The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (September 2025)

[Alwynne]

Nigeyb wrote: "I don’t recall the war ever getting a mention either. Nothing really bad ever impinges into his worlds."

I suppose in the later novels Roderick Spode hints at bad things to come but he's undermined pretty ruthlessly; and made to seem quite foolish.

[Nigeyb]

Ah yes. Well remembered

[Alwynne]

Nigeyb wrote: "Ah yes. Well remembered"

I think he just stood out because he tied to the real world. I find time in these quite hard to work out, the stories stretch out over so many years! And some characters like Bingo experience quite significant changes as far as their lives go but Jeeves and Wooster seem to stand still. They're like a fixed point that everyone else relates back to.

[Tania]

No, it doesn't really come up, apart from his poking fun at the brown shorts. I would imagine that for many people, having lost loved ones and/or going through the trenches, it would be pretty great to be reading something that was essentially light, frothy, funny, and entertaining.

[Tania]

A bit of a tangent, but one of the criticisms often levelled at Jane Austen is that the Napoleonic war is never mentioned. Does that mean that all the other writers who were allowed a place in the canon and who were writing at that time did feature it?

[Alwynne]

Tania wrote: "A bit of a tangent, but one of the criticisms often levelled at Jane Austen is that the Napoleonic war is never mentioned. Does that mean that all the other writers who were allowed a..."

I've never personally thought of that as a weakness. But the preponderance of officers naval/army did always give me a sense of how central war/impending war was to the society Austen's characters are living in. It's like the way in which slavery haunts Mansfield Park.

[Alwynne]

Tania wrote: "No, it doesn't really come up, apart from his poking fun at the brown shorts. I would imagine that for many people, having lost loved ones and/or going through the trenches, it would be pretty grea..."

Yes, it made me think of the discussions about popular TV shows and whether or not they'd include the pandemic in their storylines.

[Roman Clodia]

Alwynne wrote: "Tania wrote: "A bit of a tangent, but one of the criticisms often levelled at Jane Austen is that the Napoleonic war is never mentioned."

Alwynne wrote: "But the preponderance of officers naval/army did always give me a sense of how central war/impending war was to the society Austen's characters are living in. It's like the way in which slavery haunts Mansfield Park"

I've always felt it's a bit of a cliche that Austen ignores 'real life' for domestic concerns. As Alwynne says, there's a sense in most of her books (not Emma?) of military readiness: the glamorous officers of P&P, Fanny's real anxiety about her naval brother (William?) in Mansfield Park, and the Portsmouth scenes. Persuasion is obviously the most engaged with Naval life, and war is the source of Captain Wentworth's money and status.

There are also lots of indications of empire in objects: cashmere shawls, muslin dresses, cotton, as well as the already-mentioned slave-worked sugar plantations as the source of Mansfield wealth.

It almost seems like another way of diminishing a female novelist, to reduce her books to 'the marriage plot' - whereas I think Austen is immensely robust in terms of money and love.