The function of imagery in everyday speech or writing is, primarily, to explain some point, or to make more vivid an idea or sentiment. Imagery helps to heighten the atmosphere and to develop a theme. Many of these images may symbolise for the author some significant occasion or thought that is not so easy to grasp by the reader. The following ideas may help in developing a deeper understanding of the events and characters which make up this novel.
NATURE IMAGERY
In ‘Silas Marner’ nature imagery is used extensively. Eliot compares the Lantern Yard sect and its interminable discussions on salvation to ‘young, winged things fluttering forsaken in the twilight’. It is a vivid image of the misguided young people who seek without success a way to God.
Silas’s life in Raveloe is compared to a spider weaving ‘from pure impulse, without reflection’. This conjures up a vision of a creature in mental semi-darkness working to a fixed pattern without joy or without understanding of what he is doing. Later, his life is described as an ‘insect-like existence’: he sits weaving ‘towards the end of his web’. The spider image suggests an unlived-in, musty, dusty, soul-less house. In the Rainbow Inn the farrier tells him that his eyes are like an insect’s so that he can’t see much at a time.
Godfrey, should the Squire disinherit him, would be ‘as helpless as an uprooted tree’. We are given the idea of dead wood, useless for anything but burning, unable to grow or develop.
In Chapter II Eliot contrasts the rich world of Raveloe with the frugality of Lantern Yard: ‘orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty’, ‘careless abundance’.
Silas’s love of his earthenware pot shows that ‘the sap of affection is not all gone’. He gives life to the pot; it has been ‘his companion’, ‘always lending its handle to him’, wearing an expression of ‘willing helpfulness’. This personification sadly emphasises how starved of human affection Silas is.
The presence of a wife and mother in the home is described as ‘the fountain of wholesome love and fear in parlour and kitchen’. This suggests the continuous outpouring of love and fear of God given as a kind of nourishing food.
Nancy Lammeter is equated with the sun – the Lammeter household is ‘sunned’ by her smile. She would have drawn Godfrey safe to the green banks where it was easy to step firmly, but he allows himself to be dragged back ‘into the mud and slime’ by his association with Molly. The contrast is vivid.
The loss of Silas’s gold left his soul ‘like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert’. The desert may be associated by contrast with the plant images – growth and fruitfulness – that occur regularly in the story.
In relation to Silas’s first visit to the Rainbow Inn and his involvement with the villagers, Eliot says, ‘Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.’
In connection with Godfrey’s reliance on Chance, Eliot says of Chance that ‘the evil principle deprecated in that religion (i.e. Chance) is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind’. This is an image of the Biblical notion that bad seed brings forth bad fruit.
Eliot introduces the notion of Eppie’s mind growing into knowledge and Silas’s mind growing into memory. This is a striking image of the future and the past growing towards one another; she clings to him, he to her.
The Squire’s anger is compared to ‘fiery volcanic matters that cool and harden into rock’. It is an excellent image of a man who decides explosively in anger and will not change his decisions even though reason tells him he is wrong.
In spite of Dolly’s efforts to befriend him, Silas is still the ‘shrunken rivulet’ with only this difference, ‘that its little groove of sand was blocked up, and it wandered confusedly against dark obstruction’. This is an excellent image as it helps us to see him in terms of the rise and fall of a river. It also points to the flood that will be released with Eppie’s coming.
The story of Eppie’s arrival and Silas’s new relations with the villagers is shown by Dolly in the imagery of Nature: ‘…..It’s like the night and the morning, the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest – one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how or where.’
In Chapter XVII when Nancy’s attention has been drawn to the people heading towards the Stone-pit, she looks out on the churchyard. Her uneasiness is compared to the raven ‘flapping its slow wing across the sunny air’. It is a realistic image; the raven is a symbol of death and disaster.
There are some remarkably descriptive nature images in the novel, e.g. in Chapter II there is the picture of the Raveloe world. In Chapter X there is a striking picture of Christmas Day.
IMAGERY OF GOLD
The image of gold is important. As money it represents the downfall of Silas; in the form of Eppie’s golden hair it brings about his salvation. The story commences with the theft of the money from Lantern Yard and Silas’s loss of faith in God and his fellow-men. In Raveloe his future is all dark: ‘the little light he possessed spread its beam so narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night’. Later we read that his future was all dark, for ‘there was no unseen love that cared for him’. This darkness will be replaced by the shining life of his new God – gold! ‘How the guineas shone!’ When he loses his new god he will be dark again until the real gold – Eppie – will save him. He loves his gold for itself, not for what he can buy. When it is stolen he has nothing left. It had given him a purpose; it had been a ‘clinging life’.
There is an image of a locked casket with its treasure inside to describe Silas before the theft. Now the casket is empty and the lock broken. A casket keeps things in and his heart is imprisoned with his gold. The empty casket shows that his love has fled, but it also leaves a way open for his love for Eppie.
His first sight of Eppie is startling. Before his fit he has been thinking of his gold; the first thing he sees when he recovers is gold. ‘Gold! – his own gold brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!’ A contrast is made between the soft warm curls of the child and the hard coins. He believes that the child has come instead of the gold – that the gold has turned into the child.
Later, Eliot contrasts the dead world of Silas with his gold and Eppie’s living gold which forces his thoughts onwards. The gold demanded that he should stay increasingly longer at his monotonous weaving; Eppie calls him from it. Money is no longer important since Eppie has replaced it.
The finding of the gold in the quarry infects Godfrey and Nancy with such a feeling of shame that Dunstan has been a thief. It has already caused Dunstan’s death.
Silas admits to Eppie that, at times, he had missed the gold, but that now it means nothing, so when Godfrey tries to use it as a lever to persuade Silas to surrender Eppie, he is doomed to failure on this point.
It is only at the end Godfrey realises that he himself had rejected the most precious gold of all.
IMAGERY OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Light and darkness have a symbolic meaning in the novel. The symbolism is uncomplicated. It first appears in Eliot’s description of the young men in Lantern Yard as young birds ‘fluttering forsaken in the twilight’ – people who have lost their way in the semi-darkness. In Lantern Yard the blackness of the night may symbolises Silas’s ‘frustrated belief’ – suggesting a kind of hell on earth. Even the future is all dark because, paradoxically, there is no Unseen Love that cares for him.
The description of Squire Cass’s parlour with the fading grey light falling dimly on the walls may symbolise the decadence of the Cass family and the absence of the guiding hand of a mother and wife.
Eliot prepares us for the theft of Silas’s gold by her description of the mist turning to rain. Dunstan’s dark deed is in contrast to the bright fire in Silas’s cottage. The darkness will hide him, but it will also make his way so hazardous that he will slip. The light from the cottage may symbolise the gold that has tempted him. Light will later save Silas from his greed.
When the child, Eppie, crawls towards the light in Silas’s cottage she is leaving the blackness of Molly’s life as well as the darkness outside. She may symbolise the light she will bring to Silas so that he, too, can leave his darkness. The end of the snowfall and the parting of the clouds may symbolise the beginning of the break in the clouds that have overhung his life.
Dolly says of Eppie’s coming – ‘it’s like the night and the morning’ – the one goes, the other comes and ‘we know nothing how or where’. Eliot contrasts the dead world of Silas and his gold with Eppie’s m world of life – the former has been hidden in the darkness and the latter loves sunshine. There is also a contrast between the brightness in Silas’s eye and the light of the candle that falls on the gold (after the gold has been found). The light in his eye is an inner light; the candle-light is dim by comparison.
On the visit to Lantern Yard, Eppie is uneasy at the darkness of the place. This may also symbolise the lack of spiritual light there. When they return to Raveloe, Silas says that he has had ‘light enough to trusten by’. Light has overcome darkness.
SYMBOLISM
Some of the characters and many of the things in the story may have a symbolic function, e.g. the broken piece of pottery that Silas puts together may symbolise the spark of affection that still exists within him. We have already dealt with light and darkness as symbols.
Among the characters, Eppie may symbolise salvation. Dunstan – evil; Squire Cass – the decadence of the landed gentry; Dolly Winthrop – faith. The villagers in the Rainbow Inn may symbolise certain types in our own world.
Lantern Yard may represent the gloom in the lives of the members of the sect. The proximity of their place of worship to the jail may also stand for the restrictions and lack of freedom there.
When the child, Eppie, is carried to the Red House by Silas there is a symbolic and prophetic rejection of Godfrey by the child and an acceptance of Silas when she looks away from Godfrey and slowly turns to Silas.
The furze-bush where her mother had been found is a symbol to Eppie of her own past and also perhaps of her mother. The furze is thorny, as Molly’s life had been.
Religion, in various forms, plays a major part in Silas Marner. It dominates the early part of the novel and influences the course of events in a decisive way. It has a significant part to play in the lives and attitudes of the people of Raveloe. George Eliot presents us with a variety of attitudes to religion in the course of the novel and there is always the implied contrast between the differing versions of religious faith and practice presented throughout the novel.
Our first glimpse of organised religion is given to us in the account of the church at Lantern Yard. It is not a flattering account. The doctrines shared by the congregation there are Calvinist in origin. The church is described as ‘a narrow religious sect’. It is inward-looking and very restrictive. Indeed, the whole account of lantern yard is an unsparing look by George Eliot at a variety of Protestant religion of which she was intimately familiar. Some would say that Lantern Yard had little to do with real Christianity and amounted to a serious perversion of religion. This is best illustrated in the drawing of lots, ‘they resolved on praying and drawing lots’. This method yields up a lie and an innocent man must suffer.
The other form of religious practice seen in the novel is that practised by the villagers in Raveloe. Whereas Lantern Yard people took their religious practices with deadly seriousness, those in Raveloe, on the other hand, are much less concerned with the externals of religious practice at any rate. Indeed, such is their anxiety not to appear too righteous some avoid going to church every Sunday! Their attitude to religion is treated with mild humour by George Eliot: the people are not ‘severely regular’ and even the ‘good livers’ go to church with ‘moderate frequency’.
The essential point to make About the form of religion practised in Raveloe is that in spite of its thinness on the side of doctrine and theology, even its closeness to mere superstition, its effects on the lives of the people is generally beneficial. Dolly Winthrop, if questioned on the subject, would probably find it difficult to articulate her religious beliefs, but fundamentally Christian practices come easily to her: ‘We must be going home now. And so I wish you goodbye, Master Marner; and if ever you feel anyways bad in your inside, as you can’t fend for yourself, I’ll come and clean up for you, and get a bit of victual, and willing’.
In contrast, Nancy Lammeter’s outlook on religion is totally different from Dolly’s. Unlike Dolly, Nancy is able to read the Bible; she is presented as usually sitting, on Sundays, with her Bible before her and in many ways, her attitude is nearly as narrow as that of the congregation in Lantern Yard.
His Lantern Yard experience has shaken Silas to the core, and shaken is genuinely held religious beliefs. Towards the end, he decides to revisit Lantern Yard with Eppie to find out if his name has been cleared and to see whether Mr Paston might enlighten him about the practice of the drawing of lots. He finds that Lantern Yard has been swept away, and he, therefore, will never get the answers to his troubling questions: ‘It’s dark to me; I doubt it’ll be dark to the last’. He will never now be fully satisfied with the wrong done to him, but his last years will be lived in a spirit of trust, thanks to the charity of real friends.
Theme of Redemption
This theme may be divided into two parts, (a) the salvation of Silas Marner from the mental and spiritual disintegration which is taking place within him because of his disillusionment with and rejection of God, and because of his miserliness and withdrawal from society, and (b) the salvation of Godfrey Cass from spiritual destruction because of his secret marriage to Molly Farren and, later, his decision to disown his own child.
There is the notion of the purging of a tragic hero through suffering in the case of both of these characters, but one of them – Godfrey – is, in the end, denied what he demands most. Yet both of them come to acquire self-knowledge. Silas says, ‘I’ve had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she’ll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die.’ Godfrey, too, has consolation, ‘And I got you Nancy, in spite of all, and yet I’ve been grumbling and uneasy because I hadn’t something else – as if I deserved it.’
Eliot may be trying to point out that, without contact with other human beings, the heart dries up. Silas rejects the notion of a loving God and of belief in his fellow-man as a result of his experiences in Lantern Yard. God turned from him in the drawing of the lots; William Dane and Sarah betrayed him at the human level.
In Raveloe ‘there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst, and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.’ Even his simple impulse to help Sally Oates rebounds on him, and he becomes more isolated. Money now becomes his new God. What affection he has left is bestowed on inanimate things – a small brown pot and his gold. He becomes a miser.
The theft of his gold is the beginning of his salvation. It brings the sympathy of the villagers – especially Dolly Winthrop. He feels conscious of ‘dependence on their goodwill.’ The coming of Eppie (perhaps an Act of God) brings him consolation for his suffering. He begins again to trust a human. He accepts Dolly’s advice that Eppie should be christened, although he does not know what this means. With Eppie he lives again. When he brings her to the village he is met with ‘smiling faces and cheerful questioning.’ She has replaced his gold. He has been out of touch with Nature as he was in Lantern Yard. It is Eppie who brings him back to it. There is no more betrayal. When Godfrey asks Eppie to come with him, she stands with Silas.
Godfrey’s faults are the result of his weakness of character. He has a ‘natural irresolution’, ‘moral cowardice’, and is ‘indecisive’. His marriage to Molly is a result of weakness but also of pity for her. His motives for concealing the marriage are selfish – fear of discovery, his father’s anger, the loss of his inheritance and of Nancy.
