49 pages • 1 hour read
Noël CowardBlithe Spirit
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Charles
His career as an author not only initiates the plot but also underscores the play’s thematic concerns about the divide between reality and appearances. An author creates a fiction when they write. Charles plans the séance so he can use the events as inspiration for his next novel, but Charles also creates a fiction in his own life in his performance as a charming and conventional husband. He is a “nice-looking man of about forty, wearing a loose-fitting velvet smoking-jacket” (2). He displays his wit in his conversations, yet the performative aspect to his character is subtly revealed from his first interaction with Ruth. He calls his wife “dear” (4), “my love” (5), and “darling” (5) in an effort to appease her, not out of spontaneous affection. The supernatural pushes him into unfamiliar territory where he reveals his real nature.
Elvira and Ruth paint a dark picture of being married to Charles. Charles, according to Ruth and later Charles himself, has been dominated by women throughout his life. Yet as Ruth observes, “Just because you’ve always been dominated by them, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you know anything about them” (35). He claims to have been dominated by Elvira, but her description of their marriage suggests the opposite. Elvira describes him as “irascible” and “an absolute pig” who “hit [her] with a billiard cue” (30). He was “[o]ften unkind” to her “when she was alive” (30). Ruth describes that his “view of women is academic to say the least” (35). Ruth describes how his “roguish flippancy” is “nauseating” (33). His desire “to be witty at all costs” causes him to be “almost supercilious” (5). When Ruth hesitates to believe Charles has seen a ghost, he insults Ruth and refuses to think of her emotions despite the absurdity of the situation. His discussions with both women devolve into fights and insults, and he eventually leaves the women to deal with the devolved situation on their own while he goes on vacation away from the house.
Ruth
Ruth is defined by her role as wife. She works to present a perfect house, a happy marriage, and herself as the perfect hostess. In addition, Ruth’s first marriage contrasts sharply with Charles’s. The play reveals how deeply flawed Charles and Elvira’s marriage was. Ruth’s “first husband was a great deal older” than her (5) while Elvira “died so young” (6). Charles also suggests that she thinks she “missed out all along the line” (5). Coward leaves open many possibilities for her first marriage including gold digging, grooming, and sincere love. This past marriage underscores the reality for women, who had to marry to have a stable life and socially acceptable sexual encounter.
Ruth is often described as a nag. For Charles, this seems to arise from Ruth’s ability to manage the household, as she guides and directs Edith in her duties and designs the house and gardens. She works to fulfill her role as wife by supporting Charles’s writing and trying to reassure a shaken Charles with a drink. Yet her expectations for an equally performing husband are restrictive for Charles. He does not thrive under her social expectations and limits, which causes him to blame Ruth and label her a nag. When she doubts he sees a ghost, he frames it as a lack of support and faith. Ruth’s unwillingness to blindly follow and her need to comment upon everything contribute to both her disputes with Charles and her own unlikeable character.
In the play as a whole Ruth represents a stereotypical wife from the 1940s in both how she fulfills her expected roles in the household and in how she embodies the typical complaints of the stereotypical husband of the time.
Elvira
Elvira’s large personality gives her a strong presence in the play before she is onstage. Reflecting on their marriage, Charles “remember[s] her very distinctly” (4). She is “fascinating,” maddening,” beautiful, and “morally untidy” (4). Despite her lack of body, her physicality and sexuality are prominent aspects of her characters. When she tries to win back Charles, she often falls back on sexual humor and sexuality. This trait also leads to her death, as she catches pneumonia while she pursues a romantic, sexual encounter at all costs. Her personality serves as a foil to the more demure and conventional Ruth.
Elvira is an extremely selfish character. Both Charles and Ruth say as much, and Elvira’s overwhelming desire to have Charles all to herself for all of time leads to many of the negative events of the play. She proves that she will kill Charles just to get what she wants, though her plan backfires and brings Ruth to share her spiritual realm instead.
Madame Arcati
The veracity of Madame Arcati’s powers are not definitively proven either way. Madame Arcati has, according to her, inherited her powers as her “mother was a medium” (13). She had her “first trance” when she was four and her “first ectoplasmic manifestation” when she was five and a half (13). She has been a “professional in London for years” (8). In addition, she “disapprove[s] of fortune tellers most strongly” because there is “[t]oo much guesswork and fake mixed up with it, even when the gift is genuine” (14). Her comment suggests she believes she is helping people and providing accurate information. In the end, the Condomines must depend on her rather than ridicule her. She approaches the supernatural experiences with the gusto of a scientist making a discovery. She conducts research where she finds a “formula” in “Edmonson’s Witchcraft and its Byways” (65). Despite her profession and the criticism of others, she ends up being the most honest. She is genuine in her belief in her own powers, even though it is unclear how much she actually contributed to the supernatural events.
Coward uses stereotypes and tropes associated with mediums. Madame Arcati’s dress matches up with the Roma stereotypes, as she is “dressed not too extravagantly but with a decided bias towards the barbaric” (9). She plays into the expectations herself, noting that in her séances the lights “had to be dim, you know; the clients expect it” (10). Coward uses these tropes for humorous effect. Turning the lights on and off, singing childish rhymes, and her general theatrics are a part of the farcical nature of the play.
Despite her spiritual profession, Madame Arcati is described in starkly physical terms. She has “a rule never to eat red meat before [she] work[s],” as it “sometimes has an odd effect” on her abilities (12). She eats cucumber sandwiches and drinks dry martinis on her visits. Cycling “stimulates” her, and she rides many miles to the Condomines’ house (10). After trances, she “[a]lways feel[s] capital after a trance,” as it “rejuvenates” her (24). The physicality of her character contrasts with her spiritual abilities. These traits foreshadow the physical embodiment of the spirits later in the play.
