Brideshead Revisited in Around the World in 80 Books

Apr 24, 2013 Greer rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013-books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. For me the overriding emotion evoked by this novel is nostalgia. As narrator Charles Ryder states, "My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning in war-time. These memories which are my life -- for we possess nothing certainly except the past -- were always with me."

Charles is eaten up with nostalgia. When we first meet him, it's nostalgia for a life he's never had, as represented by the Marchmains -- through them he found that "low door in the wall...which opened For me the overriding emotion evoked by this novel is nostalgia. As narrator Charles Ryder states, "My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning in war-time. These memories which are my life -- for we possess nothing certainly except the past -- were always with me."

Charles is eaten up with nostalgia. When we first meet him, it's nostalgia for a life he's never had, as represented by the Marchmains -- through them he found that "low door in the wall...which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden." Raised in a pedestrian upper-class household by an emotionally distant father, Charles is drawn first to the rich, titled and dramatic Sebastian Marchmain and later to his sister Julia. Whereas Charles and his father are strangers, the Marchamains are emotionally enmeshed (sometimes with disasterous results). Charles is agnostic; the Marchmains deeply Catholic. Later when his relationships with the family disintegrates, Charles is filled with nostalgia for what he's lost. He only truly seems to come alive through his interactions with the Marchmains, and during the times they are out of his life, to be a half-formed person. Perhaps his conversion to Catholicism near the end is driven in part by a desire to maintain a connection to this family.

One thing I find interesting is that although I couldn't be more different in philosophical outlook than Waugh (he was a conservative misanthrope who idolized the upper classes and I fall more to the liberal humanist side), I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The writing was beautiful. Waugh was a man of strong opinions, and yet the novel never felt preachy or like the art was merely being put to the service of advancing a particular point. Characters who according to the conventional morality of that time might be seen as "black sheep" were portrayed quite sympathetically (Cara, Anthony Blanche, Sebastian, Julia) whereas those who clung to conventional morality were often portrayed as lacking (Lady Marchmain and Bridey). The story and characters are open to a number of different interpretations.

I don't know that Waugh succeeded in his goal of showing "the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters." Once Julia breaks off her relationship with Charles on religious grounds, we hear very little about her. We have no way of knowing if she is at peace or not. And we only hear about Sebastian second-hand from Cordelia -- it sounds like he is less unhappy living at the monastery, but he certainly still seems troubled. We are to presume that Charles has also been acted upon by divine grace due to the subtle references to his conversion. But in the end he finds value in painful past events in the fact that the chapel is open for the soldiers, but nothing about how he's been personally affected by his conversion. ...more

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