Most readers very much enjoyed our first book of the year, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited listing the wonderful descriptive prose and the complex web of characters and plot developments as the main attractions. However, there were a minority of readers who were irritated by what they saw as the vacuous lives of the characters, the constant religious references, and the lack of believability of some of the scenes.
We talked about the fact that upon publication the book was criticised in literary quarters for not focusing on the more fashionable topic of the working-class man and for being too adulatory of the upper classes. There is no doubt that both the author and his narrator, Charles Ryder were infatuated by the world occupied by people like the Flyte family. As the son of a publisher, Waugh was not a member of the upper class and his hopes of being accepted by them were dashed when his brother was sent down from the elite Sherburne College for sexual misbehaviour. Evelyn was forced to attend a less prestigious school which he believed prevented him from being accepted into the better colleges at Oxford. Despite this Waugh went on to befriend many aristocratic people who lived in large country houses and in many ways the book is an elegy for the traditions, values, and way of life of these people which had begun to die away after the second world war.
Not everybody liked Charles Ryder, the narrator and central character of the book, finding him colourless and a bit emotionally shut down. Many had him pinned as the ultimate social climber whose attraction to Sebastian and the Flyte family was more about what they represented - beauty, luxury, wealth, tradition and social standing – than who they were as people. Although some readers cut him some slack due to the early loss of his mother and his upbringing up by a distant father in a dull and lifeless home most of us felt this didn’t excuse his callous treatment of his wife Celia and their children. However, we thought Charles was the ideal narrator who by not being vibrant and interesting himself could better observe and tell the story of those who were. Only someone who has not been raised on sumptuous foods or surrounded by magnificent art and architecture could convey the joyful experience of being exposed to it for the first time as a young man. Descriptions of fresh strawberries, cold champagne, plover’s eggs and beautiful country houses filled with priceless art would have been absorbed like a drug by a population who had been subjected to food rations for years and who had watched their historical buildings being destroyed by the blitz. We were sure they were a huge part of the book’s commercial success when it was published shortly after the war.
Many readers loved the character of Sebastian and we found his trajectory from beautiful, quirky, charming young man to a sick and prematurely aged alcoholic heart-breaking. Readers advanced many theories for his decline. Some said it was his repressed homosexuality which could not be tolerated by his religion (or any religion in those days) that sent him to drink. Others blamed a dysfunctional family dynamic – his father’s departure, his mother’s shame at being deserted, his lack of purpose as the second son or spare, the hands-off parenting practised by the aristocracy and his mother’s attempts to control his every move. Another contingent simply believed that he was born an alcoholic who didn’t get the requisite help. Mostly we saw a 19-year-old who refused to grow up, who was still attached to his Nanny, his teddy, the pursuit of pleasure and getting his own way and concluded that a mix of a mix of factors both genetic and environmental were at play.
We talked about the nature of the relationship between Charles and Sebastian and whether they were lovers or merely romantically attached friends. Some readers were very interested in this question and others thought it didn’t really matter. What was interesting was that same sex attraction was clearly a thing among the upper classes that attended Oxford in the 19330’s and Waugh himself was romantically linked with quite a few young men before going on to marry twice and have seven children. We thought it quite brave of him to incorporate an arguably gay relationship into a novel in 1945 particularly when one of the parties to that relationship was clearly based on himself.
We spent a lot of time talking about Lady Marchmain. Many readers initially blamed her for all the trouble in the Flyte family and branded her a religious fanatic and control freak who alienated people with her rigid beliefs. However, over time, some realised that this view of her was a bit simplistic. When we tried to pinpoint exactly what she did that was so wrong we struggled a bit. Perhaps trying to curtail her son’s drinking by having him supervised and followed when he was away from home was a tad controlling but most readers did not think it was the cause of Sebastian’s compulsive drinking and she didn’t seem to exert undue control over her other children. Removing all access to alcohol from Sebastian when he was at Brideshead was a not so unwise alternative to letting him drink himself to an early death under her nose. Others thought she should have arranged help for his addiction, but we weren’t sure that had Sebastian been offered rehabilitation therapy he would have taken advantage of it. A few readers thought she should have simply turned his remittance money off forcing him to provide for himself and grow up, but we all agreed how hard it is to deny support to someone who is still a child in so many respects. The balance between looking after someone and letting them make their own mistakes is a difficult one to strike particularly when the stakes are so high. Many blamed her fervent religiosity for everything that was wrong with the Flyte family but couldn’t really say why. Others thought that her shame and pain at being abandoned by her husband would have been great and she might have needed her faith to get through it. After discussing all this quite a few readers thought Cordelia’s assertion that ‘when people wanted to hate God, they hated Mummy’ might have some merit as did Cara’s observation ‘that Lady Marchmain was a good and simple woman’ who had been loved by a man (Lord Marchmain) who had not grown up and who instead of hating all the illusions of his childhood that had not come to fruition, hated his wife instead. We remarked how often in literature mothers get the blame for their children’s unhappiness when the father has been equally if not more remiss.
