ENGLISH LITERATURE
Bejanyan K.
George Bernard Shaw
Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing pretensions to nobility
(Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be descended from Macduff, the slayer of
Macbeth), George Bernard Shaw grew to become what some consider the second greatest
English playwright, behind only Shakespeare. Others most certainly disagree with such an
assessment, but few question Shaw's immense talent or the play's that talent produced. Shaw died
at the age of 94, a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who
believed in the Life Force and only wore wool. He left behind him a truly massive corpus of
work including about 60 plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance and
theatrical criticism, and heaps of social commentary, political theory, and voluminous
correspondence. And this list does not include the opinions that Shaw could always be counted
on to hold about any topic, and which this flamboyant public figure was always most willing to
share. Shaw's most lasting contribution is no doubt his plays, and it has been said that "a day
never passes without a performance of some Shaw play being given somewhere in the world."
One of Shaw's greatest contributions as a modern dramatist is in establishing drama as serious
literature, negotiating publication deals for his highly popular plays so as to convince the public
that the play was no less important than the novel. In that way, he created the conditions for later
playwrights to write seriously for the theater.
Of all of Shaw's plays, Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and popularly
received, if not the most significant in literary terms. Several film versions have been made of
the play, and it has even been adapted into a musical. In fact, writing the screenplay for the film
version of 1938 helped Shaw to become the first and only man ever to win the much coveted
Double: the Nobel Prize for literature and an Academy Award. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza in
Pygmalion for the famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom Shaw was having a
prominent affair at the time that had set all of London abuzz. The aborted romance between
Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle reflects Shaw's own love life, which was always peppered
with enamored and beautiful women, with whom he flirted outrageously but with whom he
almost never had any further relations. For example, he had a long marriage to Charlotte PayneTownsend in which it is well known that he never touched her once. The fact that Shaw was
quietly a member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, an organization whose
core members were young men agitating for homosexual liberation, might or might not inform
the way that Higgins would rather focus his passions on literature or science than on women.
That Higgins was a representation of Pygmalion, the character from the famous story of Ovid's
Metamorphoses who is the very embodiment of male love for the female form, makes Higgins
sexual disinterest all the more compelling. Shaw is too consummate a performer and too smooth
in his self- presentation for us to neatly dissect his sexual background; these lean biographical
facts, however, do support the belief that Shaw would have an interest in exploding the typical
structures of standard fairy tales.
Summary
Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor Higgins is a scientist
of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he
can, with his knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months,
he will be able to transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle,
into a woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl appears at his
laboratory on Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to pay a shilling, so that she
may speak properly enough to work in a flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is
seduced by the idea of working his magic on her. Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover
the costs of the experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden
party. The challenge is taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe Eliza and give
her new clothes. Then Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle comes to demand the return of his daughter,
though his real intention is to hit Higgins up for some money. The professor, amused by
Doolittle's unusual rhetoric, gives him five pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to
recognize the now clean, pretty flower girl as his daughter. For a number of months, Higgins
trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials for Eliza follow. The first occurs at Higgins' mother's
home, where Eliza is introduced to the Eynsford Hills, a trio of mother, daughter, and son. The
son Freddy is very attracted to her, and further taken with what he thinks is her affected "small
talk" when she slips into cockney. Mrs. Higgins worries that the experiment will lead to
problems once it is ended, but Higgins and Pickering are too absorbed in their game to take heed.
A second trial, which takes place some months later at an ambassador's party (and which is not
actually staged), is a resounding success. The wager is definitely won, but Higgins and Pickering
are now bored with the project, which causes Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins' slippers at
him in a rage because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby bewildering him. He
suggests she marry somebody. She returns him the hired jewelry, and he accuses her of
ingratitude.
The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic because Eliza has run
away. On his tail is Eliza's father, now unhappily rich from the trust of a deceased millionaire
who took to heart Higgins' recommendation that Doolittle was England's "most original
moralist." Mrs. Higgins, who has been hiding Eliza upstairs all along, chides the two of them for
playing with the girl's affections. When she enters, Eliza thanks Pickering for always treating her
like a lady, but threatens Higgins that she will go work with his rival phonetician, Nepommuck.
The outraged Higgins cannot help but start to admire her. As Eliza leaves for her father's
wedding, Higgins shouts out a few errands for her to run, assuming that she will return to him at
Wimpole Street. Eliza, who has a lovelorn sweetheart in Freddy, and the wherewithal to pass as a
duchess, never makes it clear whether she will or not.
Characters
Professor Henry Higgins– Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics who plays Pygmalion to
Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts
like visible speech, and uses all manner of recording and photographic material to document his
phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as readily understandable
units. He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the rest of society in
most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society, forgetful in his public graces, and poorly
considerate of normal social niceties– the only reason the world has not turned against him is
because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully.
Eliza Doolittle – "She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she introduced in Act I. Everything
about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic
heroine. When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone flower girl with
deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to do with
her innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself.
In other words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as being much more instrumental
than fundamental. The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's party,
when she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against Higgins' insensitive treatment.
This is when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why
Higgins begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature worthy of his
admiration.
Colonel Pickering – Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins
(although somewhat less obsessive) in his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish,
careless bully, Pickering is always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He says little of note
in the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy
professor. He helps in the Eliza Doolittle experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will
cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her.
However, while Higgins only manages to teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's thoughtful
treatment towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself.
Alfred Doolittle – Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman who has
had at least six wives and who "seems equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns
that his daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, he immediately pursues to see if he can
get some money out of the circumstance. His unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed,
unhypocritical advocation of drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is amusing to
Higgins. Through Higgins' joking recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer
to a moral reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle class
morality--he becomes miserable. Throughout, Alfred is a scoundrel who is willing to sell his
daughter to make a few pounds, but he is one of the few unaffected characters in the play,
unmasked by appearance or language. Though scandalous, his speeches are honest. At points, it
even seems that he might be Shaw's voice piece of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat status,
given Shaw's socialist leanings, makes the prospect all the more likely).
Mrs. Higgins – Professor Higgins' mother, Mrs. Higgins is a stately lady in her sixties who sees
the Eliza Doolittle experiment as idiocy, and Higgins and Pickering as senseless children. She is
the first and only character to have any qualms about the whole affair. When her worries prove
true, it is to her that all the characters turn. Because no woman can match up to his mother,
Higgins claims, he has no interest in dallying with them. To observe the mother of Pygmalion
(Higgins), who completely understands all of his failings and inadequacies, is a good contrast to
the mythic proportions to which Higgins builds himself in his self-estimations as a scientist of
phonetics and a creator of duchesses.
Freddy Eynsford Hill – Higgins' surmise that Freddy is a fool is probably accurate. In the
opening scene he is a spineless and resourceless lackey to his mother and sister. Later, he is
comically bowled over by Eliza, the half-baked duchess who still speaks cockney. He becomes
lovesick for Eliza, and courts her with letters. At the play's close, Freddy serves as a young,
viable marriage option for Eliza, making the possible path she will follow unclear to the reader.
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Further Reading
Bentley, Eric. Bernard Shaw: A Reconsideration. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1976.
Bloom, Harold. George Bernard Shaw. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Chesterton, G. K. G. Bernard Shaw. Phaidon-Verlag, Vienna, 1925.
Innes, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Langner, Lawrence. G.B.S. and the Lunatic: Reminiscences of the Long, Lively and
Affectionate Friendship between George Bernard Shaw and the Author. New York:
Atheneum, 1963.
Peters, Sally. Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of Superman. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1996.
Robert Louis Stevenson
R.L.Stevenson, one of the masters of the Victorian adventure story, was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland (November 13, 1850). He was a sickly child, and respiratory troubles
plagued him throughout his life. As a young man, he travelled through Europe, leading a
bohemian lifestyle and penning his first two books, both travel narratives. In 1876, he met a
married woman, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, and fell in love with her. Mrs. Osbourne
eventually divorced her husband, and she and Stevenson were married. Stevenson returned to
London with his bride and wrote prolifically over the next decade, in spite of his terrible health.
He won widespread admiration with Treasure Island, written in 1883, and followed it with
Kidnapped in 1886; both were adventure stories, the former a pirate tale set on the high seas and
the latter a historical novel set in Stevenson's native Scotland. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which
Stevenson described as a “fine bogey tale,” also came out in 1886. It met with tremendous
success, selling 40,000 copies in six months and ensuring Stevenson's fame as a writer.
In its narrative of a respectable doctor who transforms himself into a savage murderer,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tapped directly into the anxieties of Stevenson's age. The Victorian era,
named for Queen Victoria, who ruled England for most of the nineteenth century, was a time of
unprecedented technological progress and an age in which European nations carved up the world
with their empires. By the end of the century, however, many people were beginning to call into
question the ideals of progress and civilization that had defined the era, and a growing sense of
pessimism and decline pervaded artistic circles. Many felt that the end of the century was also
witnessing a twilight of Western culture. With the notion of a single body containing both the
erudite Dr. Jekyll and the depraved Mr. Hyde, Stevenson's novel imagines an inextricable link
between civilization and savagery, good and evil. Jekyll's attraction to the freedom from restraint
that Hyde enjoys mirrors Victorian England's secret attraction to allegedly savage non-Western
cultures, even as Europe claimed superiority over them. This attraction also informs such books
as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. For, as the Western world came in contact with other
peoples and ways of life, it found aspects of these cultures within itself, and both desired and
feared to indulge them. These aspects included open sensuality, physicality, and other so-called
irrational tendencies. Even as Victorian England sought to assert its civilization over and against
these instinctual sides of life, it found them secretly fascinating. Indeed, society's repression of
its darker side only increased the fascination. As a product of this society, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde manifests this fascination; yet, as a work of art, it also questions this interest.
By the late 1880s, Stevenson had become one of the leading lights of English literature.
But even after garnering fame, he led a somewhat troubled life. He traveled often, seeking to find
a climate more amenable to the tuberculosis that haunted his later days. Eventually he settled in
Samoa, and there Stevenson died suddenly in 1894, at the age of forty-four.
Plot Overview
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
On their weekly walk, an eminently sensible, trustworthy lawyer named Mr. Utterson
listens as his friend Enfield tells a gruesome tale of assault. The tale describes a sinister figure
named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and reemerges
to pay off her relatives with a check signed by a respectable gentleman. Since both Utterson and
Enfield disapprove of gossip, they agree to speak no further of the matter. It happens, however,
that one of Utterson's clients and close friends, Dr. Jekyll, has written a will transferring all of his
property to this same Mr. Hyde. Soon, Utterson begins having dreams in which a faceless figure
stalks through a nightmarish version of London. Puzzled, the lawyer visits Jekyll and their
mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to try to learn more. Lanyon reports that he no longer sees much of
Jekyll, since they had a dispute over the course of Jekyll's research, which Lanyon calls
“unscientific balderdash.” Curious, Utterson stakes out a building that Hyde visits—which, it
turns out, is a laboratory attached to the back of Jekyll's home. Encountering Hyde, Utterson is
amazed by how undefinably ugly the man seems, as if deformed, though Utterson cannot say
exactly how. Much to Utterson's surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. Jekyll tells
Utterson not to concern himself with the matter of Hyde.
A year passes uneventfully. Then, one night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde brutally beat
to death an old man named Sir Danvers Carew, a member of Parliament and a client of Utterson.
