he's got no money? Better try to get himself an invitation to Brideshead, where they'll pay all his bills. Oh, he's got a wife he doesn't like? Better avoid her at all costs, completely abandon his children, and have an affair with a blank, shallow heiress. Oh, his friend's going in a bad way? Better let him do his own thing. It'll be fine, right?
The real tragedy in all this, I thought, was Sebastian. Here was a man who was brought up on what the narrator calls a bunch of nonsense that wrecked havoc on his psyche, combined with the overwhelming shallowness and, almost, cruelty of the very wealthy to create a man who had no purpose, no happiness, and no escape. All he did was drink and try to forget everything he was. There were references to the fact that he was gay, and that he and the narrator were lovers, but it all sort of came to naught in the end. Personally, I thought that was the root of the trouble: he wanted to love who he wanted to love but his church made it so his conscience was guilty and drove him to drink. But I really don't know because there's not much to go off of, here. And it also certainly didn't seem like he was stopped from loving whoever he wanted to. It seems more like Charles Ryder rejected him and he couldn't see a way to be happy, not that he ever was, so instead he turned to drinking and trying to get away from his family. Really, I wanted the whole book to be about their relationship and I wanted there to be more of a relationship (so much not talking in amongst all the talking). The whole second half of the book was about Charles's doomed love affair with Julia, doomed because of her religion. Because he didn't get her religion so even though she'd never really been that religious, her father's death threw her back into it and she couldn't get over the fact that Charles didn't share her beliefs. Okay. Sure. Whatever floats your boat. But she was boring. She was passionless and he was passionless even as he was declaring his passion. So much of this book was pretty dialogue -- the kind you might hear eavesdropping at Downton Abbey -- and meaningless. Or, if it had meaning, it had meaning to a breed of person entirely different to myself. This might have been one book where I would have benefitted from annotations. For example, Pride and Prejudice is much funnier when someone explains all the jokes. It's a downright hoot. This book left me cold. I felt like I couldn't break below the surface and I also felt like it wasn't my fault as a reader. I was an English major. I know how to pick apart a book. But this one wasn't about literature, it was about the subtle nuances of a culture long gone that I have no real conception of and no great desire to learn about.
The whole reason I even read this book was because of the movie, with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw. The movie is so much the same. I liked both because of their aesthetic. The movie is all clouds and muted neutrals in lovely colors: dove grey and rose pink. There are beautiful scenes and beautiful people being beautiful together. And the score is simply divine. I listen to it often. In fact, I found all the titles of the soundtrack hidden in the book, which made me very happy. But what did I remember of the movie? A dashed romance between Sebastian and Charles. I didn't even remember the Julia bits. So it was beautiful in that lost way of nobles hanging on to Edwardian tradition decades after it should have gone by the bye. It also makes me think of Testament of Youth and Atonement, except that Testament has the badge of being a true story and Atonement the badge of being a good story, full of passion and genuine feelings from the upper classes. Atonement I believe. Atonement I get. Brideshead Revisited? A lovely excursion of an afternoon, soon forgot and left to the past from whence it came.
The real tragedy in all this, I thought, was Sebastian. Here was a man who was brought up on what the narrator calls a bunch of nonsense that wrecked havoc on his psyche, combined with the overwhelming shallowness and, almost, cruelty of the very wealthy to create a man who had no purpose, no happiness, and no escape. All he did was drink and try to forget everything he was. There were references to the fact that he was gay, and that he and the narrator were lovers, but it all sort of came to naught in the end. Personally, I thought that was the root of the trouble: he wanted to love who he wanted to love but his church made it so his conscience was guilty and drove him to drink. But I really don't know because there's not much to go off of, here. And it also certainly didn't seem like he was stopped from loving whoever he wanted to. It seems more like Charles Ryder rejected him and he couldn't see a way to be happy, not that he ever was, so instead he turned to drinking and trying to get away from his family. Really, I wanted the whole book to be about their relationship and I wanted there to be more of a relationship (so much not talking in amongst all the talking). The whole second half of the book was about Charles's doomed love affair with Julia, doomed because of her religion. Because he didn't get her religion so even though she'd never really been that religious, her father's death threw her back into it and she couldn't get over the fact that Charles didn't share her beliefs. Okay. Sure. Whatever floats your boat. But she was boring. She was passionless and he was passionless even as he was declaring his passion. So much of this book was pretty dialogue -- the kind you might hear eavesdropping at Downton Abbey -- and meaningless. Or, if it had meaning, it had meaning to a breed of person entirely different to myself. This might have been one book where I would have benefitted from annotations. For example, Pride and Prejudice is much funnier when someone explains all the jokes. It's a downright hoot. This book left me cold. I felt like I couldn't break below the surface and I also felt like it wasn't my fault as a reader. I was an English major. I know how to pick apart a book. But this one wasn't about literature, it was about the subtle nuances of a culture long gone that I have no real conception of and no great desire to learn about.
The whole reason I even read this book was because of the movie, with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw. The movie is so much the same. I liked both because of their aesthetic. The movie is all clouds and muted neutrals in lovely colors: dove grey and rose pink. There are beautiful scenes and beautiful people being beautiful together. And the score is simply divine. I listen to it often. In fact, I found all the titles of the soundtrack hidden in the book, which made me very happy. But what did I remember of the movie? A dashed romance between Sebastian and Charles. I didn't even remember the Julia bits. So it was beautiful in that lost way of nobles hanging on to Edwardian tradition decades after it should have gone by the bye. It also makes me think of Testament of Youth and Atonement, except that Testament has the badge of being a true story and Atonement the badge of being a good story, full of passion and genuine feelings from the upper classes. Atonement I believe. Atonement I get. Brideshead Revisited? A lovely excursion of an afternoon, soon forgot and left to the past from whence it came.
