This is unheard-of in modern fiction. Stephen Dedalus must leave the world of Jesuit sermons. It offends our fastidiousness.
This tactic, or alchemy, if you will, whereby Waugh obliges us to take seriously the demand laid on his characters that they face their choices in the light of Catholic teaching, is paralleled by another tactic, namely, that even though the Faith is, in some sense, the heroine of the story, nevertheless, every single exemplar of that Faith is a very poor icon. We may survey the characters to see if this is so. First, of course, there is Sebastian. What a dazzling, coruscating figure he is. Young, beautiful, witty, acerb, cavalier, infinitely cultivated: which of us is not left plodding in the dust as his barouche-landau whirls by?
He seems to know, and be long since at home in, everything that marks the precincts where life is lived with grace and civility: cigars, wine, clothes, art, repartee, persiflage, eccentricity—Sebastian is the very avatar of all of this. He would seem to stand at a polar extreme from the dowdy world of religious belief. Are you struggling against temptation? This is the note struck in Brideshead Revisited. Whereas religion ordinarily has to creep apologetically, or lurch awkwardly, onto the stage, here it dances out in front of our eyes, daring us to cavil or carp.
We are not sure how we might gainsay it. But there is something vastly civilized about Bridey at the same time. He has no vanity at all, and he is transparent and utterly without malice. But he can be heavy-footed. It is a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin with Rex or Charles or both—I have always avoided inquiry into the details of your menage—but in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest. So far, Catholicism is not being very compellingly, or attractively, represented by the Catholics among whom our agnostic narrator Charles finds himself.
But there is their wonderful little sister Cordelia. She also thinks it would be a good idea if Charles chipped in five shillings so she can buy yet another African goddaughter. But Cordelia turns out to be a girl, and presently a young woman of vast integrity, generosity of spirit, joy, and self-effacement. In this same conversation with Charles, she speaks of Lady Marchmain, their mother.
Lady Marchmain has died by this late point in the story. No one could really hate a saint, could they? But what are we to make of Lady Marchmain? This is all innocent enough; but we discover in the story that Lady Marchmain is something of a dragon.
It may be because of her sheer power over her children, exercised ever so softly and elegantly, that they all have such problems. And so once again, we find a reason why Catholicism need not win us over.
Look at what a termagant Catholic piety has made of Lady Marchmain. Which brings us to Julia, long since deeply embroiled in a life of sexual havoc. Why should I be allowed to understand that, and not you, Charles? How do you present a drawn-out, highly-charged deathbed scene without sloshing into the worst sort of bathos and treacle?
Victorian novels and Hollywood movies have made us all quite justifiably skittish about deathbed scenes. But Waugh seems to bring this one off. It is doubly threatened with sentimentalism, since not only do we have the dying man surrounded by his family, we also have our agnostic Charles, having reached the crisis in his own recalcitrant itinerary. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.
How do you do a conversion scene? The perils are legion. Only in the epilogue, when we are back in the bleak present with Charles, nineteen years later, do we find him, in , with his army unit having been ordered to bivouac, unbeknownst to him, on the immense Brideshead estate.
He steps into the little chapel in the house. 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, turning towards the camp… Something quite remote from anything the builders intended had come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame—a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs … that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home… It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.
That is language that sails very near the wind. One false word, and we would capsize into sentimentalism.
But I think Waugh brings it off. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you. Some of the techniques listed in Brideshead Revisited may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url. Lord Marchmain has renounced Catholicism and is very hostile to the Church.
Charles is totally against the idea, but Julia seems unsure. Charles is horrified at first, but soon realizes that this has always been inevitable. After this, Julia breaks up with Charles because she says she must return to the Catholic Church and cannot get a divorce or remarry. Charles leaves her bitterly and despises her.
World War II breaks out in , and Charles joins the army. As he wanders around Brideshead, which has been converted into a military base, he is upset at the destruction the soldiers have caused.
However, after he visits the chapel, which is now open and used by the soldiers, he begins to think that perhaps there is a purpose to all the change and upheaval caused by the war. In light of this, Charles begins to feel that he cannot control how things change over time, and this makes him feel better and inspires him to have hope for the future. Brideshead Revisited. Plot Summary.
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