His silent reaction to the news that Molly is dead is a sinful fear that she may not be dead. His rejection of Eppie is a spoken one. He disowns his moral and paternal obligations and lacks the moral courage to give up Nancy. He is now living a lie and tries to justify it by assuring himself that he is thinking only of Nancy’s happiness. He is punished by a childless marriage. He has, however, a conscience about Eppie and almost accepts his childlessness as a punishment. Further punishment and suffering come with the shame of Dunstan’s theft, but he accepts God’s will for the first time and admits his secret to Nancy. He bitterly realises that Nancy would have gladly accepted Eppie had she known the situation. He is further punished by Eppie’s rejection of him. His redemption comes in his realisation of the truth that ‘there’s debt we can’t pay like money debts.’ He has suffered, but recognises the injustice of it. He, too, has some consolation in Nancy.
Theme of Social Isolation and Communication
The degrees of isolation and communication through which the central character – Silas – passes are extreme. One might divide his life into four distinct parts – distinct because he is subject to a change of disposition each time.
There is his period in Lantern Yard.
Then his first fifteen years in Raveloe during which he becomes dedicated to his gold and so more isolated.
Next comes the short period after the theft of his gold when he is deprived of any comfort and has only limited communication with the people of Raveloe.
Finally, Eppie arrives and Silas is no longer isolated.
In Lantern Yard he is immersed in the life of the sect. He shares the rigid, Calvinistic society of his fellow-believers, the companionship of William Dane and the company of Sarah. His self-doubting is offset by William’s certainty – although in the end of this period God seems to desert him. William falsely accuses him of theft and Sarah deserts him, he has been relatively contented.
When he arrives in Raveloe he is a stranger and, so an object of suspicion. He hates ‘the thought of the past’; there is ‘nothing that calls out his love and fellowship towards the strangers in the village.’ He contributes to his own isolation in his failure to invite anyone to visit him and his failure to mix with others except on business. The riches of Nature are in contrast with the narrow, frugal life (physical and spiritual) of Lantern Yard. There is no ‘Unseen Love’ that cares for him. The children fear him and the villagers wonder at his solitary isolation. The results of his impulsive desire to help Sally Oates are disastrous. He refuses to exploit the villagers and they drive him back to isolation. His attempt to establish a relationship has, through no fault of his own, driven a wedge between the villagers and him. Money now becomes his god. He still retains a spark of affection but it is for inanimate things like his broken pot. When his gold is stolen, the disaster seems worse than that of Lantern Yard. His soul is ‘like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert.’ Yet his impulse is to go for help. He goes to the Rainbow Inn. It is here that he communicates with others.
Afterwards the neighbours try to ‘get through’ to him. He is not yet one of them, but is affected by their anxiety to help. He feels that people might help him. Their kindness may spring from their recognition of suffering – ‘pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment.’ Although he still feels desolate he is now aware that he depends on others. Yet he is not cheered by Dolly as ‘human love and divine faith have not yet been released in him.’
The coming of Eppie changes everything. It makes the villagers more actively sympathetic. She unlocks the door to his happiness within the community when he determines to meet the neighbours for her sake. He acquires knowledge of life from his new acquaintances. As he grows older, his eyes ‘seem to have gathered a longer vision as is the way with eyes that have been short-sighted in life.’ This may be symbolic of his spiritual outlook. Eliot says that a sense of presiding goodness and human trust come with all pure peace and joy. The human trust is important; he had lost it after Lantern Yard.
He has a bad moment when Eppie speaks of marriage. Is his gold again being stolen? But she reassures him. His final trial comes when Godfrey arrives to ask for Eppie. Silas’s decision not to stand in her way is heroic, but he has no need to fear; he will never again be isolated.
Godfrey Cass may be included as one whose failure to communicate contributes to his unhappiness. The Red House atmosphere is not conducive to communication, as love does not exist within it. His lack of true communication with Nancy prevents him getting to know her until it is almost too late. He is afraid to tell Squire Cass of his marriage to Molly, a social inferior, because he fears the Squire’s reaction and because he feels that he will lose Nancy. He again fails to communicate when he denies knowledge of Molly and then rejects his child. When he finally tells Nancy of the marriage, she tells him that she would have accepted Eppie. He now realises that his reticence has been for nothing.
Again, when he calls Silas to surrender Eppie, he shows his inability to understand Silas by speaking in terms of bodily warts and money and by painting Eppie’s future as a lady and contrasting it with the rough life before her if she remains with Silas. It is only when he faces the truth and accepts the justice of his punishment that he is saved. He now knows himself and is rewarded when Nancy’s eyes and his ‘meet in trust’.
Theme of Chance
In Chapter XI Eliot personally intervenes to comment on Chance – ‘In this point of trusting to some throw of fortune’s dice, Godfrey can hardly be called old-fashioned. Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in.’ she personifies Chance as a deity, ‘the mighty creator of success and its worship is a religion of these people.’
Godfrey is always hopeful that something will turn up to save a dangerous situation. As a result he finds it hard to make a decision about anything. So he falls back on ‘casualties’ (accidental happenings). He fails to admit his marriage to Molly Farren because he feels that, the longer the interval before revelation, the more chances there are of deliverance from some of the unpleasant consequences to which he may have subjected himself. When Dunstan fails to return from the sale of Wildfire, Godfrey asks himself why he should cut off his hopes by his own admission of his misdeeds. If Dunstan fails to return soon everything may blow over. When the Squire tells him to propose to Nancy with the half-threat that the Squire may himself speak to Nancy’s father he flies to ‘his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences – perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence’. Not until Eppie rejects him does he face the truth and accept the consequences.
Silas Marner, too, at one stage leans on Chance. He, like the Lantern Yard brethren, believes that Chance in the form of ‘trial by lot’, reflects God’s judgement. When his innocence is not borne out, he rejects God. Later, after Eppie’s coming, he agrees with Dolly that there is good in the world. He feels that the ‘lots’ were compensated for by Eppie. ‘There’s dealings with us – there’s dealings.’ Eppie, too, has arrived by Chance.
Theme of Love
Love runs through the novel as a recurring motif. It is associated with other themes. Its absence may be noted in Lantern Yard where the devotees have been taught that they are miserable sinners so that they are prepared to believe in the sinfulness of their brethren and to punish it without an impulse of charity or human pity. Each thinks only of his own salvation. Lantern Yard also suppresses Silas’s love of Nature.
Yet, in Raveloe, Silas feels ‘a rush of pity’ for Sally Oates. He also shows grief for his broken pot, but his affection is for inanimate things. At first the villagers in Raveloe, because of their superstition, contribute to Silas’s loveless life by withholding whatever neighbourliness they might normally bestow on a fellow-human. His miserliness saps his love for other human beings; gold is his true love.
His love is rekindled, albeit slowly when his gold is stolen. He feels pity for Jem Rodney whom he accuses of the theft, realising the injustice of the accusation. (This is an echo of what befell himself in Lantern Yard). His apology is, in effect, a gesture of love. The kindness of the villagers to someone in trouble is an indication that love is there if he can meet it half-way. Dolly Winthrop is in the vanguard of human compassion; she is ‘mild and patient’ and helps those who need help. This is true love.
The coming of Eppie brings true love into Silas’s life; not alone the love she gives to him and the love which he bestows on her, but also the friendship and sympathy of the villagers. Her pranks and naughtiness make him realise that love makes claims on him, yet he cannot really find it within himself to punish her. After sixteen years with her, he has acquired the ‘mild, passive happiness of love-crowned age in his face.’ Eliot says that, because of his love and the seclusion of his cottage, she has been preserved from the coarseness of village talk and habits, so that she has a touch of refinement. In the end, his love for her is repaid by her declaration of love for him and her rejection of Godfrey. He now asserts his trust in God.
Godfrey and Dunstan have been deprived of love since their mother’s death. Their father is weak in character and self-indulgent. He rules his household by fear. He lacks courtesy and makes no attempt to understand his sons. Dunstan has no saving graces; he is entirely lacking in love. Godfrey shows his weakness in marrying Molly Farren, but he is conscious of the harm he has done to her. He loves Nancy Lammeter and sees her as his loving wife, but even in his love, he has no real knowledge of her and so postpones admitting to her his unfortunate marriage.
Eliot says ‘…..the yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature’, and that the affectionate-hearted Godfrey is becoming bitter and subject to cruel wishes (presumably for the early death of Molly). When he hears that she is dead, his fear is that she may not really be dead. He then rejects his own child – Eppie. This is the antithesis of love. There is happiness and love in his marriage to Nancy, although it may be asked if Nancy falls short of love in her refusal to adopt the child. When Godfrey finally admits to his marriage to Molly, their eyes meet ‘ with awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.’ Is there a temporary cessation of love here on Nancy’s part? She speaks of a chance lost of having a child to love her. After their abortive attempt to persuade Eppie to live with them, they again look into one another’s eyes. It is now that, although Eppie has rejected him, he knows that Nancy truly loves him, ‘And I got you, Nancy, in spite of all.
Theme of Nature
Eliot believed that Nature is an influence in developing the human person. Silas rejects Nature in Lantern Yard, briefly returns to it to aid Sally Oates and then, under the influence of Eppie, finally returns. Eppie’s wish is for a garden. This may indicate her simplicity and that Nature is sufficient for her. It is also possible to discuss human nature under this theme. (See further notes on Nature Imagery here.)
The Theme of Knowledge
The theme of Knowledge has some importance in the novel. There is a suggestion that knowledge of oneself and others, or the lack of it, plays an important part in both characterisation and plot. Eliot, speaking of the Lantern Yard sect with its constant discussions on the possibility of salvation, says it resembles ‘young winged things fluttering forsaken in the twilight.’ This suggests a misdirected search for knowledge that is in contrast with Dolly Winthrop’s certain trust in ‘Them above’.
The superstition of the villagers in Raveloe that helps keep Silas in isolation is a result of their fear that Silas possesses knowledge that they do not have and their belief that knowledge and skill come from the devil. When his gold is stolen, the villagers see him as without knowledge and so, godly.
With the coming of Eppie, Silas acquires knowledge from his now sympathetic neighbours. His discussions with Dolly also help him towards religious contentment. He also gains self-knowledge when Godfrey cannot begin to understand why Silas might not wish to part with Eppie. Yet Eliot says that it is only the want of sufficient knowledge that allows him to be deliberately unkind.
Godfrey also undergoes a journey towards self-knowledge. You might try to map this journey yourself using the incidents in the novel.
The accompanying film clip records the parishioners from Knockaderry and Clouncagh gathering for the Confirmation ceremony which took place in St. Mary’s Church in Clouncagh in 1963. The ceremony was conducted by the Very Rev. Henry Murphy, Bishop of Limerick and he was assisted by Rev. Fr. Costello P.P.
The occasion was filmed by John Joe Harrold and we are grateful to jdtvideo for uploading the very historic footage to You Tube for our enjoyment.
Girls Confirmation Photo 1963
Included in photo is Bishop Henry Murphy, Bishop of Limerick, and Canon Costelloe. The teachers are Miss Margaret Droney and Mrs. Eilish Hickey.
Back row: (left to right): Marie Sheehy, Eileen Lynch, Mary Cregan, Ann Quaid, Margaret Cregan, Violet Hennessy, Kathleen Chawke.
Front Row: Nora O’Gorman, Bridget Downes, Bridie Chawke, Catherine Butler, Jacinta Scanlan, Margaret Sheehy, Christina Quaid, Mary Curtin, Mary Noonan, Mary Chawke.
Boys Confirmation Photo 1963
Canon Costelloe is at the left at the back, Bishop Murphy is in the centre at the back and on the extreme right is Master Micheál de Búrca.
Back row: (left to right): John Guiry (R.I.P.), John Wall, Patsy Downes, John Collum, David Noonan (R.I.P.), William Hickey, Michael Moloney, Donie O’Sullivan, Michael Dowling.
Third row: David Downes, Jack Hennessy, Eddie Liston, John O’Gorman, Paddy Curtin, Philip Hickey, Liam O’Sullivan, William O’Connor, Jerry Hennessy, Eddie O’Connor.
Second row: Ted O’Gorman (R.I.P.), Diarmuid O’Sullivan, Paddy Walsh, David Guiry (R.I.P.), Bernard Mackessy, Jimmy Dowling, Eddie Dillon, Harry Maune, Gerard Moloney (R.I.P.), Tom Scanlan.
Front row: Michael Cunningham, Thomas Butler, Michael Dowling, Liam Doherty, Noel O’Gorman, David Collum, Joe Dowling, Christopher McCabe.
Sources: Knockaderry Clouncagh Christmas Annual 1986 and Kno0ckaderry Clouncagh Annual 1990. Thanks to jdtvideo for making footage available on You Tube.
This review and notes are based on the Merchant Ivory Film of A Room with a View, which was directed by James Ivory and produced in 1986. It is based on the novel of the same name, which was written by E.M. Forster in the early 1900s and set in 1907, at the end of the Edwardian era. This was a moment in British history when Britain was still an imperial power. It is an old love story with a happy ending (much like Pride and Prejudice). The film was shot on location in Tonbridge Wells, Kent and in Florence, Italy. In 1987 the film won three Oscars (and a further six nominations) and also won five BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe.
THE STORY
Lucy Honeychurch, a young English lady, is on a visit to Florence in Italy, chaperoned by her cousin Miss Charlotte Bartlett. They had been led to believe that they would have a wonderful view at the Pensione Bertolini, but this is not the case when they arrive. Another couple, a father and son, overhear them when they express their dissatisfaction and they promptly offer to exchange rooms. Charlotte is offended at this presumption for her young cousin’s sake, especially when the young man is dangerously attractive. However, the Reverend Beebe, the rector of Lucy’s parish at home in England, happens to be staying there as well. He offers to act as an intermediary and the rooms are exchanged without further ado.
The next morning, Charlotte tours the city with Eleanor Lavish, a lady novelist whom she had met at dinner the night before. Lucy goes for a walk alone and she witnesses a violent street fight where a young man is seriously injured. She becomes weak and faints from the shock. Luckily, George Emerson, the young man she had met in the Pensione, is there to help her back to her room.