Julia was an enigmatic figure for some readers. We wondered why someone so beautiful and wealthy would want to marry Rex but we could see why she was attracted to his drive and ability to get what he wanted and his many points of difference from her own family. The fact that he was unconcerned with society’s conventions and was prepared to marry a catholic whose father had run off with his mistress also helped. Not many readers thought the marriage would last. As for her second love interest, Charles, we couldn’t understand the attraction and were not surprised when she broke off their engagement. A few readers believed her explanation that she could never be happy in a marriage that was not blessed and accepted by God ( or more accurately the catholic church) but most thought that was just an excuse to get out of a relationship with a boring and not very nice man who saw her brother every time he looked at her. We hoped she found fulfilment and purpose nursing soldiers in Spain.
Religion is omnipresent in the book and Waugh himself said the theme of the novel was the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters. Since many people who liked the book found the religious references to divine grace mystifying and totally unbelievable, we concluded that it didn’t matter if a reader’s interpretation of a book did not accord with the author’s stated intent. A book gains its life in the mind of the reader and this one could easily be enjoyed as an absorbing tale about an upper-class family and their friend set during a time when the world was undergoing great change.
However, many readers were very interested in the religious aspects of the book and the role faith played in the lives of Charles and the Flytes. One reader came up with the interesting theory that the character of Nanny Hawkins represented religion or God in the story – always present and offering unconditional love and support from the beginning right through to the end of the story.
By choosing an agnostic as narrator we thought Waugh initially encouraged the reader to view the catholic faith as a complex game with interminable rules that produce ridiculous outcomes. Questions such as who can marry who and who can get to heaven are all dependent on fulfilling sets of criteria that even the staunch Catholics can’t agree on. Cordelia, Bridey and even Lord Marchmain’s mistress Cara all have their views on these manmade laws. Many readers identified with Charles as he watched on in horror as the priest was brought to Lord Marchmain’s death bed against his wishes and some believed that Lord Marchmain’s sign of the cross was an attempt to make the priest go away rather than a genuine acceptance of the Lord’s forgiveness. However, for quite a few readers, the theme of faith became more developed from this scene onwards and it was one of the most moving in the book. They felt that witnessing this genuine sign by Lord Marchmain started Charles on the way to finding a belief in God and the novel ends with him returning as an army captain to a dilapidated and repurposed Brideshead where his day is cheered by saying a prayer, ‘ an ancient, newly learned form of words’ before the flame in the Chapel. The reference to Charles’ conversion is subtle and many readers missed it, but for Waugh, who converted to Catholicism in his thirties and for whom the book was at least partly autobiographical, it was important that his narrator find peace in a belief in God.
Perhaps one of the most interesting religious theories we discussed related to Sebastian and his struggles with alcohol. Although he describes himself to Charles as a half heathen, Charles noted that he always ‘took mass’ and some readers believed that he had the most simple and unquestioning faith of all the Flytes. When he tells Charles that you can believe something just because it’s a lovely story he is talking about the beautiful parts of religion. The great art and music, the romantic stories, the colourful ornamentation of churches with their stained-glass windows. However, he was unprepared for the more difficult aspects of his faith namely the need to forgo self-gratification sometimes and put others first. As Sebastian’s life moves away from the pursuit of pleasure and beauty and he learns to deal with suffering and care for someone other than himself he is drawn closer to God until he finds some kind of peace as a lay brother in a monastery. We remembered Cordelia saying that Sebastian had a vocation to religious life but hated that he had it and we wondered whether drinking alcohol was his way of blocking out the voice of an innate spirituality that demanded that he give up his childish life of pleasure and turn towards more meaningful things. One reader observed that one of the most enduringly successful addiction programs - alcoholics anonymous -has a religious underpinning.
For many readers their favourite characters were those who provided the humour. We loved Charles Father’s glee at refusing Charles any financial help when he ‘ran short’ and thought it was pretty good parenting since Charles, with all his faults, at least distinguished himself from the other characters by working and supporting himself throughout his life. We thought Cordelia with her novenas for her pet pig Francis Xavier, and her collecting five shillings to buy African God daughters was like the court jester who illuminates the truth with her funny observations. Rex Mottram’s attempts at conversion and his bemusement at not being able to buy his way into the Catholic church, Bridey endlessly pondering whether he should be a Jesuit, a soldier or a politician while earnestly collecting matchboxes and Celia’s ruthless socialising all provided lighter moments and showcased Waugh’s brilliance as a satirical writer.
Whether we read it as a gripping family saga or a deeply reflective religious novel, Brideshead Revisited generated lots of interesting discussion over a range of topics and almost everyone was happy to have read it. As usual we learned and laughed a lot about literature and life.
