Brideshead Revisited
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 The first UK edition of Brideshead Revisited. |
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| Author | Evelyn Waugh |
|---|---|
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Little, Brown & Co |
| Released | 1945 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Followed by | Brideshead Regained (Unauthorised Sequel) |
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel, "deals with what is theologically termed, 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself". This is achieved by an examination of the aristocratic Flyte family, as seen by the narrator, Charles Ryder.
Time included Brideshead Revisited in its list of "All-time 100 Novels." In various letters, Waugh himself refers to the novel a number of times as his "magnum opus"; however, in 1950 he wrote to Graham Greene saying "I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled." In Fathers and Sons (2004), a biography of five generations of the Waugh family, Alexander Waugh (son of Auberon and grandson of Evelyn) quotes Evelyn's preface to the 1960 revised edition of Brideshead. In this preface, Evelyn explains the circumstances in which the novel was written, in the six months between December 1944 and June 1945 following a minor parachute accident. He is mildly disparaging of the novel, saying; "It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster — the period of soya beans and Basic English — and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language which now, with a full stomach, I find distasteful."
Brideshead Revisited was brought to the screen in the ITV drama serialisation of 1981, produced by Granada Television. A film adaptation of the book is currently in pre-production, scheduled for release in 2008, which will concentrate solely on the relationship between Charles and Julia.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at an unnamed Oxford University college (though critics have suggested Waugh used Hertford College as his model; in the television series Charles Ryder wears a St Edmund Hall tie), and Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of an aristocratic family and himself an undergraduate at Christ Church, become friends. Sebastian takes Charles to his family's palatial home, Brideshead Castle, where Charles eventually meets the rest of the Flyte family, including Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte.
During the holiday Charles returns home, where he lives with his father. Scenes between Charles and his father Ned (Edward) provide some of the best-known comic scenes in the novel. During the holiday he is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian incurs a minor injury. Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the summer together.
Sebastian's family is Catholic. Religious considerations arise frequently among the family, and Catholicism influences their lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always assumed Christianity to be "without substance or merit." Sebastian, in some ways a troubled young man, learns to find greater solace in alcohol than in religion, and descends into that habit, drifting away from the family over a two-year period, which occasions Charles' own estrangement from the Flytes. Yet Charles is fated to re-encounter the Flyte family over the years, and eventually forms a relationship with Julia, who by that time is married but separated from the wealthy but uncouth Canadian entrepreneur, Rex Mottram.
Charles plans to divorce his own wife — who has been unfaithful — so he and Julia can marry. However, motivated by a comment by her brother and by her father's deathbed return to the faith, Julia decides that she can no longer live in sin, and for that reason can no longer contemplate marriage to Charles. Lord Marchmain's reception of the sacrament of Extreme Unction also influences Charles, who had been "in search of love in those days" when he first met Sebastian, "that low door in the wall...which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden," a metaphor that informs the work on a number of levels.¹ Waugh desired that the book should be about the "operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters."
During the Second World War, Ryder, now an army officer after establishing a career as an architectural artist, is billeted at Brideshead, once home to many of his affections. It occurs to him that builders' efforts were not in vain, even when their purposes may appear, for a time, to be frustrated.
[edit] Motifs and other points of interest
[edit] Catholicism
Taking into account the background of the author, the most significant theme of the book is Catholicism. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and the book is considered to be an attempt to express the Catholic faith in secular literary form. Waugh wrote to his literary agent A. D. Peters, "I hope the last conversation with Cordelia gives the theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that the theologians won't recognise it." Considering his readership, who were generally urbane and cosmopolitan, a sentimental or a didactic approach would not have worked. Sentimentalism would have cheapened the story while didacticism would have repelled a secular audience through excessive sermonising. Instead, the book brings the reader, through the narration of the agnostic Charles Ryder, in contact with the severely flawed but deeply Catholic Marchmain family. While many novels of the same era portray Catholics as the flatfooted people put on the spot by brilliant non-believers, Brideshead Revisited turns the table on the agnostic Charles Ryder (and presumably the reader as well) and scrutinises his secular values, which are tacitly portrayed to fall short of the deeper humanity and spirituality of the Catholic faith.