The police contact Utterson, and Utterson suspects Hyde as the murderer. He leads the officers to
Hyde's apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather—the morning is dark and
wreathed in fog. When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, and police
searches prove futile. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have
ended all relations with Hyde; he shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde,
apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however,
Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde's handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own.
For a few months, Jekyll acts especially friendly and sociable, as if a weight has been
lifted from his shoulders. But then Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Lanyon dies
from some kind of shock he received in connection with Jekyll. Before dying, however, Lanyon
gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll's death. Meanwhile,
Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the
three men begin to converse, but a look of horror comes over Jekyll's face, and he slams the
window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll's butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of
desperation: Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks, and now the voice
that comes from the room sounds nothing like the doctor's. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll's
house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled
together in fear. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll's
laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead by
suicide—and a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain everything.
Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon's letter; it reveals that
Lanyon's deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde take a
potion and metamorphose into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter constitutes a testament by Jekyll. It
explains how Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a
way to transform himself periodically into a deformed monster free of conscience—Mr. Hyde.
At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the
creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in
his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde.
One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he
immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more
adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful; one day, however,
while sitting in a park, he suddenly turned into Hyde, the first time that an involuntary
metamorphosis had happened while he was awake.
The letter continues describing Jekyll's cry for help. Far from his laboratory and hunted
by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon's help to get his potions and become Jekyll
again—but when he undertook the transformation in Lanyon's presence, the shock of the sight
instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find
himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and
necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of
these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the
middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the potion began to run out,
and Jekyll was unable to find a key ingredient to make more. His ability to change back from
Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that
he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his
crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in any case, the end of his letter marks the end
of the life of Dr. Jekyll. With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close.
Character List
Dr.Henry Jekyll – A respected doctor and friend of both Lanyon, a fellow physician, and
Utterson, a lawyer. Jekyll is a seemingly prosperous man, well established in the community,
and known for his decency and charitable works. Since his youth, however, he has secretly
engaged in unspecified dissolute and corrupt behavior. Jekyll finds this dark side a burden and
undertakes experiments intended to separate his good and evil selves from one another. Through
these experiments, he brings Mr. Hyde into being, finding a way to transform himself in such a
way that he fully becomes his darker half.
Mr.Edward Hyde - A strange, repugnant man who looks faintly pre-human. Hyde is violent and
cruel, and everyone who sees him describes him as ugly and deformed—yet no one can say
exactly why. Language itself seems to fail around Hyde: he is not a creature who belongs to the
rational world, the world of conscious articulation or logical grammar. Hyde is Jekyll's dark side,
released from the bonds of conscience and loosed into the world by a mysterious potion.
Mr.Gabriel John Utterson – A prominent and upstanding lawyer, well respected in the London
community. Utterson is reserved, dignified, and perhaps even lacking somewhat in imagination,
but he does seem to possess a furtive curiosity about the more sordid side of life. His rationalism,
however, makes him ill equipped to deal with the supernatural nature of the Jekyll-Hyde
connection. While not a man of science, Utterson resembles his friend Dr. Lanyon –and perhaps
Victorian society at large – in his devotion to reasonable explanations and his denial of the
supernatural.
Dr.Hastie Lanyon – A reputable London doctor and, along with Utterson, formerly one of
Jekyll's closest friends. As an embodiment of rationalism, materialism, and skepticism, Lanyon
serves a foil (a character whose attitudes or emotions contrast with, and thereby illuminate, those
of another character) for Jekyll, who embraces mysticism. His death represents the more general
victory of supernaturalism over materialism in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Mr.Poole – Jekyll's butler. Mr. Poole is a loyal servant, having worked for the doctor for twenty
years, and his concern for his master eventually drives him to seek Utterson's help when he
becomes convinced that something has happened to Jekyll.
Mr. Enfield – A distant cousin and lifelong friend of Mr. Utterson. Like Utterson, Enfield is
reserved, formal, and scornful of gossip; indeed, the two men often walk together for long
stretches without saying a word to one another.
Mr. Guest – Utterson's clerk and confidant. Guest is also an expert in handwriting. His skill
proves particularly useful when Utterson wants him to examine a bit of Hyde's handwriting.
Guest notices that Hyde's script is the same as Jekyll's, but slanted the other way.
Sir Danvers Carew – A well-liked old nobleman, a member of Parliament, and a client of
Utterson.
Analysis of Major Characters
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
One might question the extent to which Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are in fact a single
character. Until the end of the novel, the two personas seem nothing alike—the well-liked,
respectable doctor and the hideous, depraved Hyde are almost opposite in type and personality.
Stevenson uses this marked contrast to make his point: every human being contains opposite
forces within him or her, an alter ego that hides behind one's polite facade. Correspondingly, to
understand fully the significance of either Jekyll or Hyde, we must ultimately consider the two as
constituting one single character. Indeed, taken alone, neither is a very interesting personality; it
is the nature of their interrelationship that gives the novel its power.
Despite the seeming diametric opposition between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, their
relationship in fact involves a complicated dynamic. While it is true that Jekyll largely appears as
moral and decent, engaging in charity work and enjoying a reputation as a courteous and genial
man, he in fact never fully embodies virtue in the way that Hyde embodies evil. Although Jekyll
undertakes his experiments with the intent of purifying his good side from his bad and vice
versa, he ends up separating the bad alone, while leaving his former self, his Jekyll-self, as
mixed as before. Jekyll succeeds in liberating his darker side, freeing it from the bonds of
conscience, yet as Jekyll he never liberates himself from this darkness.
Jekyll's partial success in his endeavors warrants much analysis. Jekyll himself ascribes
his lopsided results to his state of mind when first taking the potion. He says that he was
motivated by dark urges such as ambition and pride when he first drank the liquid and that these
allowed for the emergence of Hyde. He seems to imply that, had he entered the experiment with
pure motives, an angelic being would have emerged. However, one must consider the subsequent
events in the novel before acquitting Jekyll of any blame. For, once released, Hyde gradually
comes to dominate both personas, until Jekyll takes Hyde's shape more often than his own.
Indeed, by the very end of the novel, Jekyll himself no longer exists and only Hyde remains.
Hyde seems to possess a force more powerful than Jekyll originally believed. The fact that Hyde,
rather than some beatific creature, emerged from Jekyll's experiments seems more than a chance
event, subject to an arbitrary state of mind. Rather, Jekyll's drinking of the potion seems almost
to have afforded Hyde the opportunity to assert himself. It is as if Hyde, but no comparable
virtuous essence, was lying in wait.
This dominance of Hyde– first as a latent force within Jekyll, then as a tyrannical external
force subverting Jekyll– holds various implications for our understanding of human nature. We
begin to wonder whether any aspect of human nature in fact stands as a counter to an individual's
Hyde-like side. We may recall that Hyde is described as resembling a “troglodyte,” or a
primitive creature; perhaps Hyde is actually the original, authentic nature of man, which has
been repressed but not destroyed by the accumulated weight of civilization, conscience, and
societal norms. Perhaps man doesn't have two natures but rather a single, primitive, amoral one
that remains just barely constrained by the bonds of civilization. Moreover, the novel suggests
that once those bonds are broken, it becomes impossible to reestablish them; the genie cannot be
put back into the bottle, and eventually Hyde will permanently replace Jekyll– as he finally does.
Even in Victorian England—which considered itself the height of Western civilization–
Stevenson suggests that the dark, instinctual side of man remains strong enough to devour
anyone who, like Jekyll, proves foolish enough to unleash it.
Mr. Gabriel John Utterson
Although Utterson witnesses a string of shocking events, Utterson himself is a largely
unexciting character and is clearly not a man of strong passions or sensibilities. Indeed,
Stevenson intends for him to come across in this way: from the first page of the novel, the text
notes that Utterson has a face that is “never lighted by a smile,” that he speaks very little, and
that he seems “lean, long, dusty, [and] dreary.” Yet, somehow, he is also “lovable,” and dull and
proper though he may be, he has many friends. His lovability may stem from the only interesting
quality that Stevenson gives him—namely, his willingness to remain friends with someone
whose reputation has suffered. This loyalty leads him to plumb the mystery that surrounds
Jekyll. Utterson represents the perfect Victorian gentleman. He consistently seeks to preserve
order and decorum, does not gossip, and guards his friends' reputations as though they were his
own. Even when he suspects his friend Jekyll of criminal activities such as blackmail or the
sheltering of a murderer, he prefers to sweep what he has learned—or what he thinks he has
learned—under the rug rather than bring ruin upon his good friend.
Utterson's status as the epitome of Victorian norms also stems from his devotion to
reason and common sense. He investigates what becomes a supernatural sequence of events but
never allows himself to even entertain the notion that something uncanny may be going on. He
considers that misdeeds may be occurring but not that the mystical or metaphysical might be
afoot. Thus, even at the end, when he is summoned by Poole to Jekyll's home and all the servants
are gathered frightened in the hallway, Utterson continues to look for an explanation that
preserves reason. He desperately searches for excuses not to take any drastic steps to interfere
with Jekyll's life. In Utterson's devotion to both decorum and reason, Stevenson depicts
Victorian society's general attempt to maintain the authority of civilization over and against
humanity's darker side. Stevenson suggests that just as Utterson prefers the suppression or
avoidance of revelations to the scandal or chaos that the truth might unleash, so too does
Victorian society prefer to repress and deny the existence of an uncivilized or savage element of
humanity, no matter how intrinsic that element may be.
Yet, even as Utterson adheres rigidly to order and rationality, he does not fail to notice
the uncanny quality of the events he investigates. Indeed, because we see the novel through
Utterson's eyes, Stevenson cannot allow Utterson to be too unimaginative—otherwise the novel's
eerie mood would suffer. Correspondingly, Stevenson attributes nightmares to Utterson and
grants him ominous premonitions as he moves through the city at night—neither of which seem
to suit the lawyer's normally reasonable personality, which is rarely given to flights of fancy.
Perhaps, the novel suggests, the chilling presence of Hyde in London is strong enough to
penetrate even the rigidly rational shell that surrounds Utterson, planting a seed of supernatural
dread.
Dr. Hastie Lanyon
Lanyon plays only a minor role in the novel's plot, but his thematic significance extends beyond
his brief appearances. When we first encounter him, he speaks dismissively of Jekyll's
experiments, referring to them as “unscientific balderdash.” His scientific skepticism renders
him, to an even greater extent than Utterson, an embodiment of rationalism and a proponent of
materialist explanations. As such, he functions as a kind of foil for Jekyll. Both men are doctors,
well respected and successful, but they have chosen divergent paths. From Lanyon's early
remarks, we learn that Jekyll shared some of his research with Lanyon, and one may even
imagine that they were partners at one point. But Lanyon chooses to engage in rational,
materialist science, while Jekyll prefers to pursue what might be called mystical or metaphysical
science. It is appropriate, then, that Lanyon is the first person to see Jekyll enact his
transformations—the great advocate of material causes is witness to undeniable proof of a
metaphysical, physically impossible phenomenon. Having spent his life as a rationalist and a
skeptic, Lanyon cannot deal with the world that Jekyll's experiments have revealed. Deep within
himself, Lanyon prefers to die rather than go on living in a universe that, from his point of view,
has been turned upside down. After his cataclysmic experience, Lanyon, who has spent his life
pursuing knowledge, explicitly rejects the latest knowledge he has gained. “I sometimes think if
we knew all,” he tells Utterson, “we should be more glad to get away.” With these words,
Lanyon departs from the novel, his uncompromising rationalism ceding to the inexplicable
reality of Jekyll.
