Brideshead Revisited

“She was stripped of all enchantment now and I knew her for an uncongenial stranger to whom I had bound myself indissolubly in a moment of folly.”

In this line, Charles treats his decision to join the army like a marriage, one that he now regrets. This foreshadows the novel’s prevailing attitude about heterosexual marriage, which it views as more related to confinement than to any sort of familial happiness.

“I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey—which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend.”

Sebastian’s expectation that Charles might pretend to have tasted a wine he’s never had suggests that Sebastian assumes Charles will attempt to claim knowledge of the upper classes that he actually lacks. His presumption also suggests that certain experiences are the “property” of the upper classes. Sebastian implies that he disdains any attempted social climbing or affected social superiority, even as he unconsciously reifies the class system.

“Beware of the Anglo-Catholics—they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents. In fact, steer clear of all the religious groups; they do nothing but harm.”

This quote from Charles’s cousin Jasper highlights several of the prevailing prejudices in the novel while addressing one of the questions of modern upheavals contemporary in the text. While religion was long a mainstay of British culture (with communities often designated by their church parishes), the notion that religious groups, in general, are dangerous reflects a shifting away—at least in the context of the modern education gained at Oxford. The association of Catholicism with queerness (implied as sexual impropriety) indicates both the struggles that the Flytes will suffer in trying to fit into their culture and the undertones of Sebastian and Charles’s relationships.

“[Sebastian] was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind.”

Sebastian’s connection with androgyny that exists only in youth echoes a theme throughout the novel. Various characters will present gay desire as something that is (or should be) experienced only by the young. The reference to “withering” also foreshadows Sebastian’s troubles with alcohol, which will lead him to be largely absent from the later portions of the novel.

“Descent or ascent? It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I acquired.”

Charles here wonders about the childlike joie-de-vivre that characterizes the first book of the novel, in which he and Sebastian enjoy the freedom of young adulthood at Oxford. The novel treats this time as an idyllic interlude, free from the pains of true adulthood. Sebastian’s failure to correctly acculturate into this true adulthood is thus reflected by his insistent childishness in Book 1.

“His own finances were perpetually, vaguely distressed. ‘It’s all done by lawyers,’ he said helplessly, ‘and I suppose they embezzle a lot. Anyway, I never seem to get much.’”

Sebastian’s “helpless” distress over the state of his finances indicates that this lack is not as material as Sebastian believes. Were he really struggling, he would likely care more about this alleged embezzling; as it stands, the ability to have money supposedly stolen from him is a class affectation. He shows that he can afford to be robbed, thus asserting his class value in a manner separate from cash in hand.

“It is purely out of respect for your Aunt Philippa that I dine at this length. She laid it down that a three-course dinner was middle-class.”

Edward Flyte’s comments here indicate that class anxieties are not merely the property of the declining upper classes. Unlike the aristocracy, however, who overlook their declining fortunes, the middle-class members of the novel have greater freedom to speak outright about questions of class, as Edward does here.

“Because her sex was the palpable difference between the familiar and the strange, it seemed to fill the space between us, so that I felt her to be especially female, as I had felt of no woman before.”

Charles’s recognition of Julia’s womanhood as the thing that separates her from Sebastian, and thus as the thing that makes said womanhood visible, highlights the way the novel’s central homosociality is connected with youth. Charles is growing up (and Julia, who is making her debut, more consciously so), which, the novel continually but covertly suggests, means the time has arrived for trading homosocial affections for heterosexual ones. The prescriptiveness of this trade, however, destines it for failure.

“‘[Our chapel] is too far away,’ said Brideshead. ‘There are a dozen families round Melstead who can’t get here. He wants to open a mass centre there.’

‘But what about us?’ said Sebastian. ‘Do we have to drive out on winter mornings?’”

Sebastian’s preference for the convenience of the few over the good of the many echoes conversations about class justice that spread across Europe in the early 20th century. Sebastian’s selfishness is framed as not being with the times—and he will ultimately be left behind when the world moves on around him.

“But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good?”

Brideshead’s question about artistic merit will reflect not only Charles’s artistic career, but also his views on the Flytes. Though Charles loves Sebastian, this does not necessarily indicate any goodness in Sebastian, something Charles will have to confront as his loyalty is challenged.

“Now I realize it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God.”

Lady Marchmain’s comments illustrate how she eliminates any internal tension between her wealth and her piousness as a Catholic. In her reframing, it is the poor who are actually spiritually wealthy, which frees her from any internal expectation toward charity or class justice.

“I think often of that bathroom—the water colours dimmed by steam and the huge towel warming on the back of the chintz armchair—and contrast it with the uniform, clinical, little chambers, glittering with chromium-plate and looking-glass, which pass for luxury in the modern world.”

