BOOK REVIEW: Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

FROM the pen of an author who mostly wrote satires Brideshead Revisited is a refreshingly reflective, sensitive and multi-layered novel. Although set in the1920s it has, to me, a very relevant and contemporary feel. It’s like it was Evelyn Waugh’s intention to write a ‘modern’ tale in his own time, but was keen that its relevance might outlive him and touch readers of the future. During a luncheon party at Oxford, a scene set in 1923, Anthony Blanche recites a section of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland which had only been published the previous year. There are details throughout the novel, some more overt than others, such as the relative ease with which it was possible to travel, which hint this may have been something the author was striving for.

The Marchmains are a highly dysfunctional family. Each member is battling with their own emotional demons, insecurities and self-doubt. Waugh tells the story in beautiful language, almost poetic in places. He takes each character on his or her own personal journey. By the end of the novel each has undergone a transition of one form or another. Devoutly Catholic, the family’s faith rules their lives and controls all who come into contact with them. Even Charles Ryder, through whom the story is narrated, an agnostic prior to meeting the Marchmains, is in the end, unable to withstand its pull. This is evidenced, very subtly, in the last few sentences of the book when Charles goes to the chapel:-

‘There was one part of the house I had not yet visited and I went there now.

The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar.
I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left.’

This aspect, that religious belief, particularly that of a Christian nature, can be so all-consuming and monopolising fascinates me and makes the discovery, of how dysfunctional a family the Marchmains really are, all the more shocking and disconcerting.

Charles meets Sebastian Flyte, the younger of the family’s two sons, in his second term at Oxford. They quickly form a strong bond and friendship which lasts several years. There is certainly an attraction between the two men, but the precise nature of their relationship is left open to speculation. Personally I find it appealing that I, as the reader, am allowed to interpret the affinity they share in my own way, rather than being told precisely. It adds an air of hushed mystery to the story.

I believe Charles feels an affection close to love for Sebastian. In fact, much later, when he has lost touch with his friend, but is forming a relationship with his sister, Julia, he admits as much. To Sebastian their friendship is, I think, more an escape from the claustrophobic atmosphere of wealth, custom and religion in which he was raised, but didn’t feel comfortable in.

The novel begins and ends twenty years later when Charles, having lost love, marriage and his children, returns to Brideshead as an army officer. The Marchmain’s former home is now an army camp. Only one of its previous occupants remains. Just as when Charles had met her during his first visit to Brideshead with Sebastian ‘on a cloudless day in June’ with which his recollections begin, Nanny Hawkins continues to live in the old nursery on the top floor, while the rest of the Castle serves as army barracks. In spite of how different the place is now and all that has happened to him in the intervening years, the drudgery of army life lifts from Charles’ shoulders as he contemplates the pleasure of being back at Brideshead for a time.

Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte are the most finely drawn characters in the novel. Waugh’s vibrant descriptions makes them step out from the page and stay with the reader long after the end. Some of the others therefore, especially Julia Flyte, who is no less important to the plot, appear a little two-dimensional by comparison. In contrast the protagonists’ fellow students, being lesser characters, are surprisingly vividly portrayed. The homosexual Anthony Blanche is so well depicted, in fact, that it’s easy to wish he played a greater role in the story.

REF. Evelyn Waugh : Brideshead Revisited ~ The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder Publisher: Chapman and Hall (1945 first UK edition), hb

22/05/10