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Duality of Human Nature
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature, although the
theme does not emerge fully until the last chapter, when the complete story of the Jekyll-Hyde
relationship is revealed. Therefore, we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only
after having witnessed all of the events of the novel, including Hyde's crimes and his ultimate
eclipsing of Jekyll. The text not only posits the duality of human nature as its central theme but
forces us to ponder the properties of this duality and to consider each of the novel's episodes as
we weigh various theories.
Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul
as the battleground for an “angel” and a “fiend,” each struggling for mastery. But his potion,
which he hoped would separate and purify each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side
into being—Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly
takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half fiend, one wonders what
happens to the “angel” at the end of the novel.
Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekyll's devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is simply
mistaken: man is not “truly two” but is first and foremost the primitive creature embodied in
Hyde, brought under tentative control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this
theory, the potion simply strips away the civilized veneer, exposing man's essential nature.
Certainly, the novel goes out of its way to paint Hyde as animalistic—he is hairy and ugly; he
conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason; Utterson describes him as a
“troglodyte,” or primitive creature.
Yet if Hyde were just an animal, we would not expect him to take such delight in crime.
Indeed, he seems to commit violent acts against innocents for no reason except the joy of it—
something that no animal would do. He appears deliberately and happily immoral rather than
amoral; he knows the moral law and basks in his breach of it. For an animalistic creature,
furthermore, Hyde seems oddly at home in the urban landscape. All of these observations imply
that perhaps civilization, too, has its dark side.
Ultimately, while Stevenson clearly asserts human nature as possessing two aspects, he
leaves open the question of what these aspects constitute. Perhaps they consist of evil and virtue;
perhaps they represent one's inner animal and the veneer that civilization has imposed. Stevenson
enhances the richness of the novel by leaving us to look within ourselves to find the answers.
The Importance of Reputation
For the characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preserving one's reputation emerges as all
important. The prevalence of this value system is evident in the way that upright men such as
Utterson and Enfield avoid gossip at all costs; they see gossip as a great destroyer of reputation.
Similarly, when Utterson suspects Jekyll first of being blackmailed and then of sheltering Hyde
from the police, he does not make his suspicions known; part of being Jekyll's good friend is a
willingness to keep his secrets and not ruin his respectability. The importance of reputation in the
novel also reflects the importance of appearances, facades, and surfaces, which often hide a
sordid underside. In many instances in the novel, Utterson, true to his Victorian society,
adamantly wishes not only to preserve Jekyll's reputation but also to preserve the appearance of
order and decorum, even as he senses a vile truth lurking underneath.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the text's major themes.
Violence Against Innocents
The text repeatedly depicts Hyde as a creature of great evil and countless vices. Although
the reader learns the details of only two of Hyde's crimes, the nature of both underlines his
depravity. Both involve violence directed against innocents in particular. In the first instance, the
victim of Hyde's violence is a small, female child; in the second instance, it is a gentle and muchbeloved old man. The fact that Hyde ruthlessly murders these harmless beings, who have
seemingly done nothing to provoke his rage and even less to deserve death, emphasizes the
extreme immorality of Jekyll's dark side unleashed. Hyde's brand of evil constitutes not just a
lapse from good but an outright attack on it.
Silence
Repeatedly in the novel, characters fail or refuse to articulate themselves. Either they
seem unable to describe a horrifying perception, such as the physical characteristics of Hyde, or
they deliberately abort or avoid certain conversations. Enfield and Utterson cut off their
discussion of Hyde in the first chapter out of a distaste for gossip; Utterson refuses to share his
suspicions about Jekyll throughout his investigation of his client's predicament. Moreover,
neither Jekyll in his final confession nor the third-person narrator in the rest of the novel ever
provides any details of Hyde's sordid behavior and secret vices. It is unclear whether these
narrative silences owe to a failure of language or a refusal to use it.
Ultimately, the two kinds of silence in the novel indicate two different notions about the
interaction of the rational and the irrational. The characters' refusals to discuss the sordid indicate
an attribute of the Victorian society in which they live. This society prizes decorum and
reputation above all and prefers to repress or even deny the truth if that truth threatens to upset
the conventionally ordered worldview. Faced with the irrational, Victorian society and its
inhabitants prefer not to acknowledge its presence and not to grant it the legitimacy of a name.
Involuntary silences, on the other hand, imply something about language itself. Language is by
nature rational and logical, a method by which we map and delineate our world. Perhaps when
confronted with the irrational and the mystical, language itself simply breaks down. Perhaps
something about verbal expression stands at odds with the supernatural. Interestingly, certain
parts of the novel suggest that, in the clash between language and the uncanny, the uncanny need
not always win. One can interpret Stevenson's reticence on the topic of Jekyll's and Hyde's
crimes as a conscious choice not to defuse their chilling aura with descriptions that might only
dull them.
Urban Terror
Throughout the novel, Stevenson goes out of his way to establish a link between the
urban landscape of Victorian London and the dark events surrounding Hyde. He achieves his
desired effect through the use of nightmarish imagery, in which dark streets twist and coil, or lie
draped in fog, forming a sinister landscape befitting the crimes that take place there. Chilling
visions of the city appear in Utterson's nightmares as well, and the text notes that
He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city. . . . The figure [of
Hyde] . . . haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide
more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly . . . through wider labyrinths
of lamp-lighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming.
In such images, Stevenson paints Hyde as an urban creature, utterly at home in the darkness of
London—where countless crimes take place, the novel suggests, without anyone knowing.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Jekyll's House and Laboratory
Dr. Jekyll lives in a well-appointed home, characterized by Stevenson as having “a great
air of wealth and comfort.” His laboratory is described as “a certain sinister block of building â
[which] bore in every feature the marks of profound and sordid negligence.” With its decaying
facade and air of neglect, the laboratory quite neatly symbolizes the corrupt and perverse Hyde.
Correspondingly, the respectable, prosperous-looking main house symbolizes the respectable,
upright Jekyll. Moreover, the connection between the buildings similarly corresponds to the
connection between the personas they represent. The buildings are adjoined but look out on two
different streets. Because of the convoluted layout of the streets in the area, the casual observer
cannot detect that the structures are two parts of a whole, just as he or she would be unable to
detect the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde.
Hyde's Physical Appearance
According to the indefinite remarks made by his overwhelmed observers, Hyde appears
repulsively ugly and deformed, small, shrunken, and hairy. His physical ugliness and deformity
symbolizes his moral hideousness and warped ethics. Indeed, for the audience of Stevenson's
time, the connection between such ugliness and Hyde's wickedness might have been seen as
more than symbolic. Many people believed in the science of physiognomy, which held that one
could identify a criminal by physical appearance. Additionally, Hyde's small stature may
represent the fact that, as Jekyll's dark side, he has been repressed for years, prevented from
growing and flourishing. His hairiness may indicate that he is not so much an evil side of Jekyll
as the embodiment of Jekyll's instincts, the animalistic core beneath Jekyll's polished exterior.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated at
Trinity College in Dublin and at Magdalen College, Oxford, and settled in London, where he
married Constance Lloyd in 1884. In the literary world of Victorian London, Wilde fell in with
an artistic crowd that included W.B.Yeats, the great Irish poet, and Lillie Langtry, mistress to the
Prince of Wales. A great conversationalist and a famous wit, Wilde began by publishing poetry
but soon achieved widespread fame for his comic plays. The first Vera(or The Nihilists) was
published in 1880. Wilde followed this work with Lady Windermere's Fan(1892), A Woman
of No Importance(1893), An Ideal Husband(1895), and his most famous play, The
Importance of Being Earnest(1895). Although these plays relied upon relatively simple and
familiar plots, they rose well above convention with their brilliant dialogue and biting satire.
Wilde published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, before he reached the
height of his fame. The first edition appeared in the summer of 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly
Magazine. It was criticized as scandalous and immoral. Disappointed with its reception, Wilde
revised the novel in 1891, adding a preface and six new chapters. The Preface (as Wilde calls it)
anticipates some of the criticism that might be leveled at the novel and answers critics who
charge The Picture of Dorian Gray with being an immoral tale. It also succinctly sets forth the
tenets of Wilde's philosophy of art. Devoted to a school of thought and a mode of sensibility
known as aestheticism, Wilde believed that art possesses an intrinsic value – hat it is beautiful
and therefore has worth, and thus needs serve no other purpose, be it moral or political. This
attitude was revolutionary in Victorian England, where popular belief held that art was not only a
function of morality but also a means of enforcing it. In the Preface, Wilde also cautioned
readers against finding meanings “beneath the surface” of art. Part gothic novel, part comedy of
manners, part treatise on the relationship between art and morality, The Picture of Dorian Gray
continues to present its readers with a puzzle to sort out. There is as likely to be as much
disagreement over its meaning now as there was among its Victorian audience, but, as Wilde
notes near the end of the Preface, “Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work
is new, complex, and vital.” In 1891, the same year that the second edition of The Picture of
Dorian Gray was published, Wilde began a homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas,
an aspiring but rather untalented poet. The affair caused a good deal of scandal, and Douglas's
father, the marquess of Queensberry, eventually criticized it publicly. When Wilde sued the
marquess for libel, he himself was convicted under English sodomy laws for acts of “gross
indecency.” In 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor, during which time he
wrote a long, heartbreaking letter to Lord Alfred titled De Profundis (Latin for “Out of the
Depths”). After his release, Wilde left England and divided his time between France and Italy,
living in poverty. He never published under his own name again, but, in 1898, he did publish
under a pseudonym The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a lengthy poem about a prisoner's feelings
toward another prisoner about to be executed. Wilde died in Paris on November 30, 1900, having
converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed.
Plot Overview
“The Picture of Dorian Gray”
In the stately London home of his aunt, Lady Brandon, the well-known artist Basil
Hallward meets Dorian Gray. Dorian is a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man
who immediately captures Basil's artistic imagination. Dorian sits for several portraits, and Basil
often depicts him as an ancient Greek hero or a mythological figure. When the novel opens, the
artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as he truly is, but, as he admits to his friend Lord
Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints him because it reveals too much of his feeling for his
subject. Lord Henry, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth,
beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure, disagrees, claiming that the portrait is Basil's
masterpiece. Dorian arrives at the studio, and Basil reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry,
who he fears will have a damaging influence on the impressionable, young Dorian.
Basil's fears are well founded; before the end of their first conversation, Lord Henry
upsets Dorian with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth. Worried that these,
his most impressive characteristics, are fading day by day, Dorian curses his portrait, which he
believes will one day remind him of the beauty he will have lost. In a fit of distress, he pledges
his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him to stay
forever young. In an attempt to appease Dorian, Basil gives him the portrait.