The Catholic themes of divine grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book. Most of the major characters undergo a conversion in some way or another. Lord Marchmain, who lived as an adulterer, is reconciled with the Church on his deathbed. Julia, who is involved in an extramarital affair with Charles, comes to feel this relationship is immoral and decides to separate from Charles in spite of her great attachment to him. Sebastian, the charming and flamboyant alcoholic, ends up in service to a monastery while struggling against his alcoholism. Even Cordelia has some sort of conversion: from being the "worst" behaved schoolgirl her headmistress has ever seen, to serving in the hospital bunks of the Spanish Civil War. Most significant is Charles's apparent conversion, which is expressed very subtly (otherwise, it would have been sentimental); at the end of the book, set 19 years after the main thread of the novel, Charles kneels down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and says a prayer with "ancient words newly learned" — implying recent instruction in the catechism. Waugh speaks of his belief in grace in a letter to Lady Mary Lygon: "I believe that everyone in his (or her) life has the moment when he is open to Divine Grace. It's there, of course, for the asking all the time, but human lives are so planned that usually there's a particular time — sometimes, like Hubert, on his deathbed — when all resistance is down and Grace can come flooding in." Aside from Grace and Reconciliation, other Catholic themes in the book are the Communion of Saints, Faith and Vocation.
The same themes were criticised by Waugh's contemporaries. Henry Yorke, a fellow novelist, wrote to Waugh, "The end was not for me. As you can imagine my heart was in my mouth all through the deathbed scene, hoping against hope that the old man would not give way, that is, take the course he eventually did." And Edmund Wilson, who had praised Waugh as the hope of the English novel, wrote "The last scenes are extravagantly absurd, with an absurdity that would be worthy of Waugh at his best if it were not — painful to say — meant quite seriously."
[edit] Nostalgia for the Age of English Nobility
The Marchmain Family, to some, is a symbol of a dying breed — the English nobility. One reads in the book that Brideshead has "the atmosphere of a better age," and, referring to the deaths of Lady Teresa Marchmain's brothers in the Great War, "these men must die to make a world for Hooper ... so that things might be safe for the travelling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat, wet handshake, his grinning dentures." This is viewed by some as elitism. According to Martin Amis, the book "squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly."[1]
[edit] Charles and Sebastian's relationship
The precise nature of Charles' and Sebastian's relationship remains a topic of considerable debate; are they simply close friends, or does Waugh mean to imply a physical relationship between the characters? Given that much of the first half of the novel circles around the initial encounter, friendship, and falling-away of these central characters, this issue continues to pique the curiosity of readers.
A frequent interpretation is that Charles and Sebastian had a passionate yet platonic relationship, an immature albeit strongly felt attachment that prefigures future heterosexual relationships. Indeed Cara, Lord Marchmain's mistress, says as much to Charles in the context of the novel itself — that his relationship with Sebastian forms part in a process of emotional development "typical to the English and the Germans". Waugh himself said that "Charles's romantic affection for Sebastian is part due to the glitter of the new world Sebastian represents, part to the protective feeling of a strong towards a weak character, and part a foreshadowing of the love for Julia which is to be the consuming passion of his mature years."
Others draw an alternative conclusion from the line "our naughtiness was high on the list of grave sins", although the "naughtiness" in question could refer to the boys' gluttony, not to mention the sloth and greed that characterize their carefree days, rather than homosexual acts per se. The latter interpretation is supported by the fact that a minor character, Anthony Blanche, is portrayed as unambiguously homosexual in the book.