Here Charles treats luxury as an aesthetic proposition, one that he sees as having vanished with the “modern world” of the 1940s. This indicates not only a shift in aesthetics themselves, but also in an understanding of how mass culture and mass production have infiltrated even the upper classes.

“‘Don’t pretend to be stupid, Charles. You understand perfectly.’

‘You mean there won’t be so many embarrassing situations for you.’”

Charles’s choice to point out the truth of a statement to Lady Marchmain instead of letting her hide behind polite obfuscation serves as a tipping point regarding his presence in the Flytes’ upper-class world. After this point, Charles is sent away from Brideshead; though he will later return as Julia’s lover, The Decline of the Aristocracy in the interim means he cannot truly return.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a physical wreck, you know. There’s no moral obligation to the Postmaster General or Master of Foxhounds or to live to walk ten miles at eighty.”

Brideshead here reveals himself as a character whose religious and moral abstractions frequently leave him ignorant of reality. His claim here that Sebastian has no “moral” obligation to remain healthy ignores the notion that what is morally obliged and what is good for a person are not necessarily the same thing.

“I don’t mean that they’ll be paupers; the old boys will always be good for an odd thirty thousand a year, but there’ll be a shake-up coming soon, and when the upper classes get the wind up, their first idea is usually to cut down on the girls. I’d like to get the little matter of a marriage settlement through, before it comes.”

Rex here shows a clear-eyed view of what the idea of the “decline” of the aristocracy really means, pointing out that though the upper classes will have less than they once did, they will still have significantly more than most others. Rather than seeing this as an opportunity for class justice, however, Rex merely wishes to take advantage of aristocratic money while he can.

“‘I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy.’

‘What do you mean by that, Cordelia?’

‘Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it’s God and hate that.’”

Cordelia’s childish view of her deceased mother as “saintly” does not align with the text’s characterization of Lady Marchmain, whose stubborn insistence on appearance over substance has contributed to the fracturing of her family. However, Charles does not object to this characterization, here or thereafter, which calls into question the nostalgia of the entire text.

“These memories, which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me.”

This assertion, made while Charles still has much of his life (and at a third of the novel) remaining, suggests a fatalistic worldview. Ultimately, this assertion is refuted by the final, optimistic vision of the past; yet it illuminates the way in which Charles’s longstanding affair with Julia, documented in Book 3, is both doomed and actually a reflection of Charles’s past relationship with Sebastian.

“It was four o’clock, but neither of us was ready to sleep, for in that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.”

Charles’s certainty that he knows New York better than its inhabitants illustrates his certainty in his own perspective as fact. In framing the energy of New York as “neurosis,” he pathologizes a world that is the opposite of his own, the rapidly vanishing British pastoral.

“They and I had fallen apart, as one could in England and only there, into separate worlds, little spinning planets of personal relationship.”

Charles’s assertion that isolated cliques are a specific purview of the British shows how, despite his travels, his view of the world remains narrow. This indicates that though the novel (given Charles’s narration) appears often ignorant of this narrowness, the cultivation of the novel as a British-specific text is not accidental.

“Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.”

Anthony’s claim about the dangers of charm offers an outsider’s view of the politesse that eliminates honesty within the upper class’s modus operandi. Anthony, framed as Other both due to his South American heritage and his explicitness about his sexuality, presents another way Charles might have lived, if he were less eager to appeal to the mores of the upper classes and the strictures of compulsory heterosexuality—a life in which he might, per Anthony’s framing, have been happier. While the novel does not exactly endorse Anthony’s view, it does find value in his outsider’s perspective.

“‘Sometimes,’ said Julia, ‘I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.’”

In contrast to Charles’s tendency to cling to Memory and Nostalgia, Julia characterizes memory and history as something oppressive. This suggests that the loss of her world—the aristocratic world in which Charles was only ever a visitor—may be more painful for her than for her lover, while also suggesting the incompatibility of vision that will lead to their separation.

“‘Estrangement and misunderstanding in act two.’

‘Oh, don’t talk in that damned bounderish way. Why must you see everything second-hand? Why must this be a play?’”

Charles persistently mediates his experience of the world through art, which here infuriates Julia, as she attempts to have a conversation about feelings. This suggests that Charles, for all that he prides himself on speaking straightforwardly (when he addresses his social superiors), is far guiltier of mediated speech than he sees himself to be.

“When we broke it to [Nanny] that Julia and I were to be married, she said: ‘Well, dear, I hope it’s all for the best,’ for it was not part of her religion to question the propriety of Julia’s actions.”

The fact that Nanny Hawkins, a deeply religious woman, considers her loyalty to Julia part of her “religion” emphasizes how she fills the trope of the devoted servant. Nanny, in the novel, never leaves the attic at Brideshead. More than a true character, therefore, she emerges as a symbol of aristocratic authority that vanishes by the novel’s conclusion—when she finally, after many years of not doing so, seems to suddenly age.