Over the next few weeks, Lord Henry's influence over Dorian grows stronger. The youth
becomes a disciple of the “new Hedonism” and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of
pleasure. He falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London's
slums. He adores her acting; she, in turn, refers to him as “Prince Charming” and refuses to heed
the warnings of her brother, James Vane, that Dorian is no good for her. Overcome by her
emotions for Dorian, Sibyl decides that she can no longer act, wondering how she can pretend to
love on the stage now that she has experienced the real thing. Dorian, who loves Sibyl because of
her ability to act, cruelly breaks his engagement with her. After doing so, he returns home to
notice that his face in Basil's portrait of him has changed: it now sneers. Frightened that his wish
for his likeness in the painting to bear the ill effects of his behavior has come true and that his
sins will be recorded on the canvas, he resolves to make amends with Sibyl the next day. The
following afternoon, however, Lord Henry brings news that Sibyl has killed herself. At Lord
Henry's urging, Dorian decides to consider her death a sort of artistic triumph—she personified
tragedy—and to put the matter behind him. Meanwhile, Dorian hides his portrait in a remote
upper room of his house, where no one other than he can watch its transformation.
Lord Henry gives Dorian a book that describes the wicked exploits of a nineteenthcentury Frenchman; it becomes Dorian's bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and
corruption. He lives a life devoted to garnering new experiences and sensations with no regard
for conventional standards of morality or the consequences of his actions. Eighteen years pass.
Dorian's reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his
scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young
and beautiful. The figure in the painting, however, grows increasingly wizened and hideous. On
a dark, foggy night, Basil Hallward arrives at Dorian's home to confront him about the rumors
that plague his reputation. The two argue, and Dorian eventually offers Basil a look at his
(Dorian's) soul. He shows Basil the now-hideous portrait, and Hallward, horrified, begs him to
repent. Dorian claims it is too late for penance and kills Basil in a fit of rage.
In order to dispose of the body, Dorian employs the help of an estranged friend, a doctor,
whom he blackmails. The night after the murder, Dorian makes his way to an opium den, where
he encounters James Vane, who attempts to avenge Sibyl's death. Dorian escapes to his country
estate. While entertaining guests, he notices James Vane peering in through a window, and he
becomes wracked by fear and guilt. When a hunting party accidentally shoots and kills Vane,
Dorian feels safe again. He resolves to amend his life but cannot muster the courage to confess
his crimes, and the painting now reveals his supposed desire to repent for what it is—hypocrisy.
In a fury, Dorian picks up the knife he used to stab Basil Hallward and attempts to destroy the
painting. There is a crash, and his servants enter to find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian
Gray as a beautiful young man. On the floor lies the body of their master—an old man, horribly
wrinkled and disfigured, with a knife plunged into his heart.
Character List
Dorian Gray– A radiantly handsome, impressionable, and wealthy young gentleman, whose
portrait the artist Basil Hallward paints. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian
becomes extremely concerned with the transience of his beauty and begins to pursue his own
pleasure above all else. He devotes himself to having as many experiences as possible, whether
moral or immoral, elegant or sordid.
Lord Henry Wotton – A nobleman and a close friend of Basil Hallward. Urbane and witty,
Lord Henry is perpetually armed and ready with well-phrased epigrams criticizing the moralism
and hypocrisy of Victorian society. His pleasure-seeking philosophy of “new Hedonism,” which
espouses garnering experiences that stimulate the senses without regard for conventional
morality, plays a vital role in Dorian's development.
Basil Hallward –An artist, and a friend of Lord Henry. Basil becomes obsessed with Dorian
after meeting him at a party. He claims that Dorian possesses a beauty so rare that it has helped
him realize a new kind of art; through Dorian, he finds “the lines of a fresh school.” Dorian also
helps Basil realize his artistic potential, as the portrait of Dorian that Basil paints proves to be his
masterpiece.
Sibyl Vane –A poor, beautiful, and talented actress with whom Dorian falls in love. Sibyl's love
for Dorian compromises her ability to act, as her experience of true love in life makes her realize
the falseness of affecting emotions onstage.
James Vane – Sibyl's brother, a sailor bound for Australia. James cares deeply for his sister and
worries about her relationship with Dorian. Distrustful of his mother's motives, he believes that
Mrs. Vane's interest in Dorian's wealth disables her from properly protecting Sibyl. As a result,
James is hesitant to leave his sister.
Mrs. Vane - Sibyl and James's mother. Mrs. Vane is a faded actress who has consigned herself
and her daughter to a tawdry theater company, the owner of which has helped her to pay her
debts. She conceives of Dorian Gray as a wonderful alliance for her daughter because of his
wealth; this ulterior motive, however, clouds her judgment and leaves Sibyl vulnerable.
Alan Campbell – Once an intimate friend, Alan Campbell is one of many promising young men
who have severed ties with Dorian because of Dorian's sullied reputation.
Lady Agatha – Lord Henry's aunt. Lady Agatha is active in charity work in the London slums.
Lord Fermor– Lord Henry's irascible uncle. Lord Fermor tells Henry the story of Dorian's
parentage.
Duchess of Monmouth– A pretty, bored young noblewoman who flirts with Dorian at his
country estate.
Victoria Wotton– Lord Henry's wife. Victoria appears only once in the novel, greeting Dorian
as he waits for Lord Henry. She is described as an untidy, foolishly romantic woman with “a
perfect mania for going to church.”
Victor – Dorian's servant. Although Victor is a trustworthy servant, Dorian becomes suspicious
of him and sends him out on needless errands to ensure that he does not attempt to steal a glance
at Dorian's portrait.
Mrs. Leaf – Dorian Gray's housekeeper. Mrs. Leaf is a bustling older woman who takes her
work seriously.
Analysis of Major Characters
Dorian Gray
At the opening of the novel, Dorian Gray exists as something of an ideal: he is the
archetype of male youth and beauty. As such, he captures the imagination of Basil Hallward, a
painter, and Lord Henry Wotton, a nobleman who imagines fashioning the impressionable
Dorian into an unremitting pleasure-seeker. Dorian is exceptionally vain and becomes
convinced, in the course of a brief conversation with Lord Henry, that his most salient
characteristics—his youth and physical attractiveness—are ever waning. The thought of waking
one day without these attributes sends Dorian into a tailspin: he curses his fate and pledges his
soul if only he could live without bearing the physical burdens of aging and sinning. He longs to
be as youthful and lovely as the masterpiece that Basil has painted of him, and he wishes that the
portrait could age in his stead. His vulnerability and insecurity in these moments make him
excellent clay for Lord Henry's willing hands. Dorian soon leaves Basil's studio for Lord Henry's
parlor, where he adopts the tenets of “the new Hedonism” and resolves to live his life as a
pleasure-seeker with no regard for conventional morality. His relationship with Sibyl Vane tests
his commitment to this philosophy: his love of the young actress nearly leads him to dispense
with Lord Henry's teachings, but his love proves to be as shallow as he is. When he breaks
Sibyl's heart and drives her to suicide, Dorian notices the first change in his portrait—evidence
that his portrait is showing the effects of age and experience while his body remains ever
youthful. Dorian experiences a moment of crisis, as he weighs his guilt about his treatment of
Sibyl against the freedom from worry that Lord Henry's philosophy has promised. When Dorian
decides to view Sibyl's death as the achievement of an artistic ideal rather than a needless
tragedy for which he is responsible, he starts down the steep and slippery slope of his own
demise. As Dorian's sins grow worse over the years, his likeness in Basil's portrait grows more
hideous. Dorian seems to lack a conscience, but the desire to repent that he eventually feels
illustrates that he is indeed human. Despite the beautiful things with which he surrounds himself,
he is unable to distract himself from the dissipation of his soul. His murder of Basil marks the
beginning of his end: although in the past he has been able to sweep infamies from his mind, he
cannot shake the thought that he has killed his friend. Dorian's guilt tortures him relentlessly
until he is forced to do away with his portrait. In the end, Dorian seems punished by his ability to
be influenced: if the new social order celebrates individualism, as Lord Henry claims, Dorian
falters because he fails to establish and live by his own moral code.
Lord Henry Wotton
Lord Henry is a man possessed of “wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.”
He is a charming talker, a famous wit, and a brilliant intellect. Given the seductive way in which
he leads conversation, it is little wonder that Dorian falls under his spell so completely. Lord
Henry's theories are radical; they aim to shock and purposefully attempt to topple established,
untested, or conventional notions of truth. In the end, however, they prove naïve, and Lord
Henry himself fails to realize the implications of most of what he says. Lord Henry is a relatively
static character—he does not undergo a significant change in the course of the narrative. He is as
coolly composed, unshakable, and possessed of the same dry wit in the final pages of the novel
as he is upon his introduction. Because he does not change while Dorian and Basil clearly do, his
philosophy seems amusing and enticing in the first half of the book, but improbable and shallow
in the second. Lord Henry muses in Chapter Nineteen, for instance, that there are no immoral
books; he claims that “[t]he books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its
own shame.” But since the decadent book that Lord Henry lends Dorian facilitates Dorian's
downfall, it is difficult to accept what Lord Henry says as true. Although Lord Henry is a selfproclaimed hedonist who advocates the equal pursuit of both moral and immoral experience, he
lives a rather staid life. He participates in polite London society and attends parties and the
theater, but he does not indulge in sordid behavior. Unlike Dorian, he does not lead innocent
youths to suicide or travel incognito to the city's most despised and desperate quarters. Lord
Henry thus has little notion of the practical effects of his philosophy. His claim that Dorian could
never commit a murder because “[c]rime belongs exclusively to the lower orders” demonstrates
the limitations of his understanding of the human soul. It is not surprising, then, that he fails to
appreciate the profound meaning of Dorian's downfall.
Basil Hallward
Basil Hallward is a talented, though somewhat conventionally minded, painter. His love
for Dorian Gray, which seems to reflect Oscar Wilde's own affection for his young lover, Lord
Alfred Douglas, changes the way he sees art; indeed, it defines a new school of expression for
him. Basil's portrait of Dorian marks a new phase of his career. Before he created this
masterwork, he spent his time painting Dorian in the veils of antiquity—dressed as an ancient
soldier or as various romantic figures from mythology. Once he has painted Dorian as he truly is,
however, he fears that he has put too much of himself into the work. He worries that his love,
which he himself describes as “idolatry,” is too apparent, and that it betrays too much of himself.
Though he later changes his mind to believe that art is always more abstract than one thinks and
that the painting thus betrays nothing except form and color, his emotional investment in Dorian
remains constant. He seeks to protect Dorian, voicing his objection to Lord Henry's injurious
influence over Dorian and defending Dorian even after their relationship has clearly dissolved.
Basil's commitment to Dorian, which ultimately proves fatal, reveals the genuineness of his love
for his favorite subject and his concern for the safety and salvation of Dorian's soul.
Themes
The Purpose of Art
When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
in 1890, it was decried as immoral. In revising the text the following year, Wilde included a
preface, which serves as a useful explanation of his philosophy of art. The purpose of art,
according to this series of epigrams, is to have no purpose. In order to understand this claim
fully, one needs to consider the moral climate of Wilde's time and the Victorian sensibility
regarding art and morality. The Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for social
education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles Dickens
and George Gissing. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought
to free art from this responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for
bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in Dorian Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word
seems designed to shock the ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as they were by
the belief that art need not possess any other purpose than being beautiful.
If this philosophy informed Wilde's life, we must then consider whether his only novel
bears it out. The two works of art that dominate the novel—Basil's painting and the mysterious
yellow book that Lord Henry gives Dorian—are presented in the vein more of Victorian
sensibilities than of aesthetic ones. That is, both the portrait and the French novel serve a
purpose: the first acts as a type of mysterious mirror that shows Dorian the physical dissipation
his own body has been spared, while the second acts as something of a road map, leading the
young man farther along the path toward infamy. While we know nothing of the circumstances
of the yellow book's composition, Basil's state of mind while painting Dorian's portrait is clear.
