brideshead revisited

I had never heard of this book before last year, when all of a sudden it became the book that I needed to read. So I did. Molly read it with me, actually, and I’ve definitely enjoyed pondering it with her over Google Hangouts.

Up front:

Favorite part: the character of Sebastian, and especially anything to do with Aloysius

Least favorite part: the general narrative style

I can’t put my finger on what exactly makes this novel feel Catholic. It’s not just that Evelyn Waugh was Catholic, or that all of the characters end up Catholic at the end. It’s something about the writing, the particular ethos of the book. I would guess that part of it has to do with Waugh’s tendency to relate everything back to romantic love, which for some reason makes me think of Catholicism. Sorry. Mental associations are weird.

For example, Waugh spends almost a page describing the military as an old lover turning false. A little while later, Sebastian’s childhood is cast as his beloved. Later still, love is the subject, personified as something military and mercenary.

But in the end… all of these loves are shown to be ‘forerunners.’ Charles, the main character, says that Sebastian was the ‘forerunner’ of Julia in his affections. She responds, ‘Perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.’ Here, Waugh slips into one of his almost-preachy and definitely-foreshadow-y paragraphs that pepper the text.

‘Perhaps, I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke—a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace—perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types, and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.’

Waugh is hinting at a romantic love higher and grander than anything Charles has experienced so far, a love (both the object of love and the love itself) that is Ultimate. It is this Ultimate that, I think, Waugh really wanted to write a novel about.

I would wager that is why he called it Brideshead Revisited. Yes, Brideshead is the name of a place that the narrator returns to. Very straightforward. But I think there’s another meaning…

Think of the word ‘maidenhead.’ A woman’s maidenhead is her virginity, the proof and seal that she is a maiden. Let’s say a woman’s ‘bridehead’ or ‘brideshead’ refers to a similar thing… her state of being a bride, whatever it is that marks her as being a woman either about to get married or just recently married.

As a bride, a woman gives herself over to a man, one she has loved, to enter into a relationship somehow deeper and more than just love. She had love before the wedding; there must be something greater afterwards for her to have wanted it at all. Among other things, marriage is a mutual commitment to belong to each other. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says that it is when man and woman unite. Become one.

Charles gives himself as a bride (if you will) to several players in the novel: Sebastian, art, Julia, the military. These become committed relationships of love that go beyond affectionate feelings to the merging of identities. Sebastian does the same. Julia does the same.

But somehow none of those unions are permanent. After a while, Charles must attach himself to something (or someone) new. At the conclusion of the novel, when he has drunk his past wells dry, he again must revisit his brideshead. He must again become a bride, again commit his life and love to something (or someone), again unite his identity with another’s. This time, Waugh suggests that Charles visits his brideshead for the last time. It is finished. It is Ultimate.

I’m torn between thinking this novel is beautiful and thinking it’s too simple. I can’t decide.