The following day, the visitors in the Pensione arrange to go sightseeing as a group and the Emersons also are part of the group. George and Lucy become separated from the others and he kisses her in a cornfield. Charlotte witnesses what happened between them and after they return to the city she arranges for them to leave their rooms the next day. The women agree not to tell anyone what has happened to Lucy.
Back in England, Lucy accepts a proposal of marriage from Mr. Cecil Vyse, who is a rather pompous, arrogant snob. By a chance arrangement, the Emersons take a house in the area, close to the Honeychurch residence. Lucy’s brother Freddy, and the Rector, Mr. Beebe, invite George to go swimming in a nearby ‘lake’ on his first day in Summer Street. The men are quite spirited, and they chase each other around the lake for fun. Unfortunately, this occurs at the same time as the ladies are taking their afternoon walk in the woods and they see the men in all their naked glory!
Now that George has arrived and Freddy befriends him, he is invited to the Honeychurch home regularly to play tennis. Lucy is perturbed by George’s renewed proximity. The contrast between George and the stuffy Cecil is very obvious and this unsettles Lucy.
When Charlotte comes to stay with the family, she is very concerned for Lucy in case the presence of George will do harm to her engagement to Cecil. One day, Cecil is reading and criticising what he considers to be a dreadful novel and both Lucy and George are listening. The book happens to be by Eleanor Lavish, the woman who stayed in the same pensione in Florence as they did. The novel is set in Florence and Cecil reads a paragraph describing exactly where and when George kissed Lucy. On the way back into the house, George kisses Lucy again out of sight of the others.
Lucy is upset by this and hurt that Charlotte has told Eleanor Lavish after they had agreed not to tell anyone about what had occurred in Italy. Lucy asks George in the presence of Charlotte to leave. George gives a passionate account of his love for her and tries to make her see that Cecil only cares for her as he would a prize possession. Lucy denies the fact that she may love George, but all the same, she breaks off her engagement with Cecil soon after this.
When George sees that Lucy will not have him, he decides to leave Summer Street because he cannot bear to be near her. Lucy is surprised and shocked to see the furniture being removed from the house. Mr. Emerson talks to her and makes a heartfelt plea to her to stop denying the truth. Realisation dawns on her that she does love George after all and the film ends with the two lovers on their honeymoon back in the Pensione Bertolini in Florence. They kiss passionately at the window of A Room with a View.
THEMES
The themes which we will consider and touch on here are: Love versus hatred, The importance of social class and self-deception and self-realisation.
A Room with a View, deals with the discovery that real love is a powerful and regenerative force: essentially it is a love story with a happy ending. In the film, Lucy Honeychurch experiences a transition from a superficial understanding of love to a full understanding of its power and potential. The film uses many devices to illustrate this change:
The language of the characters
Their actions and gestures
The symbolic use of landscape and flowers
The metaphor of a room with a view.
Unlike a play and a novel, which rely heavily on the reader’s ability to interpret the subtlety and significance of images or references made in the texts, A Room with a View can guide the viewer to their meaning by using effective cinematography.
In the opening sequence of the film, the courtyard view which Lucy has from her window is very disappointing. She was expecting a spectacular view of Florence and this indicates to the viewer Lucy’s desire for new experiences. The room with a view becomes a metaphor for Lucy’s desire to live an exciting and full life.
Lucy’s disappointment with the restricted view is captured by the close-up camera shot of her face. This is intensified by her costume and by the incessant chatter of her cousin Charlotte.
In the dinner sequence, the camera focuses on a large question mark which George Emerson has arranged with the food on his plate. He deliberately shows this question mark to Lucy so that it becomes a symbolic representation for the viewer of their quest to find a meaningful and passionate existence.
The film clearly shows, even in the opening sequences, that the conventions which govern English society are useless in Italy. This is reflected in the open and direct manner of Mr. Emerson who offers Lucy and Charlotte the opportunity to change rooms. Mr. Emerson’s passionate plea that they should have a view indicates his emotional nature and affinity with the workings of the human heart: ‘I don’t care what I see outside. My vision is within. Here is where the birds sing; here is where the sky is blue.’
To emphasise Emerson’s passionate nature even further, the camera focuses on his face, which changes from a look of congeniality when he first suggests the switch, to a rising colour in his cheeks and a pleading look in his eyes. The shot also captures his emphatic gesture of beating his chest with his fork as he speaks, to indicate that his heart is where he feels life most powerfully.
The dialogue between Lucy, Charlotte, Mr. Beebe and the Misses Alan, as they discuss Mr. Emerson’s proposal, illustrates the conflict between the dictates of society and individual free will. Miss Catherine Alan’s opinion, that things which are indelicate can sometimes be beautiful, is a philosophy which Lucy adopts for her stay in Italy.
When Charlotte accepts the Emerson’s offer, she takes the larger of the two rooms for herself, explaining to Lucy that it belonged to George: ‘In my small way I am a woman of this world and I know where things can lead to.’
The ambiguity of this statement is apparent and hints at the physical attraction which exists between Lucy and George. It is also quite a pathetic statement, and though the viewer is not prone to like Charlotte at this stage in the film because of her ramrod stature, her severe hairstyle and her irritating personality, it does evoke a sense of empathy with her for her repressed emotions.
This shot is followed by the image of Lucy lying on the bed the next morning with a vertical strip of sunlight partly illuminating her face and body. This sensual image is enhanced when she rises from the bed and opens the window onto a panoramic view of Florence.
These images of Lucy along with her passionate piano playing indicate her desire to be free to experience all aspects of life and also to be free from the constraints and petty rules of society.
The sequence of shots in Santa Croce illustrates the Emersons rejection of social norms and the religious hypocrisy of people like the Rev. Cuthbert Eager. Mr. Emerson even makes fun of Giotto’s frescoes because he sees no truth in them. While this statement might appear like ignorance to art historians or religious zealots, it is not meant to be blasphemous; rather it reflects his belief that spirituality alone, faith without emotion, cannot sustain the human heart.
The close-up camera shots which move rapidly from fresco to fresco illustrates their disproportion to real life figures. These shots can be contrasted with the opening of this sequence where, through a high camera angle, Lucy wanders through the vast space of the church on her own. This contrast emphasises Lucy’s individualistic nature, which instinctively reacts against society’s expectations. This point is also highlighted in her dialogue with Mr. Emerson who pleads with her to help his son to stop brooding: ‘I don’t require you to fall in love with my boy but please try to help him’.
The ambiguity of this exchange is further emphasised by Mr. Emerson’s reference to the ‘everlasting why’ which he says George is trying to answer and also to his belief that there is ‘a yes and a yes and a yes’ which lies at the side of the everlasting why. These statements reflect an inner sensibility in Emerson to recognise an openness to love and passion in his son and most importantly a recognition of these qualities when he finds them in Lucy. Emerson’s riddles are comparable to the cryptic language of the Fool in King Lear, the purpose of which is to provoke deep, soul-searching contemplation and honest interaction between characters.
While the Santa Croce sequence is taking place, Miss Lavish is leading Charlotte on a tour of the ‘real’ Italy. The camera follows them down little alleys and side streets, soaking up the atmosphere of Florence. As they pass down one side street, three local Italian men try to catch their attention. The individual responses of the women are interesting. Miss Lavish seems to be oblivious to them but the camera focuses on Charlotte’s face, which reflects a sense of repulsion and scorn. This reaction illustrates Charlotte’s inability to cope with raw passion and desire. Miss Lavish, on the other hand, seems to have a rather lax attitude towards the rules which govern society. They both try to be individualistic, self-sufficient and daring and both are opinionated and headstrong. There is, however, a sense of innocence about them, as though they know the theory about love but have little actual experience of it. This is illustrated by the over-sentimentalised love story which Miss Lavish writes, using Lucy and George as her protagonists. Her philosophy that ‘one has always to be open, wide open to physical sensation’, is applied to Lucy when she describes her as a ‘young English girl transfigured by Italy’.
The irony of this statement is emphasised in the next sequence which catapults Lucy into this very ‘transfiguration’. The camera, having cut to Lucy, follows her across the piazza, widening into a high angle shot so that the frame encompasses the width and breadth of the square and Lucy is swallowed up into the crowd. The camera then focuses on close up shots of various sculptures of classical figures holding decapitated heads and figures bearing swords and clubs, engaged in various acts of barbarity. These shots, accompanied by ominous background music, are indicative of the terrible violence which Lucy is about to witness. What looks like a fist fight between two young Italian men, suddenly turns to murder when one of them is stabbed. The stabbing indicates the evil nature of humanity when passion overrides moral judgement. It is juxtaposed with Lucy’s discovery of real love and thus serves to contrast the struggle between the destructive power of hatred and the transforming power of love.
After the brawl in the piazza there is a low camera angle and close up shot of the victim’s face, so that the frame encompasses his mouth which is covered in blood and his eyes which reflect the horror of his attack. The impact of this scene on Lucy is captured in the slow camera movement which lingers on the victim’s face in a moment of tension and drama, indicated by the swell of dramatic music in the background. It is as if the blood which drains from the young man’s body is also being drained from Lucy, and the high camera angle which captures her fainting spell illustrates the subconscious impact which the event will evoke in her. When George Emerson rescues Lucy from the frenzied crowd, the camera cuts back and forth between the victim’s predicament and Lucy’s attempt to disengage herself, both mentally and physically, from George. Her awkwardness at this point reflects the intimacy that has occurred between them, an intimacy which would be frowned upon by society.
Her attempt at aloofness fails because he tells her that something tremendous has happened between them. Lucy’s notion that after the upheavals experienced by people in their lives, they return to their old life is rejected by George, who tells her that this is not so with him. His words are graphically illustrated by their close proximity to each other on the bridge and when he throws her pictures, which are covered in the victim’s blood, into the river. The camera follows the pictures as they are swept away by the swift flowing waters, metaphorically representing the passion which has been ignited between them. From this moment onwards every time Lucy and George encounter each other, the viewer is aware of the attraction that lies between them. This is evident in their gestures and interactions with each other and most particularly in the amorous eye contact made between them. All these relationships are highly charged with dramatic tension because of their forbidden nature. They illustrate very effectively the possibility of desire creating strong characters or contemptible individuals.
In the sequence where the company drive out in two carriages to see a view, the theme of love versus hatred is evident. As they drive, Rev. Eager reprimands Phaethon, the young Italian coachman, for his intimacy with the young girl who accompanies him. Their display of affection conflicts with Eager’s clinical unemotive personality and his patronising attitude to Lucy. Ironically, while he points out various buildings and houses which he recognises, the driver and his companion continue to caress each other and it is obvious that Lucy finds their actions much more interesting than Rev. Eager’s conversation.
Her curiosity is illustrated when the camera focuses on her as she spies on the lovers through Miss Lavish’s binoculars. In this interesting shot the camera allows the viewer to see Lucy’s point of view. The frame is confined to the close-up of the lovers’ kiss. This emphasis on Lucy’s curiosity parallels her desire to experience passion and prepares the viewer for her climactic encounter with George later on in the sequence.
Later George and Lucy encounter each other in a secluded part of the view and finally succumb to their desires and they embrace passionately. Their abandonment of proper etiquette is reflected in the scenery, which is untamed and surrounded by luscious greenery. Ironically, it was Phaethon, the young Italian driver, who guided Lucy to George. The paralleling of the Italian and his lover with George and Lucy emphasises the importance of love in the film. The comparison between the Italian’s relaxed image in the carriage when Lucy comes upon him and her sensuous image in bed at the beginning of the film, reiterates her latent desire.
When Charlotte finds George and Lucy embracing, the look of repulsion on her face symbolises her suppression of emotion but when compared to her earlier conversation with Miss Lavish about a woman marrying a lover ten years younger than her, this seems contradictory. The tone of the lovers’ conversation infers the scandalous nature of such behaviour but it also illustrates the emptiness of Charlotte’s existence; she can only talk about such passion while Lucy actually experiences it with George. However liberating this experience is for Lucy, it becomes a burden which she must hide from her own conscience, her family and the other guests in the pensione.
It is interesting that after this episode, Charlotte continually orders Lucy away from the window in her room, but symbolically Lucy is drawn back to it again. It is as if having once experienced such passion she is ensnared by it and wants to explore it more fully.
The sequence which takes place in England allows the viewer to contrast the dull conventionalism of English society with the open and unpretentious society of Italy. This contrast is reinforced by the formality of Cecil Vyse’s proposal to Lucy. The stylised position of their bodies as he proposed illustrates the emotional distance between them and is emphasised by the camera movement out through the drawing-room window to give the viewer Mrs. Honeychurch’s point of view of the setting. The dialogue between Lucy and Cecil cannot be heard because the dialogue Mrs. Honeychurch has with her son has precedence. Their dialogue implies Freddy’s dislike of Cecil’s pomposity and unsuitability for Lucy. Her acceptance of Cecil’s proposal is her attempt to purge herself of the memory of George Emerson.
Cecil’s unsuitability for Lucy is reflected very well in Mr. Beebe’s face when Cecil tells him about the engagement. The camera holds on Mr. Beebe and the viewer witnesses the mingling of his shock and sadness.
Subconsciously Cecil is probably aware of his unsuitability for Lucy because it is inferred when he suggests that she is more comfortable with him in a room than in the open countryside. It is most definitely evident in the way he kisses her. This shot reflects his inexperience and sexual indifference to her, while Lucy displays an avid desire for a passionate embrace. Lucy’s disappointment with Cecil is reflected by the close-up camera shot of Lucy’s face, which highlights her bewilderment at expressing so much unrequited passion. It is also evident in the dissolving of this frame into the sequence in the Italian countryside where George Emerson first kissed her.