Later in the novel, he advocates that all art be “unconscious, ideal, and remote.” His portrait of
Dorian, however, is anything but. Thus, Basil's initial refusal to exhibit the work results from his
belief that it betrays his idolization of his subject. Of course, one might consider that these
breaches of aesthetic philosophy mold The Picture of Dorian Gray into something of a
cautionary tale: these are the prices that must be paid for insisting that art reveals the artist or a
moral lesson. But this warning is, in itself, a moral lesson, which perhaps betrays the
impossibility of Wilde's project. If, as Dorian observes late in the novel, the imagination orders
the chaos of life and invests it with meaning, then art, as the fruit of the imagination, cannot help
but mean something. Wilde may have succeeded in freeing his art from the confines of Victorian
morality, but he has replaced it with a doctrine that is, in its own way, just as restrictive.
The Supremacy of Youth and Beauty
The first principle of aestheticism, the philosophy of art by which Oscar Wilde lived, is
that art serves no other purpose than to offer beauty. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray,
beauty reigns. It is a means to revitalize the wearied senses, as indicated by the effect that Basil's
painting has on the cynical Lord Henry. It is also a means of escaping the brutalities of the
world: Dorian distances himself, not to mention his consciousness, from the horrors of his
actions by devoting himself to the study of beautiful things—music, jewels, rare tapestries. In a
society that prizes beauty so highly, youth and physical attractiveness become valuable
commodities. Lord Henry reminds Dorian of as much upon their first meeting, when he laments
that Dorian will soon enough lose his most precious attributes. In Chapter Seventeen, the
Duchess of Monmouth suggests to Lord Henry that he places too much value on these things;
indeed, Dorian's eventual demise confirms her suspicions. For although beauty and youth remain
of utmost importance at the end of the novel—the portrait is, after all, returned to its original
form—the novel suggests that the price one must pay for them is exceedingly high. Indeed,
Dorian gives nothing less than his soul.
The Superficial Nature of Society
It is no surprise that a society that prizes beauty above all else is a society founded on a
love of surfaces. What matters most to Dorian, Lord Henry, and the polite company they keep is
not whether a man is good at heart but rather whether he is handsome. As Dorian evolves into
the realization of a type, the perfect blend of scholar and socialite, he experiences the freedom to
abandon his morals without censure. Indeed, even though, as Basil warns, society's elite question
his name and reputation, Dorian is never ostracized. On the contrary, despite his “mode of life,”
he remains at the heart of the London social scene because of the “innocence” and “purity of his
face.” As Lady Narborough notes to Dorian, there is little (if any) distinction between ethics and
appearance: “you are made to be good—you look so good.”
The Negative Consequences of Influence
The painting and the yellow book have a profound effect on Dorian, influencing him to
predominantly immoral behavior over the course of nearly two decades. Reflecting on Dorian's
power over Basil and deciding that he would like to seduce Dorian in much the same way, Lord
Henry points out that there is “something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence.”
Falling under the sway of such influence is, perhaps, unavoidable, but the novel ultimately
censures the sacrifice of one's self to another. Basil's idolatry of Dorian leads to his murder, and
Dorian's devotion to Lord Henry's hedonism and the yellow book precipitate his own downfall. It
is little wonder, in a novel that prizes individualism—the uncompromised expression of self—
that the sacrifice of one's self, whether it be to another person or to a work of art, leads to one's
destruction.
Motifs
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The picture of Dorian Gray, “the most magical of mirrors,” shows Dorian the physical
burdens of age and sin from which he has been spared. For a time, Dorian sets his conscience
aside and lives his life according to a single goal: achieving pleasure. His painted image,
however, asserts itself as his conscience and hounds him with the knowledge of his crimes: there
he sees the cruelty he showed to Sibyl Vane and the blood he spilled killing Basil Hallward.
Homoerotic Male Relationships
The homoerotic bonds between men play a large role in structuring the novel. Basil's
painting depends upon his adoration of Dorian's beauty; similarly, Lord Henry is overcome with
the desire to seduce Dorian and mold him into the realization of a type. This camaraderie
between men fits into Wilde's larger aesthetic values, for it returns him to antiquity, where an
appreciation of youth and beauty was not only fundamental to culture but was also expressed as
a physical relationship between men. As a homosexual living in an intolerant society, Wilde
asserted this philosophy partially in an attempt to justify his own lifestyle. For Wilde,
homosexuality was not a sordid vice but rather a sign of refined culture. As he claimed rather
romantically during his trial for “gross indecency” between men, the affection between an older
and younger man places one in the tradition of Plato, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare.
The Color White
Interestingly, Dorian's trajectory from figure of innocence to figure of degradation can be
charted by Wilde's use of the color white. White usually connotes innocence and blankness, as it
does when Dorian is first introduced. It is, in fact, “the white purity” of Dorian's boyhood that
Lord Henry finds so captivating. Basil invokes whiteness when he learns that Dorian has
sacrificed his innocence, and, as the artist stares in horror at the ruined portrait, he quotes a
biblical verse from the Book of Isaiah: “Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as
white as snow.” But the days of Dorian's innocence are over. It is a quality he now eschews, and,
tellingly, when he orders flowers, he demands “as few white ones as possible.” When the color
appears again, in the form of James Vane's face—“like a white handkerchief”—peering in
through a window, it has been transformed from the color of innocence to the color of death. It is
this threatening pall that makes Dorian long, at the novel's end, for his “rose-white boyhood,” but
the hope is in vain, and he proves unable to wash away the stains of his sins.
Symbols
The Opium Dens
The opium dens, located in a remote and derelict section of London, represent the sordid
state of Dorian's mind. He flees to them at a crucial moment. After killing Basil, Dorian seeks to
forget the awfulness of his crimes by losing consciousness in a drug-induced stupor. Although he
has a canister of opium in his home, he leaves the safety of his neat and proper parlor to travel to
the dark dens that reflect the degradation of his soul.
James Vane
James Vane is less a believable character than an embodiment of Dorian's tortured
conscience. As Sibyl's brother, he is a rather flat caricature of the avenging relative. Still, Wilde
saw him as essential to the story, adding his character during his revision of 1891. Appearing at
the dock and later at Dorian's country estate, James has an almost spectral quality. Like the ghost
of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, who warns Scrooge of the sins he will
have to face, James appears with his face “like a white handkerchief” to goad Dorian into
accepting responsibility for the crimes he has committed.
The Yellow Book
Lord Henry gives Dorian a copy of the yellow book as a gift. Although he never gives the
title, Wilde describes the book as a French novel that charts the outrageous experiences of its
pleasure-seeking protagonist (we can fairly assume that the book in question is Joris-Karl
Huysman's decadent nineteenth-century novel Rebours, translated as “Against the Grain” or
“Against Nature”). The book becomes like holy scripture to Dorian, who buys nearly a dozen
copies and bases his life and actions on it. The book represents the profound and damaging
influence that art can have over an individual and serves as a warning to those who would
surrender themselves so completely to such an influence.
Suggestions for Further Reading
1. Ellmann, Richard, ed. Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
2. Fido, Martin. Oscar Wilde. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
3. Gillespie, Michael Patrick. The Picture of Dorian Gray: What the World Thinks Me. New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.
4. Liebman, Sheldon W. “Character Design in The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Studies in the
Novel 31, no. 3. (1999): 296-316.
5. McCormack, Jerusha Hull. The Man Who Was Dorian Gray. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 2000.
6. Nicholls, Mark. The Importance of Being Oscar: The Life and Wit of Oscar Wilde. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
7. Raby, Peter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
8. Riquelme, John Paul. “Oscar Wilde's Aesthetic Gothic: Walter Pater, Dark
Enlightenment, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Modern Fiction Studies 46, no. 3
(2000): 609–631.
9. San Juan, Epifanio. The Art of Oscar Wilde. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1967.
10. Womack, Kenneth. “'Withered, Wrinkled, and Loathsome of Visage': Reading the Ethics
of the Soul and the Late-Victorian Gothic in The Picture of Dorian Gray.” In Victorian
Gothic: Literary and Cultural Manifestations in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ruth
Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, 168–181. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, the third of ten
children. Early on, he evinced a talent for storytelling, wowing teachers and friends in Jesuit
school with his yarns. His first publication came in 1879 with "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley"
in the Chambers's Journal. At the same time, Doyle pursued a career in medicine at Edinburgh
University, going on to become a surgeon of some renown at Southsea, Portsmouth. While a
medical student, he worked with Dr.Bell, who was exceptionally observant. Doyle thought he
would write stories, said Doyle, "in which the hero would treat crime as Dr.Bell treated disease
and where science would take the place of chance." In a series of stories– starting with A Study
in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four – Doyle produced the memorable character, Sherlock
Holmes, a detective who relied on facts and evidence rather than chance. In 1891, six
"Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" showed up in Strand magazine, with six more appearing the
next year. By 1893, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, as the collected stories were now called,
was a huge hit. The public mourned Holmes' death in "The Final Problem." Doyle changed his
decision to pursue more serious literary endeavors in 1901, when finances and public pressure
yielded The Hound of the Baskervilles. The same year that The Hound of the Baskervilles was
published, Doyle produced a piece of propaganda on the Boer War, and the author was knighted
for his efforts. Doyle continued putting out Sherlock Holmes stories, including the collected
Return of Sherlock Holmes. Later in life, when his son was killed in the World War I, Doyle
devoted himself to his chosen faith, spiritualism. The notion of life after death and the idea of
psychic abilities inform the character of Doyle's famous detective. Sherlock Holmes is a man
who can see beyond appearances and link ostensibly unrelated facts into a coherent whole.
The Sherlock Holmes stories also owe a debt to Ed.Al.Poe, who is often credited with
having created the modern detective tale. The Gold Bug (1843), The Murders in the Rue Morgue
(1841), The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842-1843), and The Purloined Letter (1844) are all, in a
sense, precursors to Conan Doyle's detective stories.
Plot Overview “Hound of the Baskervilles”
The Hound of the Baskervilles opens with a mini mystery – Sherlock Holmes and
Dr.Watson speculate on the identity of the owner of a cane that has been left in their office by an
unknown visitor. Wowing Watson with his fabulous powers of observation, Holmes predicts the
appearance of James Mortimer, owner of the found object and a convenient entrée into the
baffling curse of the Baskervilles. Entering the office and unveiling an 18th century manuscript,
Mortimer recounts the myth of the lecherous Hugo Baskerville. Hugo captured and imprisoned a
young country lass at his estate in Devonshire, only to fall victim to a marauding hound of hell as
he pursued her along the lonesome moors late one night. Ever since, Mortimer reports, the
Baskerville line has been plagued by a mysterious and supernatural black hound. The recent
death of Sir Charles Baskerville has rekindled suspicions and fears. The next of kin, the duo
finds out, has arrived in London to take up his post at Baskerville Hall, but he has already been
intimidated by an anonymous note of warning and, strangely enough, the theft of a shoe.
Agreeing to take the case, Holmes and Watson quickly discover that Sir Henry
Baskerville is being trailed in London by a mysterious bearded stranger, and they speculate as to
whether the ghost be friend or foe. Holmes, however, announces that he is too busy in London to
accompany Mortimer and Sir Henry to Devonshire to get to the bottom of the case, and he sends
Dr.Watson to be his eyes and ears, insisting that he report back regularly.