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This novel, probably Waugh's most famous, ambitiously engages several themes: Catholicism and the push-pull of faith during life's most significant moments; the internal divisions among members of an immensely wealthy family of the titled British gentry; the looming threat of World War II, the call of friendship and of love affairs.
The protagonist is Charles Ryder, whom we meet at the outset when he is an officer during the war and whose company has been moved to the estate of Brideshead, requisitioned for the military's use. Ryder knows the palatial estate intimately, having become nearly part of the Flyte family who had owned it for generations on end. But then Ryder tells the backstory, which began when he was in college at Oxford. There, he becomes close to another new student, Sebastian Flyte, an odd yet endearing young man who is not ashamed to keep a teddy bear and to even talk to it. Sebastian's parents are separated, the father having chuffed off to Italy where he lives with a lady friend. His mother, a devout Catholic, refuses to divorce and lives at the family estate of Brideshead.
Over the course of the novel, Charles becomes increasingly involved with the Flytes, and becomes bewitched by one of Sebastian's younger sisters, Julia. Charles also tries to save a sinking Sebastian from his worst impulses, mostly involving alcohol and a refusal to take life seriously or to make peace with the family dysfunction. Charles, meanwhile, discovers his talent for painting, leaves school early to study in art school.
Charles is based on Evelyn Waugh himself in some respects: both studied art, both eventually embraced Catholicism. Waugh's descriptions are elegant and beautiful, though sometimes overwrought. I happened to read an edition that Waugh had edited and was republished in 1959. I highly recommend reading this version. And yet, for all the grand themes and colorful characters, Charles is not very likeable. While critics considered this novel one of the author's most sentimental, Charles, who is in every scene, maintains a stereotypically British reserve throughout, even during moments when deep feelings within him should have had at least some more vivid expression.
He even turns cold, as when he refers to his young children as his wife's children, and not their children. Though he no longer loves his wife, there is zero feeling expressed for the children of their union. At this point, my neutral feelings toward Charles went into the chill zone.
There is much description of lavish surroundings, particularly the ostentatious, palace-like Brideshead, of meals prepared as if for kings and queens, even a grotesque gift of a live tortoise with a family member's initials set in diamonds on its back. First published in 1944 when privations from the war were still severe, the focus on lost luxuries may be understandable among a set that had been used to such luxury, but it becomes more than a bit much.
About halfway through the book the storyline focuses intensely on the relationship between Charles and Julia and their longing for one another (both are married at this time). Here is how Charles, earlier in their relationship, viewed the tantalizing woman and the scheming, uncultured man to whom she was engaged:
"This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me through the dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by the power of her own beauty, hesitating on the cool edge of life; one who had suddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy story turning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it with her fingertips and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open at her feet and belch forth her titanic servant, the fawning monster who would bring her whatever she asked, but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcome shape."
If you like this sort of very long, yet still superlatively written sentence, you will be enthralled by Brideshead Revisited. (Most sentences are far more manageable length!)
The protagonist is Charles Ryder, whom we meet at the outset when he is an officer during the war and whose company has been moved to the estate of Brideshead, requisitioned for the military's use. Ryder knows the palatial estate intimately, having become nearly part of the Flyte family who had owned it for generations on end. But then Ryder tells the backstory, which began when he was in college at Oxford. There, he becomes close to another new student, Sebastian Flyte, an odd yet endearing young man who is not ashamed to keep a teddy bear and to even talk to it. Sebastian's parents are separated, the father having chuffed off to Italy where he lives with a lady friend. His mother, a devout Catholic, refuses to divorce and lives at the family estate of Brideshead.
Over the course of the novel, Charles becomes increasingly involved with the Flytes, and becomes bewitched by one of Sebastian's younger sisters, Julia. Charles also tries to save a sinking Sebastian from his worst impulses, mostly involving alcohol and a refusal to take life seriously or to make peace with the family dysfunction. Charles, meanwhile, discovers his talent for painting, leaves school early to study in art school.
Charles is based on Evelyn Waugh himself in some respects: both studied art, both eventually embraced Catholicism. Waugh's descriptions are elegant and beautiful, though sometimes overwrought. I happened to read an edition that Waugh had edited and was republished in 1959. I highly recommend reading this version. And yet, for all the grand themes and colorful characters, Charles is not very likeable. While critics considered this novel one of the author's most sentimental, Charles, who is in every scene, maintains a stereotypically British reserve throughout, even during moments when deep feelings within him should have had at least some more vivid expression.
He even turns cold, as when he refers to his young children as his wife's children, and not their children. Though he no longer loves his wife, there is zero feeling expressed for the children of their union. At this point, my neutral feelings toward Charles went into the chill zone.
There is much description of lavish surroundings, particularly the ostentatious, palace-like Brideshead, of meals prepared as if for kings and queens, even a grotesque gift of a live tortoise with a family member's initials set in diamonds on its back. First published in 1944 when privations from the war were still severe, the focus on lost luxuries may be understandable among a set that had been used to such luxury, but it becomes more than a bit much.
About halfway through the book the storyline focuses intensely on the relationship between Charles and Julia and their longing for one another (both are married at this time). Here is how Charles, earlier in their relationship, viewed the tantalizing woman and the scheming, uncultured man to whom she was engaged:
"This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me through the dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by the power of her own beauty, hesitating on the cool edge of life; one who had suddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy story turning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it with her fingertips and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open at her feet and belch forth her titanic servant, the fawning monster who would bring her whatever she asked, but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcome shape."
If you like this sort of very long, yet still superlatively written sentence, you will be enthralled by Brideshead Revisited. (Most sentences are far more manageable length!)
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