In the London sequence when Cecil and his mother talk about Lucy it is in the tone of having acquired a possession. This attitude is highlighted when Mrs. Vyse watches the reactions of her guests to Lucy’s piano playing. The claustrophobic room where this sequence takes place also illustrates that the acquisition of objects is more important to the Vyses than self-knowledge or real feelings.
The shot which focuses on the faces of Cecil and his mother captures their conspiratorial gaze and also forces Mrs. Vyse to look up at Cecil while he is talking. This inference of Cecil’s superior attitude is reflected in his dialogue about the education of his children in the future. The sense of confined space in this frame, suggested by the vast array of ornaments in the room, is paralleled to Lucy’s encounter with Cecil on the landing before she retires to bed. The sense of awkward anticipation in her gestures underlines her inner frustration with Cecil’s lack of passion. Their incompatibility is carried into the next sequence which contrasts the Vyses’ home with the Honeychurch’s’ sprawling house and gardens and the horseplay of Freddy and Lucy.
The arrival of the Emersons in Summer Street propels the theme of love into the foreground of this sleepy, contented little place. The first suggestion of the upheaval which their arrival will bring about is the swimming sequence. The close camera shots of Freddy, Mr. Beebe and George Emerson frolicking and carousing about the place naked is symbolic of the raw and primitive passion which exists in human beings and which must find expression. The seclusion of the frame with the three men surrounded by bushes and trees is contrasted with the long-distance shot of Cecil, Mrs. Honeychurch and Lucy.
When Lucy, Cecil and Mrs. Honeychurch come face to face with George and Freddy, their reactions are typical. Only Lucy, who makes a tentative effort to shield her eyes with her umbrella, finds the episode humorous, while Cecil attempts to beat an escape route through the undergrowth with his cane, in order to avoid confrontation.
Constantly in this film Cecil is used as a medium through which the upper classes are ridiculed and this is obvious in his self-delusion and his blindness about what is really going on around him. He becomes a source of fun and is ridiculed. This is illustrated in the sequence where Lucy and George embrace in the garden while Cecil reads Miss Lavish’s book about their first encounter in Italy. Cecil is incapable of seeing things as they really are. He is content in his delusion but outside influences force him to suffer for his ignorance. Cecil is very pompous, dismissive and critical of other people.
Lucy finally breaks off her engagement with Cecil. This sequence takes place at night and Lucy’s delivery of the bad news, while she tidies the drawing room, begins politely but increases in vehemence.
The final sequence of the film reiterates the symbolic importance of a room with a view. The close-up camera shot of George and Lucy, framed by the open window, against the backdrop of Florence in the distance, captures their love for each other. The evils which exist in A Room with a View, therefore, are found in the repression of society, the snobbery of class distinction and the inability to express openly the passions of the heart.
LITERARY GENRE
This film is a classic romance, a love story with a happy ending. Before the end, however, both Lucy and George Emerson must overcome obstacles to their love and in the end, they are happily reunited once again.
The viewer is expected to suspend disbelief concerning the numerous rather extravagant coincidences in the plot – the initial confusion over the room, meeting with George at the street fight, the great coincidence that there was a novelist present to enshrine the illicit kiss in fiction, and the even greater coincidence when that novel is read by Cecil in the presence of Lucy and George, etc. ….. !
PLOT
The plot of the film is straightforward. The heroine and hero meet in a hotel in Florence and are attracted to one another. The hero falls in love immediately but the heroine will not allow herself to do so. They meet again in England and eventually marry despite their social backgrounds.
SETTING
The film is set in Florence and Summer Street in England. It begins and ends in Florence, and it begins and ends with the view from the hotel window as the main focus. The rest of the film is set in England. There is only one brief visit to London when Lucy goes to stay with Cecil’s family.
VISUALS
The Florentine scene with the view as the main focus is a striking part of the film. When the tourists go on their day trip the attractions of the Italian countryside are emphasised. Art is an important topic and there are many shots of the architecture of Florence. The stone carvings on the streets and the inside of a church, Santa Croce, are examined. Pictures in the Art Gallery in London feature and Cecil compares Lucy to a Leonardo painting. George and Lucy kiss in a beautiful cornfield and later on in a green countryside. The colour green is evident everywhere. The lush landscape of England is seen in the season of swimming and tennis parties.
CAMERA SHOTS/ANGLES
There is nothing unusual about the camera shots or angles: they reinforce and aid the leisurely flow of the story. There is one flashback sequence when Cecil is clumsily venturing to kiss Lucy on the mouth and she cannot help remembering George’s passionate embrace in Italy. This is shown briefly on screen accompanied by passionate music. This is a very effective device as the difference between the two men is revealed and from here on in the film, the audience become alienated from Cecil.
There is clever use of camera shots in the cathedral in Florence. An obedient crowd of tourists rotate their heads in the required direction when their guide indicates an important feature of its architecture. The camera switches to the particular feature and back to the crowd in readiness for the next swivel of heads. This happens a few times and it arouses the viewer’s curiosity.
When the men are bathing in the lake near Summer Street their enjoyment of the afternoon is clearly established in the viewers’ minds before the ladies and Cecil are introduced. The camera changes from the men to the women a couple of times to heighten the suspense of the approaching discovery.
LIGHTING
There are no major changes in the lighting in the film. Italy and England in the summer time are awash with light. England indoors is often in shadow, this sometimes varies depending on the scene. When Lucy is breaking up with Cecil the room is particularly dark. Most of the shadowy lighting reflects their relationship.
MUSIC
The music varies with the scenes. When emotional scenes are being shown, it is often subtle, and particularly romantic when Lucy and George are kissing. There is a strong beat which heightens the drama when the fight occurs. Near the conclusion, the music reaches a crescendo when Lucy realises who she really loves.
LANGUAGE
The accents of the actors are clearly distinguished. Cecil Vyse, in particular, has what he considers to be a superior accent. His speeches are in a haughty tone and this is more exaggerated when he is criticising or demeaning someone. His affected language makes him both sound and look ridiculous. Mr. Emerson speaks with a plain and unadorned accent to indicate a more honest character who speaks his mind. He stands out in contrast to Cecil, and in particular to the company he meets in Florence and in England.
SYMBOLS
The piano is a key symbol in the film. Lucy plays it regularly, expressing her strongest emotions through her playing. It is Mr. Beebe who is struck by the fact that her personality does not match the way she plays. He makes the point that if Lucy lives as she plays, ‘it will be very exciting for us, and for her’. He suspects that she will break out someday and, ‘One day music and life will mingle.’
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Society is a central issue in the film. For the Edwardians, social position was everything. English hypocrisy and pretentiousness is highlighted here. Social snobbery is rife. Charlotte’s attitude towards Mr. Emerson in the pensione is a striking example of this. The Miss Alans, an elderly couple, also illustrate this. They both sympathise with Charlotte and Lucy for having to endure Mr. Emerson’s insistence on exchanging rooms. Cecil is depicted as an insufferable snob, who sneers at everything that does not match his standards. Ironically he shows how social standings and gentility do not always go together. He is quite rude about Lucy’s brother Freddy because he is not an academic. He also makes Lucy’s mother feel that she is not good enough for him.
Social snobbery at its worst is evident when Lucy visits Cecil’s home. When Cecil and his mother discuss Lucy’s potential, it is as if they are discussing the potential of a new household acquisition. In the end, however, Lucy has the courage to overcome the social barriers that divide her and George and she decides to follow her instincts. Much of the film concentrates on Lucy’s emancipation from the restrictions imposed upon her by the society that surrounds her.
The culture of England and Italy are also contrasted in the film. The English visitors are restrained by their code of behaviour. The Italians, who are only briefly introduced, are uninhibited, and are puzzled and slightly amused by the prudish behaviour of the English. Charlotte Bartlett typifies this particularly English approach. The rector, Mr. Eager, is also easily horrified at what he considers to be a blatant show of sexuality when he sees the young Italian driver embracing his girlfriend.
Therefore the viewer is presented with two very different cultures in this film: upper-class England and Florence. England is emotionally restricted, bourgeois and staid. Certain codes of behaviour are rigidly adhered to and women have to travel with a chaperone. The stiffness and formality of this lifestyle is represented in the clothes of the time, manners, language and physical movement. Florence, on the other hand, is rich, relaxed and flamboyant. The social atmosphere is open and bright with streets full of life and endlessly fascinating. The viewer sees the beautiful, airy streets and squares, stunning monuments and impressive architecture.
The colour and variety of the Italians engage the viewer, and the contrast between the social mores of the English visitors is marked. The Italians chat easily to foreigners and just as easily get caught up in violent street fights.
And so, in the end, realisation dawns on Lucy that she does love George after all and the film ends with the two lovers on their honeymoon back in the Pensione Bertolini in Florence. They kiss passionately at the window of A Room with a View – and like all good love stories, they both live happily ever after!
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen looks at people who are guilty of pride, and the effects it has both on their lives and the lives of others. Everyone in the book has some degree of pride, but the key characters are often caricatures of proud people: Mr Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourg. Darcy and Elizabeth develop as characters during the course of the novel and they are also seen to have pride as part of their personality.
Caricatured pride is shown by Austen to be obnoxious. Lady Catherine is proud because she was born an aristocrat, raised to believe herself to be superior to others. She is patronising, believes she has a right to know and judge everything and gives petty advice because she needs to feel useful. She always likes to be the centre of attention, and she expects to be always obeyed.
Lady Catherine is challenged by Elizabeth, who unlike everyone else, is not overawed by her. Lady Catherine is outraged when Elizabeth answers her back at Rosings and later when she barges in to Longbourn. She tries to bully her at first, ordering her not to marry Darcy and finally insulting her by saying that accepting Darcy will pollute the shades of Pemberley. She demands instant submission and when this is not on offer her pride is severely dented.
Mr Collins had long been supplying this need. He had been raised with ‘humility of manner’, but living at Hunsford has made him a mixture of ‘pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility’ and this lapdog servility makes him even more unlikeable in our eyes. The key scene showing Collins’s pride comes with his proposal to Elizabeth, where he not only assures her he will not despise her for being without a dowry but tells her that she might as well accept him, for he is the best she can expect.
Elizabeth herself, though chiefly signifying prejudice, is guilty of the pride on which this prejudice is based. Darcy tells her when he proposes, ‘Had not you heart been hurt … (my faults) might have been overlooked’, and in the key chapter that follows, she admits this. She has been convinced she was right about Bingley’s treatment of Jane, Charlotte’s and Collins’s marriage, Wickham’s goodness and Darcy’s lack of worth. She learns that her prejudice has been due to her belief in the infallibility of her own judgement. Also, she realises her vanity has been wounded.
The distinction between pride and vanity is made early in the novel. Mary comments that ‘pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us’. As well as pride, Elizabeth has, therefore, been guilty of vanity. She has been far too influenced by Wickham’s attention and Darcy’s neglect. She admits this immediately, making an honest effort from then on to be neither proud nor vain.
The chief representative of pride in the novel is Darcy. On his introduction in Chapter 3, he is said to be proud. He seems withdrawn, superior and cynical. He puts Elizabeth down coldly with a patronising comment about her looks. Later, despite his infatuation, he feels himself superior to Elizabeth and kindly condescends to ignore her towards the end of her visit to Netherfield so that ‘nothing could elevate her with the hope’ of marrying above herself. Pride convinces Darcy he is right to interfere in Bingley’s relationship with Jane, and pride keeps him from lowering himself and his family by disclosing Wickham’s bad nature.
By the time he makes his first blighted proposal to Elizabeth, Darcy is firmly established in our minds as the epitome of pride. The proposal, ‘not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride’, reveals a Darcy who considers he is doing her a favour. She is outraged and accuses him of ‘arrogance’ and ‘conceit’. Were he a lesser character, like Mr Collins, for instance, he would have sulked and moved on to fresher pastures, but Darcy, the hero, ponders Elizabeth’s accusations, realises the truth in them and he resolves to change. At first, we only see his outward transformation, his gentle behaviour at Pemberley, his assistance to the Bennets after the elopement. It is only after his second and more successful proposal that we see evidence of his complete change of heart. Loving Elizabeth has made him realise that people can be good despite their humble origins and that love is not compatible with condescension.
We must remember of course that Darcy was never all bad. Our view of him as such is largely formed by Elizabeth’s prejudice. His reputation for being proud largely stems from his being shy and his dislike of socialising. He may put people down, but he also helps them, as friends and dependants. Remember his housekeeper’s kindly comments: ‘Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw any thing of it’.
By the end of the novel, Darcy still has some pride, but with good reason. The mature Elizabeth has learnt, as have we, that there is good pride and bad. ‘Vanity is a weakness’, says Darcy, but with ‘superiority of mind, pride will always be under good regulation’. Elizabeth, thinking he is guilty of both, smiles. But Darcy is right. Vanity, as seen in Lady Catherine, Mr Collins, Elizabeth, and even in Darcy himself, is wrong, but pride, while also being wrong, can be acceptable if properly controlled. In many ways, Darcy controls his pride. The Darcy who saves Lydia and marries Elizabeth is a well balanced mature individual. He is master of Pemberley and Elizabeth sees this in a positive light; he has many good attributes and a capacity to help his family, tenants and friends. She defends Darcy to her father, telling him that he is proud, but has ‘no improper pride’.
Lady Catherine and Mr Collins don’t change in the course of the novel but Elizabeth and Darcy do. Having learnt a valuable lesson they both are now ready to take up residence at Pemberley and reign supreme at the centre of Austen’s universe!
THE THEME OF PREJUDICE
In this age of political correctness and media spin the notion of prejudice, as described in the novel, is very pertinent. In the novel, Jane Austen talks about the idea of ‘universal acknowledgement’, where society in general takes a united (and she infers, a biased) stand, welcoming Bingley because he is an eligible bachelor, rejecting Darcy because he seems proud and favouring Wickham because he flatters and charms.
