Revisiting Brideshead

Evelyn Waugh is considered a major writer, and Brideshead Revisited his masterpiece. I was long in thrall to the novel (and the BBC miniseries that brought the story to a new generation of English and American audiences) but hadn’t picked it up in some time. I did so recently, wondering if my perspective on the novel had changed. Certainly part of the novel’s appeal was the evocation of the relationship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte. Further appeal lay in the geographical, historical, and material settings—Oxford; Europe between the wars; Brideshead itself. Flyte’s family, the Marchmains, are extremely wealthy, Catholic, dysfunctional. I don’t think Waugh would have liked that label any more than I do, but in my recent re-reading it seemed especially apt.

What also came through this time around were various things that I’d missed and, truth be told, lacked the maturity to see before. For one thing, the novel is more melodramatic than I’d remembered. I actually found the dialogue in the final scene between Julia and Charles embarrassing, almost unbelievable. I was also struck by the number of occasions on which various characters convey large amounts of crucial information to Charles in private confidences—he hears a number of rambling, elliptical monologues from Julia, Rex Mottram, Cordelia, Anthony Blanche. In this novel narrated by Charles, an avowed agnostic, it’s interesting how many confessions he hears. Lady Marchmain never struck me as such a terrible person before, but this time around I was really taken aback by her character. She has the best of intentions, but her devotion to her faith frequently blinds her to the ways in which it suppresses and in some cases damages her four children, rendering them incapable of fitting properly into society. This struck me as painfully sad, even tragic.

Cordelia repeats the line from Chesterton that gives the second half of the book its title: the quote refers to an ability to bring back one who wanders far with a mere twitch upon the thread. This quote and the book as a whole have been given a positive read by one Catholic critic—that the power of faith even reconciles all the Marchmains, even the father, in the end. But at what a cost! In her earliest scenes, the youngest daughter, Cordelia, shows signs of what we’ve recently labeled “social intelligence”, but by the book’s end resigns herself to spinsterhood. Sebastian nearly pays for his alcoholism with his life, but also eventually gets both the financial support and the geographical distance he seeks. The elder son, Bridey, has the socio-economic makings of a British elderstatesman, yet it falls to the comically endearing Rex Mottram, a parvenu Canadian, to claim that position. Bridey’s sense of duty to family and church prevents him from claiming his proper position in society. Julia, the beautiful older daughter, also fails to attain her rightful social position, and is pulled back to the dysfunctional family core at the cost of one unhappy marriage and an affair with Charles.

All this was lost on me before, and noticing it this time around felt like I’d made my peace with the novel as Charles makes his with memories. It’s a book that because of its material and moral weightiness easily lends itself to a symbolic, positivistic reading, but I think its truth is darker, sadder, and much more ambiguous. I will be curious to see whether the forthcoming movie version will capture this or not.