Books - Brideshead Revisited

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	Books - Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited, the Sacred and Profane Memories of Capt. Charles Ryder is a novel by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel, "deals with what is theologically termed, "the operation of Grace", that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself". This is achieved by an examination of the aristocratic Flyte family, as seen by the narrator, Charles Ryder. In his Letters, Waugh refers to the novel a number of times as his "magnum opus", but writes to Graham Greene in 1950, saying "I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled." It has become well-known to modern audiences as a result of the ITV drama serialisation of 1981, produced by Granada Television.

Plot summary

After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at an unnamed college (though critics have suggested Waugh used Hertford College as his model) at Oxford University, and Lord Sebastian Flyte, an undergraduate at Christ Church, the younger son of an aristocratic family, become friends. Sebastian takes Charles to the palatial home of his family, Brideshead Castle, where Charles eventually meets the rest of the Flyte family, including Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte.

Sebastian's family is Catholic. Religious considerations arise frequently among the family, and prove to govern the details of their lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always assumed Christianity to be "without substance or merit." Sebastian, in some ways a troubled young man, learns to find greater solace in alcohol than in religion, and descends into that habit, drifting away from the family over a two-year period, which occasions Charles' own estrangement from the Flytes. Yet Charles is fated to re-encounter the Flyte family over the years, and eventually forms a relationship with Julia, who by that time is married but separated. Charles plans to divorce his own wife so he and Julia can marry, until Julia, motivated by a comment by her brother and by her father's deathbed return to the faith, decides that she can no longer live in sin, and indeed can no longer contemplate marriage to Charles. Lord Marchmain's reception of the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick also influences Charles, who had been "in search of love in those days" when he first met Sebastian, "that low door in the wall...which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden," a metaphor that informs the work on a number of levels.¹ Waugh desired that the book should be about the "operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters."

During the Second World War, Ryder, now an army officer after establishing a career as an architectural artist, is billeted at Brideshead, once a home to many of his affections. It occurs to him that builders' efforts were not in vain, even when their purposes may appear, for a time, to be frustrated.

Themes and other points of interest

Catholicism

Taking into account the background of the author, the most significant theme of the book is Catholicism. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and the book is considered to be an attempt to express the Catholic faith in secular literary form. Considering his readership, who were generally urbane and cosmopolitan, a sentimental or a didactic approach would have not worked. Sentimentalism would have cheapened the story while didacticism would have repelled a secular audience through excessive sermonizing. Instead, the book brings the reader, through the narration of the agnostic Charles Ryder, in contact with the severely flawed but deeply Catholic Marchmain family. While many novels of the same era portray Catholics as the flatfooted people put on the spot by brilliant non-believers, Brideshead Revisited turns the table on the agnostic Charles Ryder (and presumably the reader as well) and scrutinizes his secular values, which are tacitly portrayed to fall short to the deeper humanity and spirituality of the Catholic faith.

The Catholic themes of grace and reconciliation are pervasive in the book. Most of the major characters undergo a conversion, in some way or another. Lord Marchmain, who lived as an adulterer, reconciles with the Church in his deathbed. Julia, who is involved in an extramarital affair with Charles, comes to feel this relationship is immoral and decides to separate from Charles in spite of her great attachment to him. Sebastian, the charming and queer alcoholic, ends-up in service to a monastery while struggling against his alcoholism. Even Cordelia has some sort of conversion: from being the "worst" behaved schoolgirl her headmistress has ever seen to service in the hospital bunks of the Spanish Civil War. Most significant is Charles's conversion, which is expressed very subtly (otherwise, it would have been sentimental); at the end of the book, set 19 years after the main thread of the novel, Charles kneels down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and says a prayer with “ancient words newly learned”—implying recent instruction in the catechism.

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