Once in Devonshire, Watson discovers a state of emergency, with armed guards on the
watch for an escaped convict roaming the moors. He meets potential suspects in Mr.Barrymore
and Mrs. Barrymore, the domestic help, and Mr.Jack Stapleton and his sister Beryl, Baskerville
neighbors. A series of mysteries arrive in rapid succession: Barrymore is caught skulking around
the mansion at night; Watson spies a lonely figure keeping watch over the moors; and the doctor
hears what sounds like a dog's howling. Beryl Stapleton provides an enigmatic warning and
Watson learns of a secret encounter between Sir Charles and a local woman named Laura Lyons
on the night of his death. Doing his best to unravel these threads of the mystery, Watson
discovers that Barrymore's nightly jaunts are just his attempt to aid the escaped con, who turns
out to be Mrs.Barrymore's brother. The doctor interviews Laura Lyons to assess her
involvement, and discovers that the lonely figure surveying the moors is none other than
Sherlock Holmes himself. It takes Holmes – hidden so as not to tip off the villain as to his
involvement– to piece together the mystery. Mr. Stapleton, Holmes has discovered, is actually in
line to inherit the Baskerville fortune, and as such is the prime suspect. Laura Lyons was only a
pawn in Stapleton's game, a Baskerville beneficiary whom Stapleton convinced to request and
then miss a late night appointment with Sir Charles. Having lured Charles onto the moors,
Stapleton released his ferocious pet pooch, which frightened the superstitious nobleman and
caused a heart attack. In a dramatic final scene, Holmes and Watson use the younger Baskerville
as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. After a late supper at the Stapletons', Sir Henry heads
home across the moors, only to be waylaid by the enormous Stapleton pet. Despite a dense fog,
Holmes and Watson are able to subdue the beast, and Stapleton, in his panicked flight from the
scene, drowns in a marshland on the moors. Beryl Stapleton, who turns out to be Jack's harried
wife and not his sister, is discovered tied up in his house, having refused to participate in his
dastardly scheme. Back in London, Holmes ties up the loose ends, announcing that the stolen
shoe was used to give the hound Henry's scent, and that mysterious warning note came from
Beryl Stapleton, whose philandering husband had denied their marriage so as to seduce and use
Laura Lyons. Watson files the case closed.
Character List
Sherlock Holmes – The novel's protagonist. Holmes is the famed 221b Baker Street detective
with a keen eye, hawked nose, and the trademark hat and pipe. Holmes is observation and
intuition personified, and though he takes a bit of a back seat to Watson in this story, we always
feel his presence. It takes his legendary powers to decipher the mystifying threads of the case.
Dr.Watson – The novel's other protagonist and narrator. Dr. Watson is the stout sidekick to
Holmes and longtime chronicler of the detective's adventures. In Hound, Watson tries his hand at
Holmes' game, expressing his eagerness to please and impress the master by solving such a
baffling case. As sidekick and apprentice to Holmes, Watson acts as a foil for Holmes' genius
and as a stand-in for us, the awestruck audience.
Sir Henry Baskerville – The late Sir Charles's nephew and closet living relative. Sir Henry is
hale and hearty, described as "a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very
sturdily built." By the end of the story, Henry is as worn out and shell-shocked as his late uncle
was before his death.
Sir Charles Baskerville – The head of the Baskerville estate. Sir Charles was a superstitious
man, and terrified of the Baskerville curse and his waning health at the time of his death. Sir
Charles was also a well-known philanthropist, and his plans to invest in the regions surrounding
his estate make it essential that Sir Henry move to Baskerville Hall to continue his uncle's good
works.
Sir Hugo Baskerville – A debaucherous and shadowy Baskerville ancestor, Sir Hugo is the
picture of aristocratic excess, drinking and pursuing pleasures of the flesh until it killed him.
Mortimer – Family friend and doctor to the Baskervilles. Mortimer is a tall, thin man who
dresses sloppily but is an all-around nice guy and the executor of Charles's estate. Mortimer is
also a phrenology enthusiast, and he wishes and hopes to some day have the opportunity to study
Holmes' head.
Mr.Jack Stapleton – A thin and bookish-looking entomologist and one-time schoolmaster,
Stapleton chases butterflies and reveals his short temper only at key moments. A calm façade
masks the scheming, manipulative villain that Holmes and Watson come to respect and fear.
Miss Stapleton – Allegedly Stapleton's sister, this dusky Latin beauty turns out to be his wife.
Eager to prevent another death but terrified of her husband, she provides enigmatic warnings to
Sir Henry and Watson.
Mr.John Barrymore and Mrs.Eliza Barrymore – The longtime domestic help of the
Baskerville clan. Earnest and eager to please, the portly Mrs. Barrymore and her gaunt husband
figure as a kind of red herring for the detectives, in league with their convict brother but
ultimately no more suspicious than Sir Henry.
Laura Lyons – A local young woman. Laura Lyons is the beautiful brunette daughter of
"Frankland the crank," the local litigator who disowned her when she married against his will.
Subsequently abandoned by her husband, the credulous Laura turns to Mr. Stapleton and Charles
for help.
The convict – A murderous villain, whose crimes defy description. The convict is nonetheless
humanized by his association with the Barrymores. He has a rodent-like, haggardly appearance.
His only wish is to flee his persecutors in Devonshire and escape to South America.
Mr. Frankland – Laura's father. Frankland is a man who likes to sue, a sort of comic relief with
a chip on his shoulder about every infringement on what he sees as his rights. Villainized due to
his one-time harsh treatment of Laura, Frankland is for the most part a laughable jester in the
context of this story.
Analysis of Major Characters
Sherlock Holmes is the ever-observant, world-renowned detective of 221b Baker Street. For all
his assumed genius and intuition he is virtually omniscient in these stories, and Holmes becomes
more accessible in the context of his constant posturing and pretension. He lets down his guard
and admits of a fragile ego. When challenged at the beginning of the book—Mortimer calls him
the second best crime solver in Europe and Holmes lets down his guard and asks who could
possibly be the first. By and large, however, Holmes' ego is kept in check by a constant dose of
adulation from Watson. Holmes regularly announces some absurd and unsubstantiated
conclusion only to mock Watson by revealing the most obvious of clues. In the end, Holmes toys
with his associates (and particularly Watson) at least as much as he flouts his enemies,
equivocating, misleading, and making fools out of them only to up his own crime-solving cachet.
Dr. Watson
The good doctor plays the sidekick to Holmes' self-obsessed hero figure. Watson is a lowly
apprentice and live-in friend, who spends most of the book trying to solve a difficult case in his
master's stead. Always on hand to stroke Holmes' ego, Watson is nonetheless intent on proving
his own mettle by applying Holmes' techniques. Watson's never-ending adulation, which is
presumably meant to mirror our own understanding of the legendary detective, comes through
most forcefully at the end of the novel, when Holmes arrives at Devonshire. Holmes announces
that he meant for Watson to think he was in London, and a pouty Watson reacts: "Then you use
me, and yet you do not trust me!" Codependent throughout, Holmes and Watson fill each other's
needs. Watson provides Holmes with an ego boost, and Holmes needs Watson's eyes and ears to
inconspicuously gather clues. Watson is awestruck by Holmes' power of observation, and
Watson feels more powerful by association.
Mr. Jack Stapleton
Intended to incarnate ill will and malice, Stapleton is conflated at various points with the
lecherous libertine Hugo, whom he resembles. Stapleton is a black-hearted, violent villain hidden
beneath a benign, bookish surface. If Hugo operates as a kind of Doppelganger for his
entomologist heir, then the convict offers an interesting parallel as well. Serving mainly as a red
herring in the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, the convict also operates as a foil for
the real culprit, Stapleton. Personifying "peculiar ferocity," "wonton brutality," and even dubious
sanity, the convict is shown to be a pathetic, animalistic figure on whom the detectives ultimately
take pity. Not so with Stapleton, a man with a "murderous heart," and a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Stapleton is a worthy adversary because of his birthright. If the convict is a simple murderer, he
is also simply born, related by blood to the Baskerville's domestic help. Thus, the convict is part
of a lower class than Holmes, and therefore is not a worthy adversary. Stapleton, however, is an
intellectual, and when his evil side comes out, his hidden nobility comes out as well. Once
Holmes is handling an educated and noble rival, he begins to take things much more seriously. In
this sense, Stapleton's character adds to the strong classist themes imbedded in this book.
Themes
Natural and supernatural; truth and fantasy
As soon as Dr. Mortimer arrives to unveil the mysterious curse of the Baskervilles,
Hound wrestles with questions of natural and supernatural occurrences. The doctor himself
decides that the marauding hound in question is a supernatural beast, and all he wants to ask
Sherlock Holmes is what to do with the next of kin.
From Holmes' point of view, every set of clues points toward a logical, real- world
solution. Considering the supernatural explanation, Holmes decides to consider all other options
before falling back on that one. Sherlock Holmes personifies the intellectual's faith in logic, and
on examining facts to find the answers.
In this sense, the story takes on the Gothic tradition, a brand of storytelling that highlights
the bizarre and unexplained. Doyles' mysterious hound, an ancient family curse, even the
ominous Baskerville Hall all set up a Gothic- style mystery that, in the end, will fall victim to
Holmes' powerful logic.
Doyle's own faith in spiritualism, a doctrine of life after death and psychic powers, might
at first seem to contradict a Sherlockian belief in logical solutions and real world answers.
Holmes is probably based more on Doyle's scientific training than his belief system. But the
struggle for understanding, the search for a coherent conception of the world we live in, links the
spiritualist Doyle with his fictional counterpart. Throughout the novel, Holmes is able to come
up with far-flung if ultimately true accounts of the world around him, much as his author strove
for understanding in fiction and in fact.
Classism and hierarchy
Hound's focus on the natural and supernatural spills over into other thematic territory –
the rigid classism of Doyle's milieu. Well-to-do intellectual that he was, Doyle translated many
of the assumptions of turn-of-the-century English society into his fiction. The natural and
supernatural is one example. Throughout the story, the superstitions of the shapeless mass of
common folk- everyone attributes an unbending faith in the curse to the commoners-are
denigrated and, often, dismissed. If Mortimer and Sir Henry have their doubts, it is the gullible
common folk who take the curse seriously. In the end, when Watson's reportage and Holmes'
insight have shed light on the situation, the curse and the commoners who believed it end up
looking silly. At the same time, Sir Henry's servants evince a kind of docility, and their brother
the convict is reduced from dangerous murderer to pathetic rodent under Watson's gaze. Hound's
classism is also enmeshed in questions of entitlement: who has the right to Baskerville Hall, to
Holmes' attention, to our attention.
Motifs
Superstition and folk tales
The story opens with the folk tale of the Baskerville curse, presented on eighteenth century
parchment. The reproduction of the curse, both in the novel and in Mortimer's reading, serves to
start the story off with a bang-a shadowy folk tale, nothing if not mysterious. At the same time, it
offers a nice contrast to Watson's straight-forward reporting, a style insisted upon by the master
and one which will ultimately dispel any foolish belief in curses and hounds of hell.
Red Herring
A classic of the mystery/detective genre, the red herring throws us off the right trail.