[edit] Television adaptation in 1981
The book was adapted for television by the producer Derek Granger and Martin Thompson after the initial script by John Mortimer had been rejected. It was directed by Charles Sturridge (part of one or more episodes by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and starred Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder, Anthony Andrews as Lord Sebastian Flyte, Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain, Claire Bloom as Lady Marchmain, Diana Quick as Lady Julia Flyte, and Jane Asher as Celia Ryder; also featuring Phoebe Nicholls as Lady Cordelia Flyte, John Gielgud as Edward Ryder, Simon Jones as Lord Brideshead, Nickolas Grace as Anthony Blanche, Stéphane Audran as Cara, Lord Marchmain's lover, and Charles Keating as Rex Mottram.
The Oxford scenes were largely filmed at Hertford College (where Waugh studied), Wadham and Christ Church Colleges. The location for Brideshead was Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Scenes on the deck of a transatlantic liner were filmed aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2. By the standards of British television, the drama series of the late 1970s was lavish; Granada Television's broadcasting franchise was up for competitive renewal in 1981 so the company designed Brideshead Revisited to prove themselves as a quality company.
It was shown in the US on PBS and was considered daring at the time for its willingness to show an extended fornication scene between Charles Ryder and Julia Flyte with full breast exposure and implied penetration and joint hip movements.
The memorable theme with a high baroque trumpet was composed by Geoffrey Burgon.
In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, the adaptation was placed 10th.
In 1974 Irons and Andrews had appeared, with Nicholls' sister Kate, as college friends in the last few episodes of the BBC's serialisation of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels.
[edit] Trivia
- "Et in Arcadia ego", the title of the first part of the novel, is a Latin phrase which means "I am even in Arcadia", with the implied speaker being Death. In the novel, while at Oxford, Ryder purchases a skull with the motto on it.
- Many of the principals in Brideshead are considered by some people to be derived from notable characters in British society during the Interwar period. These include:
- Alexander Flyte, Marquess of Marchmain: William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp
- Anthony Blanche: reported variously as either Anthony Blunt or Harold Acton (or Brian Howard)
- Sebastian Flyte: Stephen Tennant
- Sebastian's teddy bear, Aloysius, was based on John Betjeman's Archie from Waugh's Oxford days.
[edit] Pop culture references
- On Frasier, when Frasier was trying to tell a co-worker obsessed with Star Trek that it's not real and "just a TV show", the co-worker retorted "So was Brideshead Revisited."
- In Dear Wendy, the Dandies congratulate one another with what they refer to as a "Brideshead stutter."
- In Season 2, episode 19 of Family Guy entitled "The Story on Page One," Stewie refers to the college campus of Brown University as "very nice...very Brideshead Revisited."
- On The Simpsons episode Catch 'Em If You Can it is one of the number of videos that Moe checks out from the "Adult" video section saying, "Brideshead's going to be revisited tonight!"
In Season One of The West Wing, to prove his knowledge and commitment to PBS, Toby lists his favorite programs: Sesame Street, 'Miss Julia', and Brideshead Revisited.
- In scene 2 of Tom Stoppard's 1993 play 'Arcadia', one character refers to another character who attends Oxford as "Brideshead Regurgitated." Et in Arcadia ego, the Latin phrase which is the title of the first chapter of Brideshead Revisited, is also a central theme to Tom Stoppard's play.
[edit] Unauthorised sequel
Brideshead Regained, Continuing the Memoirs of Charles Ryder by Michael Johnston was published in 2003 by akanos. The book deals with Ryder's career as a war artist and his subsequent reunion with the major characters from Brideshead Revisited. Currently the book's legal status is in dispute and the sequel is unauthorised by the estate of Evelyn Waugh with sales limited to certain internet sites.
[edit] Notes
- ^ see The War Against Cliché
[edit] External links
- 1945 New York Times Book Review on Brideshead Revisited
- A Companion to Brideshead Revisited (adapted for both book and serialisation)
- Downloadable audio about Brideshead Revisited and Evelyn Waugh from EWTN
- Brideshead Revisited at the Internet Movie Database — 1981 mini-series
- Brideshead Revisited at the Internet Movie Database — 2008 movie adaptation
- Article Regarding Waugh and Hollywood
- Encyclopedia of Television
- British Film Institute Screen Online
- Brideshead Revisited — UK TV Schedules and Episode Guide
