Brideshead Revisited

Sebastian Flyte is Charles’s closest friend during his Oxford years and the person who introduces Charles to Brideshead and the rest of the Flyte family. Sebastian is charming in a way that is linked to both youth and class. Sebastian makes friends wherever he goes, even after his alcohol misuse leads him to be frequently drunk and combative; his charm and social status permits him to affect potential queerness without risk of harm in a way that would be dangerous for others (as Anthony references in his dinner with Charles in Book 1). A central aspect of his charm is youth; Charles describes him as “entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind” (33). In the first part of the novel he carries a teddy bear named Aloysius with him in what is taken for a charming affectation.

Sebastian is selfish and jealous. He worries that Charles will prefer the other Flytes to him, and demands regular confirmation of Charles’s loyalty, which he does not offer in return. He both takes advantage of the privileges of his class and pretends they don’t exist (as when he laments his finances). He resents his family’s attempts to control him and blames them for his alcohol misuse.

Sebastian ultimately returns to the religion of his childhood, Catholicism, though during his university years he describes himself as “half-heathen.” When Cordelia describes his life as a “hanger-on” at a religious order, she characterizes it as a place where he will be cared for and accepted as he is. Sebastian’s version of happiness (mediated through his sister) is thus framed as a state analogous to perpetual childhood, lacking responsibilities and always possessing a source of care.

Julia Flyte is Sebastian’s sister and Charles’s eventual lover. For much of the novel, Julia shows little interest in her family’s wants and concerns, focusing instead on her self-image as a modern woman. She is pragmatic, accepting that her Catholicism will limit her in the social sphere of the English upper crust. She is also competitive and acquisitive, as suggested by her courtship of Rex Mottram, whom she eventually marries. She first becomes interested in Rex because he is unattainable (he has a long-term mistress), then falls in love with him because he refuses to have sex with her. Julia becomes focused on “attaining” Rex, to the point that she routinely calls Sebastian’s alcohol misuse “boring” and frames it as interfering with her courtship.

When Julia marries Rex, she must give up her attachment to her religion, since as a divorced man, Rex cannot be married in a Catholic church. Their marriage is not a happy one, she considers Rex less than a full person, and she regrets marrying him. She enters a multi-year affair with Charles. Julia returns to Catholicism after her father’s death, deciding, at the last moment, not to divorce Rex to marry Charles. This marks the end of their affair.