Against this background of public prejudice, Jane Austen presents several particular illustrations of people who confuse appearance with reality because of their personal bias.
Mrs Bennet is probably the most humorous example of this, seeing the world in terms of the wealth and charm of potential husbands. Thus, she is blind to Collins’s faults, is deceived by Wickham, and yet cannot see Darcy’s real worth: ‘I hate the very sight of him’. (Yet, worryingly, she welcomes Wickham as Lydia’s husband even though he nearly ruined her reputation and the reputation of her family).
There are many examples of social prejudice and snobbery dealt with in the novel (and this overlaps with the vice of pride). Lady Catherine, Collins and the Bingley sisters all fail to see the real Bennets when they judge them early on. Look at Collins’s proposal and how he constantly reminds Elizabeth of her inferior position in life, echoing the comments of Lady Catherine at Rosings. The Bingley sisters spend several sessions judging Jane and Elizabeth on their relatives and their wealth.
Darcy, though in the main clear-sighted and intelligent in his approach to life, at first joins in this social snobbery. His initial opinion of Elizabeth herself was formed by her lack of beauty and then compounded by her lack of connections. This snobbery led him to influence Bingley away from Jane and to resist his own infatuation for Elizabeth. It is only when Elizabeth points out his pride, after his first proposal to her, that he realises his mistake and he makes an honest effort to change his behaviour. By the end of the novel, he respects Elizabeth’s family and sees only the true Elizabeth, not her social standing.
It is Elizabeth who most typifies prejudice for us. The first time she and Darcy meet he snubs her and this turns her against him. From then on, instead of attempting to understand him, she reacts only to his proud outer appearance and delights in fuelling her prejudice as much as possible. At first, she can be pardoned for disliking a man who has insulted her but, as she admits, her reasons were not sound. She wanted to score points, to seem clever, and to say something witty.
It is not until the first proposal that Elizabeth begins to doubt her judgement. After all, she has been prejudiced against Darcy because of his insensitive remarks and in the case of Wickham, her judgement has been clouded by sexual attraction and flattery. In the crucial Chapter 36, Elizabeth considers Darcy’s letter and there follows a careful account of how she overcomes her prejudice. At first totally biased against Darcy, without ‘any wish of doing him justice’, she then realises that if his account is true, she must have deceived herself. Notice how by putting the letter away she literally refuses to see the truth. Almost immediately, however, her strength of character triumphs, she rereads the letter, and Elizabeth now sees the situation clearly. She admits to being ‘blind, partial, prejudiced’ and achieves insight into the situation and her own character. She admits her fault to Jane, and by letting Wickham know that she sees the difference between appearance and reality, she makes a public statement of her new self-knowledge.
She sees things in a clearer light from this point on, viewing Pemberley with unbiased eyes and meeting Darcy with an open mind. She also begins to understand his criticisms of her family, seeing them objectively possibly for the first time in her life. Finally, she comes to accept Darcy as an acceptable partner and she works hard to overcome her family’s prejudices against him by presenting him in his true light.
Elizabeth has learnt many valuable lessons at the end of this novel: she now knows that ‘first impressions’ are rarely sufficient and she comes to see the reality of true worth, not the appearance of it. There may be lessons here for us as well. Our age is obsessed with image, and spin and outward appearances and social snobbery. Finding our own Elizabeth or Mr Darcy is not going to be easy either!
Elizabeth is the central character in Pride and Prejudice – indeed it could be said that Elizabeth is Pride and Prejudice. She is the main focus of our interest, she is the novel’s heroine, even though she makes mistakes and is not particularly heroic. Her personality, her attitudes and her development throughout the novel bring together the story and all the other characters. The novel is concerned with pride and with prejudice and she and Darcy are the main players. She is Mr Bennet’s favourite daughter and her ‘quickness of mind’ is made evident in her witty and teasing conversations, where she often adopts striking and independent views. (See Chapters 8,9, and 11, when she is looking after Jane at Netherfield, in her conversations with Bingley, his sisters and Darcy).
She likes to laugh at people, including herself. She shares her capacity for irony with her father and the narrator. This allows her to stand back and offer judgements on certain situations. She often says the opposite of what she really means. In Chapter 6 (p. 27) she says, ‘Mr. Darcy is all politeness’, as a way of avoiding dancing with him after his rude remarks earlier.
A key passage in reviewing Elizabeth’s growth is Chapter 36 when we see her painfully coming to terms with her mistaken understanding of Wickham and Darcy while reading Darcy’s letter. She is forced here to confront some of her prejudices and earlier judgements, and in doing so realises that she has not been as sharp a reader of character as she has previously supposed. She blames herself for not having recognises the smack of ‘impropriety’ in Wickham’s behaviour, but had allowed herself to be deceived by his charm.
Elizabeth’s most appealing characteristic is her independent streak, her ‘self-sufficiency’. She judges things for herself and she is capable of decisive action as when she calmly, yet firmly, stands up to Mrs Bennet over Mr Collins’s proposal. She argues later that it is this ‘self-sufficiency’ which made Darcy fall in love with her.
However, though formidable at times, Elizabeth is also emotional. She feels great affection for Jane and is concerned for Lydia and Kitty. She is very close to her father, though she is often exasperated by her mother’s behaviour. She is very kind-hearted and we see this in her relationships with Charlotte and Georgiana.
She is not faultless, however, and her main fault is her prejudice. As Darcy is Pride, so Elizabeth is the Prejudice of the book’s title. She may see and judge for herself, but often these judgements are based on appearance rather than reality, on her strong emotions, not on rational thought. The two main targets for her prejudice are Darcy and Wickham. She tells us that from the beginning she meant to be ‘uncommonly clever’ in disliking Darcy ‘without any reason’. In fact, her initial dislike is seen as being justified because Darcy’s first comment was cruel and offensive. Afterwards, however, she delights in provoking him, and when he is denounced by Wickham, she is more than ready to believe the accusations made about him. One moment she is stating firmly that she does not think Darcy capable of such inhumanity, the next she is totally accepting Wickham’s story that he is! From the start, she is ‘out of her senses’ about Wickham’s looks and charm. For the next twenty chapters (!) she takes Wickham’s side despite warnings from Jane, Mrs Gardiner and Caroline Bingley, all of whom, ironically, Elizabeth considers to be prejudiced!
Darcy’s letter opens her eyes to the truth. He has already hinted that she only hears what she wants to hear. She therefore makes a conscious effort to read his letter openly, and on the second reading does so, analysing it rationally and she finally begins to notice Wickham’s inconsistencies and the lack of any real evidence of goodness on his part. She finally realises how ‘blind, partial, and prejudiced’ she has been. She also realises that she has been guilty of the same fault she accused Darcy of having – pride. She, too, has believed herself to be superior to others, and refused to believe she could be wrong, her vanity fuelled by Wickham’s attentions and offended by Darcy’s. She realises that ‘Till this moment, I never knew myself’. This is a crucial moment in the novel which marks her realisation of her faults and her decision to change.
Although she is still angry with Darcy, from this point on in the novel we see that she has changed and we see that she does try to see things clearly and without pride. She admits her faults to Jane, tells Wickham she knows the truth about him, tries to work out her problems honestly and rationally, and from now on values Darcy. It is her ability to do this which makes her the heroine of the novel. Faced with the truth about herself, realising she has been badly affected by both her pride and her prejudice, she accepts the fact, thinks about it and acts on her conclusions. She has, in effect, become a mature adult.
Her views on love and marriage also change. Jane Austen uses Elizabeth to show us the mature, ideal marriage, and by contrasting through her eyes other, less worthy marriages, we ourselves learn what is best. Elizabeth, at first, seems very clear about what she expects from a relationship. As she tells Charlotte, she is not seeking a husband, let alone a rich one. She despises courtship games, wants to know all about her partner, and when she hears of Charlotte’s engagement, her reaction is ‘impossible!’. She slowly learns that her prejudice has led her astray. Her visit to Hunsford shows her that such a marriage is not only possible but a fair compromise. Darcy’s views, Pemberley, and the elopement show her too that financial and social considerations in marriage are important. She needs to learn this before she can take a realistic view of marriage as a social union and become the responsible mistress of Pemberley. However, her view of marriage as an equal partnership is a very valid one and her refusal of Mr Collins’s proposal is vindicated. His marriage to Charlotte works because it is balanced, and all that remains now is for Elizabeth to meet her equal – quite literally she too must meet her match! Elizabeth needs a real partner, like Darcy.
It is worth your while trying to pinpoint the exact moment at which Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy. The fact that she dislikes and provokes him in the early part of the novel may well be a sign of her attraction, but Elizabeth does not admit this. She claims to find him obnoxious and certainly has no second thoughts about refusing his first patronising proposal. Not until her visit to Pemberley does she appreciate Darcy’s real worth and his change of heart, and she begins then to feel more for him. Her view of marriage also begins to change. She knows that Darcy is correct in his assessment of her family, and Lydia’s elopement only confirms this. The inequalities between herself and Darcy are eventually overcome, and Elizabeth betters herself by marrying Darcy. However, she never takes advantage of this. Seeing Pemberley marks the start of her affection for Darcy because there she begins to appreciate his real character, rather than simply his wealth.
The elopement crystallises Elizabeth’s view of marriage – she now sees the ideal, and realises that Darcy could provide it, ‘answer’ her needs. His generosity on Lydia’s behalf compounds her feelings and when he returns to Longbourn, Elizabeth is quiet and uncertain; he is now important to her and she knows that she needs his attention and approval. But first, she must overcome the twin hurdles of Darcy’s family and her own! She defeats Lady Catherine first, defending the right of Darcy and herself to choose their own partner. Her courage here against the formidable Lady Catherine surely encourages Darcy to propose again. She then overcomes her own family’s prejudice against Darcy, showing that she is now a truly independent adult and ready to be married.
Her relationship with Darcy is sound. They communicate well, give each other mutual support and affection and generally are good for one another. She has found her true partner, with whom she can live at Pemberley, her true home. At the end of the novel, Elizabeth is the happy heroine, the centre of everything. She has not only changed herself through her newly found love for Darcy, but she equally has changed Darcy through his love for her.
Mr. Darcy
Mr Darcy is the hero of Pride and Prejudice. He is entitled to be considered a hero because he has the capacity to change and mature and because he is a true partner for our heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. When we meet him first, however, he seems to be the villain of the book. He appears at the Meryton ball and is immediately disliked by everyone because he so obviously disapproves of the evening, will not mix, and seems above himself, particularly to Elizabeth. What we learn about him later supports this view: he is ‘haughty, reserved ……. continually giving offence’. These ‘first impressions’ are strengthened by more serious criticisms: his condescending manner towards Elizabeth at Netherfield, his actions to Wickham, his influencing of Bingley against Jane.
By the end of Chapter 33 we, like Elizabeth, have come to form a clear but negative view of Darcy. Then he proposes, but patronisingly, and they quarrel, gaining self-awareness shortly afterwards. From this point on, Darcy ceases to be an anti-hero and begins to change. We also begin to view him differently. Once the truth behind Wickham’s assertions and the reasoning behind Darcy’s influencing of Bingley are known, Elizabeth begins to reconsider her opinion of Darcy. The business with Wickham was, of course, a slander. Darcy seems to have done all that could have been asked of him and more: to have judged Wickham correctly and to have been generous enough not to seek revenge for the planned elopement with his sister. Over the Jane and Bingley affair, he seems to have acted honestly, if through pride, and his concern for Bingley’s welfare is touching.
We, like Elizabeth, begin to see things in a new light and to reconsider our own opinion of Darcy. Notice that in fact the very first impression he gave, at the Meryton ball, was good: ‘fine, handsome, noble’. We learnt too that he was intelligent and clear-sighted, and his conversations with Elizabeth certainly showed his thought and intelligence. When she finally realises that Darcy is right for her, she comments particularly on his ‘judgement, information, and knowledge of the world’. We are made increasingly aware also of Darcy’s real kindness and generosity. He is an affectionate brother, trusted by Georgiana, a wise and generous landlord and a good friend to Bingley. His free use of money to help first Wickham, then Lydia, is admirable.
In fact, Darcy’s chief fault is his pride, and this he honestly tries to conquer in the course of the novel. His is the pride in the title of the novel. He was brought up to be proud, almost trained to it. At the start of the novel, he triumphantly defends it, though he realises the importance of controlling it, which he feels he can do. However, he is wrong. His pride does lead him to behave wrongly – on three occasions. He conceals Wickham’s faults because he does not wish the name of Darcy to be humiliated. He is totally convinced of his own good judgement over the matter of Jane and so influences Bingley accordingly. Over Elizabeth, his pride causes him to despise her family connections, and though at first he resists, the attraction remains; he sees his own proposal as demeaning, without realising the implications of this for his relationship with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth reacts to his proposal with genuine anger, and for the first time in his life, Darcy’s ‘arrogance, conceit, disdain’ are challenged. This is, of course, the point of change for Darcy. He later tells Elizabeth that it took him some time to begin to alter, but in fact, by the next morning, he has understood enough to want to justify himself in a letter. He thinks over his actions, slowly realising ‘how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased’. By the time we reach Pemberley, he is eager to show his new persona. His outward manner, unlike so many in the novel, is a sign of his inward change. He accepts Elizabeth and her relations, and soon after accepts responsibility for Lydia’s elopement and arranges her marriage. His final proposal expresses his hopes, but not expectations, of being accepted, and he admits his pride, with gratitude to Elizabeth for humbling him.
We must not, however, judge Darcy too harshly. He is neither vain nor self-centred. Much of his pride is valid, the natural result of being master of Pemberley, affording him a self-confidence that allows him to help others. Equally, Elizabeth has coloured our view! Much of Darcy’s pride is a figment of her own prejudice. Her final declaration to her father, that ‘he has no improper pride’, says everything.