Much like the folk tale, it offers a too-easy answer to the question at hand, tempting us to take
the bait and making fools of us if we do. In Hound, the largest red herring is the convict. After
all, who better to pin a murder on than a convicted murderer. Barrymore's late-night mischief
turns out to be innocent, and the convicted murderer turns out to not be involved in the
mysterious deaths.
Key Facts
full title · The Hound of the Baskervilles
author · Arthur Conan Doyle
type of work · Novel
genre · Mystery
language · English
time and place written · Returning from the Boer War in South Africa, Doyle wrote and
published Hound of the Baskervilles in England in 1901.
date of first publication · 1901, serialized in The Strand; 1902, published by Newnes
publisher · George Newnes, Ltd.
narrator · Dr. Watson
climax · Holmes' secret plan comes to fruition when a guileless Sir Henry heads home across the
moor, only to be attacked by the hound. Hindered by a thick fog and sheer fright, Holmes and
Watson nonetheless shoot the beast and solve the mystery.
protagonist · Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes
antagonist · Jack Stapleton
setting (time) · 1889. Holmes notes that the date 1884, engraved on Dr. Mortimer's walking
stick, is five years old.
setting (place) · The novel starts and ends in London, in Holmes' office at 221b Baker Street.
Most of the rest of the novel takes place in Devonshire, at the imposing Baskerville Hall, the
lonely moorlands, and the rundown Merripit House where Stapleton lives.
point of view · The mystery is told entirely from Watson's point of view, although the author
regularly switches from straight narrative to diary to letters home.
falling action · Holmes explains the intricacies of the case; Sir Henry and Mortimer head off on
vacation to heal Henry's nerves
tense · Modulates from past (as in Watson's narration of London events) to recent past (as in
Watson's diary and letters)
foreshadowing · The deaths of some wild horses prefigure Stapleton's own death by drowning in
the Grimpen mire. There is a sense in which all the clues serve as foreshadowing for later
discoveries.
tone · At different times, the novel's tone is earnest, reverent (of Holmes), uncertain, and
ominous.
symbols · The moor (the mire); the hound
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Jann, Rosemary. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Detecting Social Order. New
York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1995.
Weller, Philip. The Dartmoor of The Hound of the Baskervilles: a Practical Guide to the
Sherlock Holmes Locations. Hampshire, England: Sherlock Publications, 1991.
Brown, Ivor, John Carnegie. Conan Doyle: a Biography of the Creator of Sherlock
Holmes. London, Hamilton, 1972.
Accardo, Pasquale J. Diagnosis and Detection: the Medical Iconography of Sherlock
Holmes. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1987.
Steinbrunner, Chris. The Films of Sherlock Holmes. Secaucus: Citadel Press, 1978.
Davies, David Stuart. Holmes of the Movies: the Screen Career of Sherlock Holmes.
London: New English Library, 1976.
“Lord of the Flies” William Golding
Context
W.Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England. Although he tried to
write a novel as early as age twelve, his parents urged him to study the natural sciences. Golding
followed his parents' wishes until his second year at Oxford, when he changed his focus to
English literature. After graduating from Oxford, he worked briefly as a theater actor and
director, wrote poetry, and then became a schoolteacher. In 1940, a year after England entered
World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy, where he served in command of a rocketlauncher and participated in the invasion of Normandy. Golding's experience in World War II
had a profound effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it was capable. After the
war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write novels. His first and greatest success came
with Lord of the Flies (1954), which ultimately became a bestseller in both Britain and the
United States after more than twenty publishers rejected it. The novel's sales enabled Golding to
retire from teaching and devote himself fully to writing. Golding wrote several more novels,
notably Pincher Martin (1956), and a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Although he never
matched the popular and critical success he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies, he remained a
respected and distinguished author for the rest of his life and was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1983. Golding died in 1993, one of the most acclaimed writers of the second half of
the twentieth century.
Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a tropical
island after their plane is shot down during a war. Though the novel is fictional, its exploration of
the idea of human evil is at least partly based on Golding's experience with the real-life violence
and brutality of World War II. Free from the rules and structures of civilization and society, the
boys on the island in Lord of the Flies descend into savagery. As the boys splinter into factions,
some behave peacefully and work together to maintain order and achieve common goals, while
others rebel and seek only anarchy and violence. In his portrayal of the small world of the island,
Golding paints a broader portrait of the fundamental human struggle between the civilizing
instinct—the impulse to obey rules, behave morally, and act lawfully—and the savage instinct—
the impulse to seek brute power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in
violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the Flies, one that
avoids highly poetic language, lengthy description, and philosophical interludes. Much of the
novel is allegorical, meaning that the characters and objects in the novel are infused with
symbolic significance that conveys the novel's central themes and ideas. In portraying the
various ways in which the boys on the island adapt to their new surroundings and react to their
new freedom, Golding explores the broad spectrum of ways in which humans respond to stress,
change, and tension.
Readers and critics have interpreted Lord of the Flies in widely varying ways over the
years since its publication. During the 1950-60s, many readings of the novel claimed that Lord of
the Flies dramatizes the history of civilization. Some believed that the novel explores
fundamental religious issues, such as original sin and the nature of good and evil. Others
approached it through the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who taught that the
human mind was the site of a constant battle among different impulses—the id (instinctual needs
and desires), the ego (the conscious, rational mind), and the superego (the sense of conscience
and morality). Still others maintained that Golding wrote the novel as a criticism of the political
and social institutions of the West. Ultimately, there is some validity to each of these different
readings and interpretations of Lord of the Flies. Although Golding's story is confined to the
microcosm of a group of boys, it resounds with implications far beyond the bounds of the small
island and explores problems and questions universal to the human experience.
Plot Overview
In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is
shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch
shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once
assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose
Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will
hunt food for the entire group. Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to
explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract
the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing
sunlight through the lenses of Piggy's eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to
playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of
dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears,
presumably having burned to death. At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and
spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains
that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in
their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with
the act of hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to
their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the hunters' responsibility to maintain—has
burned out. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all
the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance.
Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and
reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes
clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as “littluns,”
have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that
there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys try to convince the
others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during
the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition that terrifies the
entire group. Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the
island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A
parachutist drifts to earth on the signal fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible
for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins
wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it
makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that
the beast has attacked them. The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster.
Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of
the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds
a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a
coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of
power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies
the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain.
They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack.
Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a
violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow
and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later,
encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to
him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the
Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he
wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that
the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the
beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—
even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack's feast—and when they see Simon's shadowy figure
emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth. The
following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack's hunters attack them and
their few followers and steal Piggy's glasses in the process. Ralph's group travels to Jack's
stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and
fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain,
killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.
Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like
an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding
place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow's head, but eventually,
he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him.
Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing
over him. The officer's ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach
and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of
bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the
knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to
weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain
their composure.
Character List
Ralph - The novel's protagonist, the twelve-year-old English boy who is elected leader of the
group of boys marooned on the island. Ralph attempts to coordinate the boys' efforts to build a
miniature civilization on the island until they can be rescued. Ralph represents human beings'
civilizing instinct, as opposed to the savage instinct that Jack embodies.
Jack - The novel's antagonist, one of the older boys stranded on the island. Jack becomes the
leader of the hunters but longs for total power and becomes increasingly wild, barbaric, and cruel
as the novel progresses. Jack, adept at manipulating the other boys, represents the instinct of
savagery within human beings, as opposed to the civilizing instinct Ralph represents.
Simon - A shy, sensitive boy in the group. Simon, in some ways the only naturally “good”
character on the island, behaves kindly toward the younger boys and is willing to work for the
good of their community. Moreover, because his motivation is rooted in his deep feeling of
connectedness to nature, Simon is the only character whose sense of morality does not seem to
have been imposed by society. Simon represents a kind of natural goodness, as opposed to the
unbridled evil of Jack and the imposed morality of civilization represented by Ralph and Piggy.
Piggy - Ralph's “lieutenant.” A whiny, intellectual boy, Piggy's inventiveness frequently leads to
innovation, such as the makeshift sundial that the boys use to tell time. Piggy represents the
scientific, rational side of civilization.
Roger - Jack's “lieutenant” A sadistic, cruel older boy who brutalizes the littluns and eventually
murders Piggy by rolling a boulder onto him.
Sam and Eric - A pair of twins closely allied with Ralph. Sam and Eric are always together, and
the other boys often treat them as a single entity, calling them “Samneric.” The easily excitable
Sam and Eric are part of the group known as the “bigguns.” At the end of the novel, they fall
victim to Jack's manipulation and coercion.
The Lord of the Flies - The name given to the sow's head that Jack's gang impales on a stake
and erects in the forest as an offering to the “beast.” The Lord of the Flies comes to symbolize
the primordial instincts of power and cruelty that take control of Jack's tribe.
Analysis of Major Characters
Ralph is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord of the Flies. Elected the leader of the boys
at the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the primary representative of order, civilization, and
productive leadership in the novel. While most of the other boys initially are concerned with
playing, having fun, and avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and thinking of ways to
maximize their chances of being rescued. For this reason, Ralph's power and influence over the
other boys are secure at the beginning of the novel. However, as the group gradually succumbs
to savage instincts over the course of the novel, Ralph's position declines precipitously while
Jack's rises. Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy leave Ralph's group for Jack's, and Ralph
is left alone to be hunted by Jack's tribe. Ralph's commitment to civilization and morality is
strong, and his main wish is to be rescued and returned to the society of adults. In a sense, this
strength gives Ralph a moral victory at the end of the novel, when he casts the Lord of the Flies
to the ground and takes up the stake it is impaled on to defend himself against Jack's hunters.
In the earlier parts of the novel, Ralph is unable to understand why the other boys would give in
to base instincts of bloodlust and barbarism. The sight of the hunters chanting and dancing is
baffling and distasteful to him. As the novel progresses, however, Ralph, like Simon, comes to
understand that savagery exists within all the boys. Ralph remains determined not to let this
savagery -overwhelm him, and only briefly does he consider joining Jack's tribe in order to save
himself. When Ralph hunts a boar for the first time, however, he experiences the exhilaration
and thrill of bloodlust and violence. When he attends Jack's feast, he is swept away by the
frenzy, dances on the edge of the group, and participates in the killing of Simon. This firsthand
knowledge of the evil that exists within him, as within all human beings, is tragic for Ralph, and
it plunges him into listless despair for a time. But this knowledge also enables him to cast down
the Lord of the Flies at the end of the novel. Ralph's story ends semi-tragically: although he is
rescued and returned to civilization, when he sees the naval officer, he weeps with the burden of
his new knowledge about the human capacity for evil.
Jack
The strong-willed, egomaniacal Jack is the novel's primary representative of the instinct of
savagery, violence, and the desire for power – in short, the antithesis of Ralph. From the
beginning of the novel, Jack desires power above all other things. He is furious when he loses the
election to Ralph and continually pushes the boundaries of his subordinate role in the group.
Early on, Jack retains the sense of moral propriety and behavior that society instilled in him – in
fact, in school, he was the leader of the choirboys. The first time he encounters a pig, he is
unable to kill it. But Jack soon becomes obsessed with hunting and devotes himself to the task,
painting his face like a barbarian and giving himself over to bloodlust. The more savage Jack
becomes, the more he is able to control the rest of the group. Indeed, apart from Ralph, Simon,
and Piggy, the group largely follows Jack in casting off moral restraint and embracing violence
and savagery. Jack's love of authority and violence are intimately connected, as both enable him
to feel powerful and exalted. By the end of the novel, Jack has learned to use the boys' fear of the
beast to control their behavior – a reminder of how religion and superstition can be manipulated
as instruments of power.
