Jamie's Reviews > Brideshead Revisited

** spoiler alert ** I really hesitated to give Brideshead four stars, because I think the most appropriate rating would be 4.5--it's just barely short of five stars for me, and I'm not entirely sure why. I was interested, in looking over other reviews of this novel and of Waugh's other work more generally, to see the kinds of complaints that arose: one that seemed pretty frequent was that the second half of the novel is 'not as good' as the first. I'll address that momentarily. The other is that the novel is a snooze in comparison to his others; I'm not sure if this is true, as this is my first experience with Waugh, but if it is true, then I can't wait to sink my teeth into another of his novels.

Brideshead Revisited has that peculiar quality, not unlike Jane Austen's world or Bronte's Wuthering Heights or Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, where a realist novel is capable of taking the reader into an entirely other world, without the crutch of fantasy and speculation. Somehow, the world is within reach, it's imaginable, but nonetheless, it feels as though you're someplace else. He invokes that incredibly frightening and emotionally moving precipice between the 'old way of life' and the new, brought about by the interruption of the war (again, much in the way that Woolf does this in novels like Mrs. Dalloway, Jacob's Room, To the Lighthouse, and so forth). This loss, and its accompanying nostalgia, pervade the novel and its world and its characters to such great effect. And one of the things that comes about from this is one of the novel's central tensions, which seems to bother some readers, but really resonated for me: the conflict between yearning for the past, all the while knowing its flaws and understanding that that yearning is so problematic and stifling.

This brings us to the earlier 'issue' readers have taken with the novel--that the first half is better than the second (which I presume to mean the Sebastian part against the Julia section). I'll concede a few things; namely, that the first half was assuredly more funny and 'enjoyable' to read. Sebastian, I've decided, is one of the most fascinating male characters I've read recently, and of course Aloysius is a very welcome addition to the Marchmain clan. I literally laughed aloud on so many occasions--whenever Aloysius came up, often at the blase ways in which people managed one another and social situations, and then Cordelia, who was such a pleasure to watch grow up in the novel. And there's the sense of joy and newness to the first part of the novel that I think tugs at our more naive instincts--again, it evokes in us that same longing for the past that Charles Ryder so frequently grapples with. The first part of the novel, moreover, leads the reader on a journey to 'decode the mystery' of the Marchmains, so to speak. Why is Sebastian so deeply hurt by his family? Why do others see them as these malevolent forces, despite the illusion of charm? What are all the dirty secrets of the family? And so on. Once we find these out, that anticipation is fulfilled. In turn, Sebastian begins to spiral out of control (and rightfully so, in my opinion--or at least logically so, since we're already accustomed to his delusions)--and is subsequently expelled from the narrative. We've already lost Aloysius at this point, and now with Sebastian more or less gone, Anthony Blanche missing, and Cordelia growing up, we're left without comic relief--except for those moments when the tension between social nicety and inner cruelty come to the surface.

And of course, once this comic relief has vanished, all we're left to see and/or laugh at are the instances of human cruelty that are so central to the novel. It's difficult to read--either because we don't want to think of people committing these acts against one another, or we don't wish to recognize the propensity for cruelty within ourselves. And so we move into the second half of the novel--as I said, I concede that it's a less 'enjoyable' read, that it's less humorous, and more difficult to read. But isn't this exactly what Waugh is trying to communicate? We have a sort of fall from grace; the loss of innocence has taken place, and now the sense of loss dominates. Ryder's affair with Julia feels superficial and half-hearted precisely because it is! As Ryder himself remarks "Sebastian was the frontrunner"; Julia becomes the socially acceptable and hand-me-down substitute, after Sebastian has ruined himself. And as in reality, we often settle for things because we feel we have no choice, we feel powerless, or simply because we wish to keep some sort of facade of respectability. The homoerotic subtext of the novel was of course one of the main lures for my reading it, and so perhaps watching Ryder and Julia's affair unfold and eventually unravel seemed perfectly in line with the atmosphere of the novel and the themes that resonated for me.

I think it's only natural to feel letdown as the novel progresses and, finally, concludes, but I think (at least for a cynic like me) this is one of Waugh's greatest accomplishments in the novel. Disappointment, longing, nostalgia, and loss--these emotions the novel lingers on feel the closest to life, for me, and ultimately reflect the reality of experience that works so powerfully in translating the novel to my own experience. And likewise, they seem perhaps to invoke the world and society in which Waugh was writing--the same fears and letdowns the world faced on the edge of war. Besides all this, he's an absolute master of prose. Every sentence is beautifully turned, the dialogue feels natural, keeps pace, and is often hilarious. I was incredibly impressed, and know this novel will haunt me for quite some time; I'm really looking forward to reading more of his work!