Although he represents pride in the novel, he is not without prejudice. He sees beyond superficial appearance more quickly than Elizabeth but nevertheless dismisses her at first glance on her looks alone. He soon changes his mind but is still put off by her inferior connections and does not consider her on her true merits. He learns to recognise his priorities after she has rejected his first proposal, and on his return to Longbourn is not disheartened by his reception, also seeing clearly now what he before judged wrongly – Jane’s true feelings for Bingley.
Darcy is, however, generally more clear-sighted than Elizabeth, and points out to her that she is prejudiced. This is the point of self-awareness for her and completes the circle whereby both hero and heroine are responsible for the other’s maturity. It is evident that as Darcy develops and matures so too does his love for Elizabeth. He is, from the start, Elizabeth’s obvious match; the story of their relationship is the story of the novel. At first, he dismisses her, then is attracted by her ‘playfulness’ and her kindness to Jane. His love is immature, though, and after her refusal of his proposal, he is forced to reconsider and reassess what she thinks of him and act on it. Gradually he develops a genuine regard for her. During the elopement crisis, his awareness and practical help both reflect and develop the growing affection he feels. One thing is certain; only when Darcy overcomes his faults and infatuation and acts truly for Elizabeth’s sake can he hope to win her. When he does, also righting the wrong he has done, by persuading Bingley after all to marry Jane, he proposes again. He is now in a position to receive the ‘happiness’ he deserves.
Darcy and Elizabeth are the one true model union in the novel. He is good for her; his pride shows her her own and through him, she learns how prejudiced she is. He alone can stand up to her, balancing her uncontrolled emotion with his controlled rationality. He ‘answers’ her totally, as no one else can. Darcy is thus the hero. He stands head and shoulders above all the other male characters in the novel. His personality also contrasts with Elizabeth’s, complementing it, as has been said, and forming a true unity. As her partner, he is as much the centre of the novel as Elizabeth is, though it is not seen through his eyes. He represents the male ideal: intelligent, rational, shows good judgement and right action, has a handsome, moneyed appearance but is nevertheless valued for his true inner qualities. He is indeed the ideal partner for our heroine; he is mature and unlike the New Man (Our 21st. Century Model!) he always considers her before himself!
This novel lays claim to being (probably) the most memorable fictional evocation of America of the ‘roaring twenties’, the jazz-age America which came to such a devastating end with the Wall Street Crash at the end of that crazy decade. Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s finest achievement, is interesting as the record of an era and of the disillusionment felt by thoughtful, sensitive people with established institutions and beliefs and in their sense of moral chaos in America after the Great War of 1914-1918.
Such was Fitzgerald’s success in expressing what was widely regarded as the spirit of the twenties that he was virtually credited with inventing the period. It was inevitable that he should be honoured with such dubious titles of distinction as ‘the laureate of the jazz age’ and ‘the novelist of the American dream’. It is true that he is remarkably successful in rendering some of the essential features of an exciting time. Sometimes it seems that Gatsby captures the moment and renders a more convincing account of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ than many a historical document.
The fragile, rich, drifting world of the twenties was the emotional heart of Fitzgerald’s life, the source of his happiness as well as his misery. Gatsby is a reflection of his passionate involvement in the issues of his day, but also of his ambivalent attitude to what he saw and experienced. It is, however, more than that. In 1950, the critic Lionel Trilling remarked that The Great Gatsby was still as fresh and as relevant as when it first appeared in 1925, and that it had even gained in stature and relevance, something that could be said of few American novels of its time. Sixty five years after Trilling’s comment, there is little evidence that interest in the novel has in any way declined. Indeed, its popularity has been enhanced by Hollywood film producers who have brought the novel and the era to the silver screen with great success and acclaim.
The American Dream
The Great Gatsby is, like many American novels, about an American dream, one dreamed by the romantic, wealthy bootlegger who gives the book its title. Gatsby’s dream begins when, as a poor young man, he falls in love with Daisy, a girl whose charm, youth and beauty are coloured and made glamorous in his eyes by a lifetime of wealth, whose very voice, he notes, ‘is full of money’. His dream that Daisy may become accessible to one of his class and background is nourished by two circumstances: the war makes him an officer, and his post-war activities elevate him to riches. Gatsby must, however, learn that such things will not bring Daisy wholly within his reach and that however ardently he may pursue it, his dream cannot be realised simply because he wills it.
Class differences
In Gatsby, Fitzgerald is dealing with an important social theme. He is fascinated by class distinctions and their relationship with the possession of wealth. This places him firmly in the tradition of the great classical novelists. The English novel originated in an age (the early eighteenth century) when class structures were drastically disturbed. Most of the major English novelists have since continued to be absorbed by class differences, and to draw heavily on these and their influences on human behaviour and attitudes. Think of the dominance of class and money in the novels of Jane Austen. Although there is an evident ambiguity in Fitzgerald’s attitude to those who possess great wealth, the established rich, they still represent what Lionel Trilling calls, ‘the nearest thing to an aristocracy that America could offer him’. Fitzgerald deals with the trappings and symbols of this American aristocracy, the great one being money. In one of his stories, The Rich Boy, there is this telling comment:
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them.
Readers of Gatsby will recognise that it is mainly about what money does to those who possess it in abundance.
There are, of course, two main versions of wealth in The Great Gatsby, dramatically contrasted throughout. This contrast gives the book much of its interest. Gatsby himself is the newly-rich tycoon, the boy from Dakota who thought he had to get rich quickly to win the love of a rich girl. His wealth gives him a vulgar neo-Gothic mansion, an incredible car, and garish clothes; it causes him to assume uncharacteristic stances and attitudes, including ‘an elaborate formality of speech’. All of these things placed side by side with the grace and ease associated with the representatives of the established rich, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, appear ludicrous. Gatsby is, from one point of view, a vulgar upstart who purchases his standing in society by giving mammoth parties patronised by all and sundry. (Check out Fitzgerald’s descriptions of these parties). His great wealth, for all his efforts, cannot imitate the effects produced by that of the Buchanans.
The world of the Buchanans
But the contrast is not entirely, or even mainly, in favour of the established rich. Gatsby, for all his lavish vulgarity, turns out all right in the end in the eyes of the reader; the Buchanans do not. Gatsby is using his money as an instrument with which to achieve something, to further his aim of enriching his life; he has a capacity for wonder, for excitement, not shared by the Buchanans. Their wealth and that of their associate Jordan Baker is sterile, which induces a tired, bored attitude to life. “We ought to plan something,” yawns Jordan, ‘sitting down at the table as if she were getting out of bed’; and again, “You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow … Everybody thinks so.”
What Fitzgerald establishes in the scenes involving the Buchanans is that their money has drained away their emotions. Daisy’s pattern of living, based as it has always been on the security of possession, has given her the habit of retreating in the face of responsibility into ‘their money or their vast carelessness’. This aspect of the mentality of the established rich is more than once contrasted with Gatsby’s heroic, if ludicrous, romantic idealism. He watches outside the Buchanan house after the accident, seeking to shelter Daisy from its unpleasant consequences. She is seated with Tom over a plate of cold chicken and two bottles of ale (‘an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture’) when Nick arrives. Gatsby looks at the latter ‘as though his presence marred the sacredness of the vigil’. The vulgar tycoon can also be the chivalrous, incorruptible upholder of ideals, however, mistaken these may be.
Gatsby’s world
The superficial beautiful world of Tom and Daisy is just as ludicrous in its way as the one Gatsby creates around himself. Gatsby’s world is, of course, a pathetic attempt to reproduce that of people like the Buchanans; by aping its surface, he fondly imagines that he can capture its heart. His provision for himself of an acceptable background is part of the elaborate, absurd pretence. As he reveals these fictional details, his speech becomes stiff and stilted, he chokes and swallows on the phrases:
I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle west – all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.
Almost all of this is false, of course, the truth being less flattering: ‘An instinct towards his future glory had led him to the small Lutheran college of St Olaf’s in Southern Minnesota’. His stay at Oxford is short and undistinguished. But the attitudes of the Buchanans are exposed by Fitzgerald to as pitiless a scrutiny. Here is a sample of what passes for thinking among them on ‘serious’ issues:
This idea is that we’re all Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and – After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again – And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilisation – oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?
The narrator Nick caraway remarks at the beginning that one of the things his father told him was that ‘a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.’ It is, oddly enough, in the socially deprived Gatsby rather than the long-established Buchanans that the ‘fundamental decencies’ are most in evidence.
Balancing two worlds in the novel
‘The test of a first-class intelligence,’ Fitzgerald remarked, ‘is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’ In The Great Gatsby, he holds contrasting ideas simultaneously on some major aspects of his material and successfully integrates opposing arguments and points of view. The most obvious instance of this is when he oscillates between imaginative identification with the splendours of rich society and a recurring tendency towards objective analysis of its limitations. The boredom, limited emotional range and narrowness of mind of the Buchanan set is very cleverly conveyed in the dialogue, but against this, he can also convey in a very sensuous way the attractions of being very wealthy:
All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the ‘Beale Street Blues’; while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with the low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.
But a more significant tension is that between the responses called forth by the two sides of Gatsby’s nature, as they are revealed in a few critical episodes and mediated to us through the play of Nick’s judgement of the events and his responses to them. The central passage of the novel, taken in conjunction with Gatsby’s own account of his background, provides a good example of the ambivalence with which the hero is regarded by his creator:
I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of god – a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that – and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would like to invent, and to this conception, he was faithful to the end.
The obscene, gargantuan vulgarity of his weekend parties is evoked with sober irony:
Every Friday, five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York – every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb!
Gatsby as a tragic figure
If this were all there was to Gatsby, we would read the novel as a satire on contemporary manners. Fitzgerald’s first publishers did, indeed, call the book a satire, but it is only incidentally so: principally in the contribution of the minor characters, and in the occasional comment on the incongruous activities of the major ones. But the story and the main character are tragic. The tragic implications of story and character arise chiefly from Gatsby’s redeeming qualities. Like Fitzgerald himself, Gatsby is a romantic, and in the end meets the fate of all romantics: disillusion, a sense of inadequacy in the face of experience, a deeply felt sense of failure. His romantic dream is centred on Daisy, an unworthy object as he finds out too late.
Gatsby’s romanticism is stressed throughout the book. It sometimes involves an endearingly childlike attitude to experience, a sentimental attachment to anything associated with those he loves, not found in any of the other characters. ‘If it wasn’t for the mist,’ he tells Daisy, ‘we could see your house across the bay. You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.’ This green light acquires a symbolic force. In a famous passage at the close of the novel, we are reminded of the sense of wonder Gatsby experienced when he first noticed the light at the end of daisy’s dock; it comes to stand as a memorial to his romantic idealism:
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine evening – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
A sense of the past
Gatsby has the characteristic romantic preoccupation with the past. This is beautifully evoked by Fitzgerald in a telling passage, which reveals some of the hidden springs of his failure and of his tragedy. His great delusion is a sad and common one: that the past can be restored and duplicated, and the effects of the passage of time erased. Gatsby wants Daisy to abandon Tom Buchanan so that, after she is free, she may go back with him to Louisville to be married from her house, ‘just as if it were five years ago’. When caraway tells him he can’t repeat the past like this he can see no reason whatever why: ‘I’m going to fix everything just as it was before.’ His longing to do so is perfectly comprehensible. His life has been disordered since his parting with Daisy: he wants to ‘recover something, some idea of himself, perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy’. He returns in his poignant day-dream to a starting place, to a scene with Daisy, described in heightened, poetic, emotionally-charged language, that can make sober realities pale into unimportance. The incident takes on almost an absolute value, for us readers as well as for Gatsby. Little wonder that he wants to begin again from such a point:
One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year …
His vain hope of recapturing such a past is finally extinguished by Tom Buchanan’s exposure of his activities during the intervening years. The romantic cavalier is mercilessly stripped of his glamour: ‘He and Wolfstein bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter … I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him.’ Tom reduces Gatsby’s thrilling aspirations to the level of the sordid: ‘I think he realises that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.’ The end of the quest for lost happiness is tellingly rendered:
But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, towards that lost voice across the room.
Fitzgerald the moralist
Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist. He once gave as his reason for writing fiction ‘a desire to preach at people in some acceptable form’. Moralists often find their natural outlet in satire, and Fitzgerald was gifted with a keen satiric eye and a keen sense of the absurdities of human nature. Tom’s defence of ‘civilisation’ against the ‘inferior’ races provides a good example. There are more good satiric portraits of minor figures like Catherine and Mr. McKee:
Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face … He informed me that he was in ‘the artistic game’, and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made a dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible.
But these, and the description of the massive vulgarity of the Gatsby residence are isolated patches; Fitzgerald was much more attracted to the affirmation of what he saw as the good than to the denunciation of the bad. The positives celebrated in The Great Gatsby are the simple virtues: the hopeful, wondering, questioning attitudes of mid-Western America, o the ‘broad, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio’, over against which, in rich contrast, is the urban sophistication, culture, boredom and corruption of the jaded East.
Flaws in the novel
The significance of the title of the book in relation to all this is often missed. Gatsby is great is so far as he stands for the simplicity of heart Fitzgerald identified with the mid-West; he is a vulgar, contemptible figure in so far as he revels in the notoriety that his worldly success lends to his name. He is, of course, a man of limited understanding, failing at once to appreciate his own real claims to recognition (his idealism, his high romantic aspirations) and to recognise his error in thinking that he really belongs to the world he has entered. In its way, too, the novel is limited in its treatment of its central figure. After all, we are expected to find the supreme value of the story and its hero in its romantic aspirations, in his ‘heightened sensitivity to the promises of life’. There is no voice in the novel, no point of view which seems to question the adequacy of this attitude. To many readers, it must seem a poor enough one in face of the complexities of actual living. What is perhaps more disturbing is that the novelist himself seems to find Gatsby’s romantic stance entirely adequate. A remark of his seems to bear this out:
That’s the whole burden of the novel, the loss of those illusions that give such colour to the world so that you don’t care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.
If this is the best that can be set over against the amoral world of the established rich, many readers will leave the book down with a sense of disappointment.
Merits of The Great Gatsby
Against this, however, one must stress the considerable virtues of The great Gatsby: its poetic quality (Fitzgerald was a devoted reader of T.S. Eliot, who influenced him here), its almost flawless structure, Fitzgerald’s mastery of technique. His use of detail to suggest symbolic meaning is particularly impressive. Here it is interesting to note that one of the best symbols in the book, the grotesque eyes of T.J. Eckleburg’s billboard came to him by chance. His publisher had a dust jacket designed for The Great Gatsby, a poor quality picture intended to suggest, by means of two enormous eyes, Daisy brooding over an amusement-park version of New York. Fitzgerald’s brilliant reworking of this in the book is a tribute to his intuitive skill. Again, the slow, gradual presentation of Gatsby is a tour de force. We are more than half-way through the book before we know the important things about him. The evocation of atmosphere and background is memorable and utterly satisfying; a detail or two will often suffice to fix indelibly a scene, a character or a mood:
With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway, and, breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his face was green.
One must not ignore the intelligent use by Fitzgerald of Carraway as narrator; a good deal of the colour and subtlety of the novel arises from the response of the narrator’s judgement and feelings to the events he describes.
Finally, the power and impact of the book are greatly enhanced by Fitzgerald’s concentration of his story and theme into a relatively few telling scenes.
About the Author....
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), known professionally as F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist and short story writer, whose writing gives us a memorable fictional evocation of America of the ‘roaring twenties’ and of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known), and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote numerous short stories, many of which treat themes of youth and promise, and age and despair (Wikipedia).
The critic C.S.Lewis once remarked that the qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral ‘is to know what it is, what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used’. George Orwell, with nice irony, subtitled Animal Farm ‘A Fairy Tale’. It is, in fact, an extended allegory. As a literary term, allegory is not really difficult to grasp. The writer of allegory describes a subject under the guise of another subject which has apt and suggestive resemblances to the first one. The allegorical work conveys a meaning other than, and in addition to, the literal meaning. If we read a story and conclude that beneath its surface meaning another meaning may be discovered and that the real point of the story resides in this other meaning, then we may safely conclude that we have been reading an allegory. Even the least qualified reader of Animal Farm will no doubt reach such a conclusion.
Animal Farm is a special kind of allegory, the beast fable. Most of us are familiar with this universal literary form through our reading of Aesop’s Fables. Those who have read the Fourth Book of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels will scarcely be surprised to learn that Swift’s talking horses are literary ancestors of Orwell’s talking farm animals. A fable is a story designed to inculcate a moral about some aspect of human behaviour. Sometimes (as in the case of Animal Farm) the moral or lesson is implicit in the story; sometimes it is explicitly stated in brief form at the end. Like other writers of beast fables, Orwell uses animals and birds to represent the deeds and motives of human beings; like them, too, he has his moral lesson to enforce.
Satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution
Every account of Animal Farm traces the fairly obvious parallels between the characters and motives of Orwell’s animals and those of the human beings they represent. It was immediately clear to his original readers (in the mid-1940’s) that Orwell had written a fairly explicit satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin, a circumstance which made it difficult for him to find an English publisher. The parallels are easily traced. Major is Lenin, although since he dies before the rising, the identification is not exact. Napoleon is Stalin, and Snowball is Trotsky, whose quarrel with Stalin after Lenin’s death led to his expulsion from the Communist Party and from Russia. Molly stands for those Russians who fled the country after 1917. Boxer is an image of the loyal, uncomplaining proletariat, and Moses an unattractive representation of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Battle of the Cowshed is clearly the Civil War that followed the 1917 Revolution; Western countries (Jones and his neighbours) sent troops to the aid of the dissenting White Russians. The Battle of the Windmill is the German invasion of 1941. Orwell pointed this out in a letter to his publisher. He felt that at one point in the story he had been unfair to Stalin. ‘All the animals including Napoleon,’ he wrote in the Windmill episode, ‘flung themselves on their faces.’ This he wanted altered to ‘All the animals except Napoleon flung themselves on their faces,’ pointing out that Stalin, after all, did remain in Moscow during the German invasion.
The moral lesson of the fable
So much for the main parallels between Orwell’s animals and their human counterparts. What of the moral lesson of the fable? His experiences during the Spanish Civil War and his close study of Russian politics made Orwell acutely conscious of what he called ‘the barbaric and undemocratic’ methods of Communist governments. His main concern in Animal Farm was to make people in Western Europe see the Soviet regime for what it really was.
It appeared to him that since 1930 the USSR, far from moving towards socialism, showed clear signs of transforming itself into a hierarchical society in which the rulers (the pigs of the fable) were no more inclined than were the members of any other power elite to surrender their privileges. Since it was the common view of Western European socialists that a genuinely socialist regime existed in Russia, Orwell saw it as one of his tasks to dispel this misunderstanding in a story that could easily be assimilated by almost anyone, and that would lend itself to easy translation into other languages.
At the end of Animal Farm it is impossible to distinguish the human beings from the pigs, the latter having entered heartily into commercial and social relations with their former enemies and abandoned the major slogan of the Revolution, ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ In his preface to the Ukranian edition, Orwell made an interesting (and perhaps surprising) comment on his ending. A number of readers, he felt, might finish Animal Farm with the impression that it ends in the complete reconciliation of the pigs (the Soviet power elite) and the humans (the Western capitalist leaders). This, he pointed out was not his intention. On the contrary, he meant the book to end on a note of discord. He wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference, which everybody thought, had established the best possible relations between the USSR and the West. ‘I personally,’ Orwell observed with satisfaction, ‘did not believe that such good relations would last long; and, as events have shown, I wasn’t far wrong.’
A novel of universal political truths
Some of the pleasure of reading Animal Farm lies in the reader’s gradual recognition of the parallels with modern Russian history. The various identifications can be disclosed rather like the answers to a crossword puzzle, or chalked up on the blackboard like so many equations. But the question arises: once we have made all the identifications what further interest are we likely to have in a work like Animal Farm? It might be argued that even as an allegory of Soviet politics, the book has lost some of its original point, since Orwell clearly did not contemplate, for example, such developments as those associated with the Krushchev era, or the astonishing course taken by the Soviet system since the coming to power of Gorbachev in 1985. Fortunately for Orwell’s reputation, his book is likely to attract readers long after the Russian experience has been forgotten, because it has large implications extending beyond the immediate circumstances of any single movement such as the Russian Revolution of 1917.In several respects, Orwell’s fable embodies universal political truths. What he describes is what happens sooner or later, to a greater or lesser extent, to all revolutionary movements. The modern Chinese theory of continuous revolution as a means of preserving intact the ideals of the first revolutionaries is an interesting recognition of the dangers (so convincingly illustrated in Animal Farm) which attended all large-scale efforts at the betterment of the human lot. Orwell’s book is a comment on the failure, as he saw it, of the Russian Revolution to fulfil the expectations of those who saw it marking a new era of true socialist democracy. But it can also be read as a disillusioned recognition of the apparently inevitable failure of every great reforming movement to preserve its original momentum. The French Revolution began in unbounded hope for a better world and petered out in the Jacobin terror.
Limitations of the moral fable
In Animal Farm, as in all moral fables, the author starts off with his abstract truth or idea, and uses his story to illustrate this, to give it life. All the elements in the story are necessarily subordinated to the pattern dictated by whatever precepts the author desires to enforce on the minds of his readers. Even these bald statements about the literary genre to which Animal Farm belongs suggest its almost inevitable limitations. The major landmarks of fiction are exploratory in character; their important discoveries about human life and conduct emerge with the progress of the story. Writers like the Orwell of Animal Farm, on the other hand, give the impression of having made their discoveries before composing their works. The problem for all those who write fiction to illustrate pre-conceived ideas is that they must force a disorderly mass of experience into conformity with these ideas, which results inevitably either in some falsification of experience, or in a radically simplified view of it. Inconvenient facts tend to be rigorously excluded. Orwell, however, in choosing to illustrate what seems to be a universal human experience, is exempt from charges of distortion, whatever may be said about the limitations of his fable.
Orwell was one of those fortunate writers who recognised his limitations, who knew what suited his special talents and what did not. Readers of his other novels will quickly realise that he found it extremely difficult to breathe life into his characters, none of whom is really convincing or memorable. There is a sense in which Orwell is not really a creative writer, but a brilliant publicist, journalist, and apologist for liberal causes, who used the conventional fictional framework for his special purposes. If he could not create life-like characters in his novels, he could at any rate write a great political fable. What gives Animal Farm its vitality is not the kind of imaginative power one associates with a great novelist. Such imaginative power was not really needed in this kind of work. Orwell’s mind was one, which, like Swift’s, often contemplated the great human questions in political terms; like Swift, he found the beast fable an admirable vehicle for political ideas. The almost perfect correspondence in Animal Farm between form and content at once helps to explain its astonishing popular success and to ensure its survival as a minor classic.
Lord of the Flies was published in 1954 and in it, William Golding sets out to create a disturbing and dystopian view of the world – a social experiment that goes horribly wrong. The bleak aftermath of the second war to blight the Twentieth Century is still being felt in Britain, Europe and the rest of the world in the early 1950’s. Images of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, along with personal war memories and experiences and other atrocities were still very raw in people’s minds. This powerful novel can be included among other dystopian classics such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. This genre of dystopian fiction represents the other extreme from Utopias, fictional representations of ideal political states or ways of life, the classical example here being St. Thomas More’s Utopia, a Latin work written in 1516.
Golding, as you will soon be aware, is very concerned with the pervasive influence of evil forces in our world, and he has few allusions about the counterbalancing forces of good. It is possible to classify Lord of the Flies as a dystopian fable because in it Golding is casting a jaundiced eye on earlier and more optimistic variations on his theme, the best known of these being R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island. Lord of the Flies was written as a kind of parody of The Coral Island and Golding makes specific reference to it in his novel. A very brief comparison with Ballantyne’s book helps us see what Golding is attempting in Lord of the Flies. In The Coral Island, Ballantyne shipwrecks a group of upright, solid, church-going British boys, and allows them to build a decent imitation of British civilisation in their new and primitive surroundings. In Lord of the Flies, the shipwreck is now a plane wreck; the boys are still middle-class British Christians. Even the names of three of Golding’s main characters are similar to those in Ballantyne – Golding’s three central characters – Ralph, Piggy and Jack – are caricatures of Ballantyne’s heroes . The vital difference between the two novels, however, is that whereas Ballantyne’s is thoroughly optimistic in spirit and outcome, Golding’s outcomes are disillusioning and pessimistic.
The need for social order
Lord of the Flies is a very grim illustration of the kind of situation that, as Golding sees it, must inevitably arise if the sanctions and controls of society are abandoned. In this kind of situation, the great majority of human beings (whether boys or men) will choose destructive courses. There will be the few who will choose order, whose acts reflect human decency and goodness, but they will be outnumbered and defeated by the evil tendencies of the many. The ethos of Ballantyne’s island was that of the boy-scout camp; on Golding’s the greater number of the boys choose to enact the roles of savages, painting themselves, wallowing in an orgy of animal slaughter, sinking into bestial habits, engaging in torture, murder and sacrifice to false gods.
Speaking of false gods prompts a reference to the significance of Golding’s title for the novel. This refers to Beelzebub, traditionally the most debased and disgusting of all the devils. The young British Christians, most of all the choirboys, instinctively chose him, rather than the Christian God as the object of their worship. This choice bears fundamentally on Golding’s views on human nature. Golding is, above all, a didactic writer and he is trying, therefore, to teach us a moral lesson here. One of his primary purposes is to expose what he sees as the shallowness of optimistic theories (he would see them as illusions) about human nature. At one level, his novel can be read as a strenuous rejection of humanistic theories of human perfection. It enacts an unrepentant belief in the traditional Christian doctrine of Original Sin; the doctrine which teaches that the first sin of Adam, as the old Catechism put it, ‘darkened the understanding, weakened the will, and left us a strong inclination to evil’.
A pessimistic world view?
This traditional view sets Golding apart from many of the modern ‘trendy’ currents of thought. Few of us have escaped the influence of the romantic view of childhood as a time of glorious innocence; the cult of the noble savage has, since Rousseau, enjoyed widespread support in all kinds of fiction. It was a common Romantic assumption that man was potentially a noble, upright creature if only he could be freed from the fetters of a corrupt society. Golding is having none of this! Not for him the vision of the child emerging in clouds of glory, or the inherent nobility of the savage life. What he finds instead, is that only the slightest push, or the removal of sanctions or firm restraints, is needed for children, as well as for men, to tumble into unfathomable depths of depravity. In Lord of the Flies he is trying to show us with what frightening ease man and boy can throw off all his superficial decency (‘off you lendings’ in Lear’s version) and regress back to that primitive state where ‘chaos is come again.’
To return to categories and literary genres for a moment, Lord of the Flies is a fable. As Golding himself points out, the writer of fables is a moralist: ‘he cannot make a story without a human lesson tucked away in it’, very similar to the parables in the Gospels. No matter how we look on this novel, however, it would be very difficult to describe Golding’s lesson here as a hopeful one. For him, men are generally vicious, murderous and liable to extremes of self-degradation and animal behaviour. What most forcibly strikes us as we read this novel is Golding’s intuition that, at best, civilising conventions and rules are passing things, but that what endures is man’s wild irrationality and his destructive urges. A passing visit to Sky News or CNN or BBC News may confirm this for us on a daily basis! Who would choose to live in Aleppo in Syria or the many cities in Iraq who have been condemned to untold barbarity in recent times?
A realistic novel
Lord of the Flies has proved an extraordinary popular book, both from the point of view of general readership and among academics. Golding may have conceived his novel as an allegory, but he is also a master of realistic fiction, and the book has a striking impact on the generality of young readers, for whom it is, here in Ireland as well as in Britain, a widely prescribed school text. Golding was a teacher for a number of years, and has an instinctive understanding of, and feeling for, the characters and mannerisms of schoolboys. One of the striking features of his method is his success in presenting his young characters in terms of idiom and linguistic habit (compare the under-educated, ill-spoken Piggy in this respect with Ralph and Jack). The novel, for all its allegorical and symbolic overtones, is rooted firmly in real experience. Physical sensations are admirably and tellingly rendered; the discomforts, unpleasantness, delights and other sensations associated with life on the island are evoked with astonishing realism. The beautiful descriptions of island and sea are unforgettable. Golding’s continuous success with the depiction of the physical realities of life, the rootedness of the book in the solid earth, is perhaps its most memorable feature for younger readers, most of whom, it is safe to suggest, can approach it on a realistic level without bothering unduly about its allegorical implications or its status as a moral fable. Discussing the wider picture, the novel as fable or allegory or simply realistic novel with an eager English class, is one of the great joys and job satisfactions of the teacher of English Literature!
Symbolism
Academics have naturally tended to focus on the allegorical and symbolic features of the book, following Golding himself, who has strongly emphasised these in his critical comments. There are numerous examples of symbols in the novel. The shell or conch discovered by Ralph and Piggy has attracted a wide variety of such interpretations. It is most obviously to be regarded as a symbol of the forces in the boys striving to uphold civilised standards and values. The character of Simon attracts a good deal of symbolic weight also. The pig’s head covered in flies is a symbol or sign of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Simon’s hallucination of the monologue from the pig’s head is another symbolic feature. But whatever importance one may attach to such matters, the vital consideration is that most of the episodes which obviously attract symbolic interpretations also work most successfully at a realistic level, which adds to the great appeal of the novel.
Dream to nightmare
Golding has a remarkable gift for presenting abstract conceptions in compelling concrete terms. One of the themes of the book that particularly appeals to younger readers is that it enacts a powerfully imagined version of the dream that most children cherish at one time or another of escaping from the restraints of a society controlled by adults. What Golding does in Lord of the Flies is bring this dream to life. But what he also does is to turn the dream into a virtual nightmare. Escape from the stabilising forces of the adult world, instead of bringing about happiness, results in a riot of destructive individualism. At the beginning, there is a vague, unsatisfactory sense of kinship and comradeship: Ralph and Jack, the two ‘mighty opposites’ of the later parts of the novel, can, at the beginning, look at each other ‘with a shy liking’. The collapse of this sympathy, the breaking of most of the bonds of human kinship, is the stark reality which haunts Golding’s fable. And even when the outside world comes to the rescue at the conclusion of the novel it only brings further reminders of disorder and war with the finding of the dead airman and the arrival of an armed warship. There is little comfort, then, to be drawn from Golding’s dystopian novel: neither a ‘civilised’ environment nor the lack of it, seem to offer much hope of even limited perfection or happiness to human beings.
This novel, first published on this day, 16th July in 1951, by the enigmatic J. D. Salinger, belongs to a category of fiction made popular by writers as diverse as Dickens and Joyce. It is Bildungsroman, or novel about upbringing and education – a novel of maturation. The heroes of novels of this type are invariably young people or children seeking to find their identities and roles in the big bad world. Nineteenth-century examples are David Copperfield (1850) and Great Expectations (1861), both by Charles Dickens. The most famous twentieth-century example is James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Probably the most famous example from American fiction before Catcher in the Rye was the classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Many of these novels go far beyond the treatment of the educational development of the central figure, and concern themselves with profound spiritual and moral experiences.
The Catcher in the Rye is the story of the efforts of an adolescent American to relate to a grown-up world that he finds deeply flawed and fundamentally unsympathetic. The central figure, Holden Caulfield, leaves his boarding school and spends a weekend in New York City. Here he finds himself alone in what he sees as a grown-up world of corruption, unkindness and hypocrisy. The main theme of the novel is Holden’s resistance to growing up into this kind of world, which, as he sees it, undermines youthful innocence and integrity. The novel has no real plot. It consists mainly of the observations of Holden on his experiences, particularly on the ‘phoniness’ of those he encounters. His attempt to reconcile himself to the values of the adult world is a failure. He retreats from this failure into mental illness, and writes his story while under psychiatric treatment.
Resistance to loss of innocence
The title of the novel is a glance at Holden’s dream of protecting other, younger children from the curse of maturity, of saving such innocents before the world corrupts them. One of Robert Burns’s most famous songs has the line, ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’, Holden has misheard the words and thinks the line should go, ‘If a body catch a body coming through the rye’. He uses the mistaken version as a slogan for his own dream-activity. He will catch the innocent children who play in the ryefield because they are in danger of falling over the unseen edge of a cliff. His vision of his saving role is pathetic in its futility:
‘I thought it was “If a body catch a body”,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going. I have to come from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.’
An uncaring adult world
Part of Holden’s depression arises from his awareness of himself as an innocent abroad in a world of phoney values, a world which, like Holden himself, needs love but does not know where to find it. It is, in many of its manifestations, a world that believes that it can get on without love, or even without decency. What passes for love in the adult world through which he moves is little better than selfish exploitation. Most of those with whom he comes in contact are crudely dismissive of him and his concerns (the taxi-drivers, for example), try to exploit him for money, like the offensive pimp in the hotel, or seem ready to abuse him sexually, like Antolini, his former schoolmaster, to whom he turns in desperate need for help and advice. It is not surprising that Holden cannot form a viable or stable relationship with adult society. That society cannot give him the love and affection for which he craves. These values seem to be associated in his mind with two things: death and the innocence that disappeared with the loss of childhood.
The death-motif and its association with love appear from time to time in Holden’s references to his much-loved brother, whose death from leukemia has blighted his family. His longing to preserve innocence in a world given over to destroying it makes him the idealist who rubs obscenities off walls so that small girls will not have to see them. In The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger, who clearly approves of his hero, raises fundamental questions about man’s inhuman treatment of his fellow-men. What, we are forced to ask, makes New York an abode of indifferent, uncaring individuals? Is the answer to be found in some radical flaw at the heart of human nature, or in society? The novel suggests that human nature is not primarily to blame for the sufferings which Holden and others like him have to endure. Salinger conveys a sense that the world is populated by fallible, foolish, pompous, careless, morally weak individuals rather than by evil ones, and that human beings are potentially loving and joyful if only society will permit them to satisfy these basic longings. It was this aspect of The Catcher in the Rye that caused it to appeal most widely to a generation of American students in the nineteen-fifties. As Anthony Burgess has pointed out, the novel was,
‘a symptom of a need, after a ghastly war and during a ghastly peace, for the young to raise a voice of protest against what the adult world was doing, or failing to do’.
Holden’s depression
The Catcher in the Rye has a single unifying theme: the nervous breakdown or intensifying depression of a sixteen-year-old boy. The progress of Holden’s psychiatric illness is chronicled not from its origins but through its critical phase. This is done with remarkable understanding of how depression actually works, and how it affects behaviour and the processes of thought. Salinger is particularly impressive in his handling of the correlation between depressive illness and physical symptoms. As his depression intensifies, Holden experiences psychosomatic symptoms, which feature a morbid fear of painful death (‘I figured I’d be dead in a couple of months because I had cancer’) and much physical distress (‘The thing is, if you get very depressed about something, it’s hard as hell to swallow’). What we learn about him from his own narrative of his life makes his depressed state comprehensible enough. The death of his much-loved brother Allie from leukaemia is one major influence on his mental and emotional states, leaving him with a grievance against the unfairness of things. His emotional difficulties are not eased by his relationship with his parents. His mother has been depressed since Allie’s death, and is not a positive force in his life, while his father, preoccupied with being successful, never discusses problems with him.
Holden is thus deprived of the parental guidance every adolescent needs. His lack of emotional stability is not surprising. The boarding school to which he is sent is no substitute for his parents. His primary need is for the kind of understanding and sympathy that will see him through a difficult period in his life. Whenever he seeks this from his acquaintances he is rebuffed or ignored. As he ruefully remarks, Stradlater is not interested in a person’s ‘lousy childhood’, while Ackley will respond only if yelled at. Both Ackley and Stradlater make little of the few achievements that might give Holden some badly needed self-confidence and self-esteem. When Holden puts a heartfelt question to his history instructor (‘Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?’), the latter cannot answer him. His old girl-friend Sally Hayes can do no better than the others in providing the understanding he needs if he is to keep depression at bay. Carl Luce, an ex-schoolmate now at Columbia University, responds coldly and unfeelingly to Holden’s plea for help in sorting out his mental and emotional confusion, callously advising him to see a psychiatrist.
As a final despairing gesture, Holden turns to a man he respects, his teacher Mr. Antolini. The latter can help him no more than the others could. He lectures him at length, but fails to notice how deeply disturbed he is. At this stage, Holden is at breaking-point, descending to deeper levels of depression, while Antolini is telling him that an academic education will give him an idea what size of mind he has. Salinger provides some obvious pointers to Holden’s lack of mental stability in his numerous self-contradictions. Our hero tells Antolini, for example, that a teacher at Pencey, ‘was intelligent and all, but you could tell he didn’t have too much brains’. He also claims that there were a couple of classes he didn’t attend for a while, but that he didn’t cut any. The outcome of the episode with Antolini is that Holden is more depressed than ever. Convinced that society has finally failed him, he decides to run away and pretend to be a deaf mute, so avoiding, ‘any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody’. He will make no further efforts to gain the understanding of other people, and will renounce the ‘phoney’ world.
Phoebe, an agent of redemption
If he is to be redeemed from his hopelessly depressed state, this must now be through the voluntary, unsolicited intervention of somebody else. His sister Phoebe becomes the agent of his redemption from total despair. When Phoebe insists on running away with him, he comes to the conclusion that he cannot take responsibility for her, and decides that he must go home, not for his own sake, but for hers. This gesture of submission is rewarded with a fleeting spell of intense happiness, lovingly described. The sight of Phoebe going round and round on the carousel fills him with inexplicable joy and tranquility, although the contradictory account of how he fares in the rain is a sinister indication of his confused mental state:
‘My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way, but I got soaked anyway. I didn’t care, though. I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going round and round. I was damn near bawling. I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don’t know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going round and round, in her blue coat and all. I wish you could’ve been there’.
After his painful quest, involving disappointment, frustration, bitterness, depression and disillusionment, Holden has at last found something beautiful in a world he has so often condemned as ‘phoney’. This does not necessarily mean that he novel has a happy ending. We know that the carousel will have to stop, and Holden and his sister will have to return to the world from which all his instincts have been urging him to escape. The best things that life has to offer him are the few fleeting moments of exaltation he has experienced watching Phoebe on the carousel.
Holden’s distorted view of the world.
The Catcher in the Rye is often read as a sympathetic account of a good-natured, sensitive boy confronted by a cruel, dishonest world, populated by freaks, exploiters and phoneys. The following is typical of his view of other people:
I was surrounded by jerks. I’m not kidding. At this other tiny table, right to my left, was this funny-looking guy and this funny-looking girl.
It is clear from the novel that Salinger likes Holden and expects his readers to like him, but the question must be asked, how likable is he? Does he deserve to be taken at his own valuation as an idealist who suffers at the hands of others? Are we to applaud his trenchant exposures of virtually all those who cross his path?
The presentation of Holden involves an obvious paradox: the childlike idealist with the vulnerable, sensitive nature can appear heartless and cruel in his comments on almost everybody else. There is the curious fact that although he is constantly protesting against the phoniness of almost everybody else, he himself is far from exempt from this fault. In this context, phoniness means hypocrisy, empty, insincere moralising and fraudulent attitudes and behaviour. It is true that Holden is upset by such things; as he puts it, they cause him to ‘puke’. The only people he can think of as being free from phoniness are his sister Phoebe, the two nuns he meets in the sandwich bar, and children in general. Were he also to look more closely at himself, he would have to acknowledge that he shares the qualities he condemns in others. He often tells lies, often pretends to be someone he is not, and can be quite bitter in his comments on his friends, while at the same time pleading for charity and kindness towards himself.
The key to Holden’s character is his mental confusion. This shows itself particularly in his inability to see people and their activities in proportion. Again, his lack of a proper sense of proportion expresses itself in an outrageously exaggerated habit of speaking. By referring to almost everybody and everything in grossly inflated language, he can make relatively innocuous circumstances sound wicked and dangerous.
It is not enough for him to describe a woman who sits next to him at the cinema as the slightly inconsiderate person she is; he feels obliged to describe her as being ‘about as kind-hearted as a goddam wolf’. He doesn’t like Ossenburger the undertaker, and takes exception to the man’s religious inclinations. His dislike vents itself in great crude fantasies in which Ossenburger features as a monstrous fraud who shoves corpses into a sack and dumps them in the river, who prays fervently to Jesus to send him more corpses and who bores a captive audience with ‘about fifty corny jokes’. He describes places and their atmospheres in the same wildly exaggerated fashion, particularly when their impact on him is unfavourable. A hotel lobby cannot seem merely stale-smelling to him; it must convey the impression of ‘fifty million dead cigars’. No wonder Phoebe tells him, ‘You don’t like anything that’s happening.’ This is because his view of reality is hopelessly distorted; his depressed state makes him so utterly negative about experience that he cannot see that even the worst people and situations have some redeeming qualities.
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