Simon
Whereas Ralph and Jack stand at opposite ends of the spectrum between civilization and
savagery, Simon stands on an entirely different plane from all the other boys. Simon embodies a
kind of innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected with nature and, in its own
way, as primal as Jack's evil. The other boys abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization is no
longer there to impose it upon them. They are not innately moral; rather, the adult world – the
threat of punishment for misdeeds – has conditioned them to act morally. To an extent, even the
seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as we see when they
participate in the hunt-dance. In Golding's view, the human impulse toward civilization is not as
deeply rooted as the human impulse toward savagery. Unlike all the other boys on the island,
Simon acts morally not out of guilt or shame but because he believes in the inherent value of
morality. He behaves kindly toward the younger children, and he is the first to realize the
problem posed by the beast and the Lord of the Flies – that is, that the monster on the island is
not a real, physical beast but rather a savagery that lurks within each human being. The sow's
head on the stake symbolizes this idea, as we see in Simon's vision of the head speaking to him.
Ultimately, this idea of the inherent evil within each human being stands as the moral conclusion
and central problem of the novel. Against this idea of evil, Simon represents a contrary idea of
essential human goodness. However, his brutal murder at the hands of the other boys indicates
the scarcity of that good amid an overwhelming abundance of evil.
Themes
Civilization vs. Savagery
The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that
exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral
commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify one's immediate
desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one's will. This conflict might
be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs. savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse,
law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding
associates the instinct of civilization with good and the instinct of savagery with evil. The
conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel, explored through the
dissolution of the young English boys' civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom
themselves to a wild, brutal, barbaric life in the jungle. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel,
which means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic
characters and objects. He represents the conflict between civilization and savagery in the
conflict between the novel's two main characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order
and leadership; and Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power.
As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people feel the influences of the instincts
of civilization and savagery to different degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings,
while Roger seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally,
however, Golding implies that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the
human psyche than the instinct of civilization. Golding sees moral behavior, in many cases, as
something that civilization forces upon the individual rather than a natural expression of human
individuality. When left to their own devices, Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty,
savagery, and barbarism. This idea of innate human evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and finds
expression in several important symbols, most notably the beast and the sow's head on the stake.
Among all the characters, only Simon seems to possess anything like a natural, innate goodness.
Loss of Innocence
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to
cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the
sense of innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in
Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from
the guileless children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this
loss of innocence as something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their
increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding
implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all
human beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of
innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the
novel, he discovers the bloody sow's head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing.
The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful
symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence.
Motifs
Biblical Parallels
Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While
that description may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and
themes. Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in
Lord of the Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel,
adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story. The island itself, particularly Simon's
glade in the forest, recalls the Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is
corrupted by the introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a
representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among humankind. Furthermore, many
critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one
who arrives at the moral truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a
consequence of having discovered this truth. Simon's conversation with the Lord of the Flies also
parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during Jesus' forty days in the wilderness,
as told in the Christian Gospels.
However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon and Christ are not
complete, and that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory.
Save for Simon's two uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to
God that Jesus has in Christian tradition. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his death does
not bring salvation to the island; rather, his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and
moral guilt. Moreover, Simon dies before he is able to tell the boys the truth he has discovered.
Jesus, in contrast, was killed while spreading his moral philosophy. In this way, Simon—and
Lord of the Flies as a whole—echoes Christian ideas and themes without developing explicit,
precise parallels with them. The novel's biblical parallels enhance its moral themes but are not
necessarily the primary key to interpreting the story.
Symbols
The Conch Shell
Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to
summon the boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell
becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs
the boys' meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this regard, the
shell is more than a symbol—it is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power.
As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its
power and influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his
role in murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him when he
attempts to blow the conch in Jack's camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes
the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the
island.
Piggy's Glasses
Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of
science and intellectual endeavor in society. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of
the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggy's glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire.
When Jack's hunters raid Ralph's camp and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the
power to make fire, leaving Ralph's group helpless.
The Signal Fire
The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing
ships that might be able to rescue the boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of
the boys' connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain
the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or
goes out, we realize that the boys have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have accepted
their savage lives on the island. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the
strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire
finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagery—
the forest fire Jack's gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.
The Beast
The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal instinct of savagery that
exists within all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the
realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more
savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it
sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The boys' behavior is what brings the beast into
existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become.
The Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow's head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest
glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in
the novel when Simon confronts the sow's head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling
him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some “fun” with him. (This
“fun” foreshadows Simon's death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies
becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of
Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context
of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the
name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a
powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.
Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, Roger
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or
themes. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and
intellectual aspects of civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power.
Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most
extreme. To the extent that the boys' society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen
as the common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders.
The relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older
boys' connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and
Simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage
boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as
objects for their own amusement.
Key Facts
full title · Lord of the Flies; author · William Golding; type of work · Novel
genre · Allegory; adventure story; castaway fiction; loss-of-innocence fiction
language · English
time and place written · Early 1950s; Salisbury, England
date of first publication · 1954; publisher · Faber and Faber
narrator · The story is told by an anonymous third-person narrator who conveys the events of the novel
without commenting on the action or intruding into the story.
point of view · The narrator speaks in the third person, primarily focusing on Ralph's point of view but
following Jack and Simon in certain episodes. The narrator is omniscient and gives us access to the
characters' inner thoughts.
tone · Dark; violent; pessimistic; tragic; unsparing
tense · Immediate past
setting (time) · Near future
setting (place) · A deserted tropical island
protagonist · Ralph
major conflict · Free from the rules that adult society formerly imposed on them, the boys marooned on
the island struggle with the conflicting human instincts that exist within each of them—the instinct to
work toward civilization and order and the instinct to descend into savagery, violence, and chaos.
rising action · The boys assemble on the beach. In the election for leader, Ralph defeats Jack, who is
furious when he loses. As the boys explore the island, tension grows between Jack, who is interested only
in hunting, and Ralph, who believes most of the boys' efforts should go toward building shelters and
maintaining a signal fire. When rumors surface that there is some sort of beast living on the island, the
boys grow fearful, and the group begins to divide into two camps supporting Ralph and Jack,
respectively. Ultimately, Jack forms a new tribe altogether, fully immersing himself in the savagery of the
hunt.
climax · Simon encounters the Lord of the Flies in the forest glade and realizes that the beast is not a
physical entity but rather something that exists within each boy on the island. When Simon tries to
approach the other boys and convey this message to them, they fall on him and kill him savagely.
falling action · Virtually all the boys on the island abandon Jack and Piggy and descend further into
savagery and chaos. When the other boys kill Piggy and destroy the conch shell, Ralph flees from Jack's
tribe and encounters the naval officer on the beach.
foreshadowing · The rolling of the boulders off the Castle Rock in Chapter 6 foreshadows Piggy's death;
the Lord of the Flies's promise to have some “fun” with Simon foreshadows Simon's death
“Lady Chatterley's Lover”– D.H. Lawrence
Context
Reviewers and government censors condemned D.H.Lawrence's last novel as radically
pornographic, a vision of a relationship and a society without moral boundaries. But this one is
not really a radical novel, unless it can be said to be radically reactionary, a profoundly
conservative response to the modern condition. What was the modern condition that Lawrence
found so foul, and who was the author, a paradoxical man whose somewhat puritan mind raged
against modernity through an unprecedentedly unconstrained celebration of sexuality?
Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, the product of an unhappy marriage between
a coal-miner father and a schoolteacher mother. His birthplace, Eastwood, was a mining village
in Nottinghamshire, the heart of England's industrial midlands. Lawrence became deeply
attached to his mother, who was deeply committed to helping her children escape the working
class. In was Nottinghamshire that Lawrence developed his hostility towards the mining industry
that had dehumanized his father and destroyed the pastoral English countryside of his birthplace,
a hostility evident throughout Lady Chatterley's Lover in Lawrence's fulmination against
industrialism and modern technology.
Lawrence supported himself by teaching school, although his ambition was to become a
poet. In 1909, he published his first poems; in 1911 and 1912, he published his first two novels:
The White Peacock and The Trespasser, respectively. In 1912, he left England with Frieda
Weekley (née Von Richtofen), the wife of one of his college professors; they were married in
1914, after the publication of his third novel, the autobiographical Sons and Lovers (1913). His
elopement marked the beginning of a nomadic lifestyle. Except for a stint in England during the
First World War, Lawrence spent practically the rest of his life traveling the world, from
Germany to New Mexico, in search of a healthy atmosphere in which to rehabilitate his lungs (he
had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed him in 1930, at the age
of 44). Lawrence's elopement also marked the first of his rejections of conventional morality,
rejections that would play themselves out in sexual experimentation that almost ruined his
marriage, and that informed his later writing, especially Lady Chatterley's Lover.
In the sixteen years between his marriage and his death, Lawrence was remarkably
prolific, publishing many novels, including the novels generally considered his finest: The
Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920); nonfiction, including history textbooks, travel
memoirs and scholarly psychological tracts; and several collections of short stories and poems.
In the last years of his life, wracked by tuberculosis, Lawrence wrote three very different
versions of what would prove his final novel, the sexually explicit Lady Chatterley's Lover. He
survived to see the final version--first published in the spring of 1928--ripped by most reviewers
and censored in England and America.
Lawrence was not the only author writing in the decades after the first World War whose
work was considered radically immoral; famously, for instance, a furor arose over the
publication of James Joyce's great novel Ulysses years before Lady Chatterley's Lover was
written. Many of the modernist writers and poets who dominated postwar avant-garde literary art
placed a high premium on discarding social convention, which they believed had been exposed
as empty by the carnage of the war. Society was morally bankrupt, empty of real meaning,
composed of individuals between whom no real connection or understanding was possible. In
response, artists began to experiment radically with form, and they set a premium on art that was
"real," that eliminated convention to get at the core of life. He was not really one of these
formally and thematically radical modernists. While he shared the modernist belief that the
postwar world was virtually bereft of meaningful values, Lawrence laid the blame at the doorstep
of technology, the class system, and intellectual life. He believed that modern industry had
deprived people of individuality, making them cogs in the industrial machine, a machine driven
by greed. And modern intellectual life conspired with social constraint to bleed men dry of their
vital, natural vigor. Lawrence wanted to revive in the human consciousness an awareness of
savage sensuality, a sensuality which would free men from their dual enslavement to modern
industry and intellectual emptiness. He was in many ways a primitivist: he saw little reason for
optimism in modern society, and looked nostalgically backwards towards the days of pastoral,
agricultural England.
Characters
Lady Chatterley - The protagonist of the novel. Before her marriage, she is simply Constance
Reid, an intellectual and social progressive, the daughter of Sir Malcolm and the sister of Hilda.
When she marries Clifford Chatterley, a minor nobleman, Constance--or, as she is known
throughout the novel, Connie--assumes his title, becoming Lady Chatterley. Lady Chatterley's
Lover chronicles Connie's maturation as a woman and as a sensual being. She comes to despise
her weak, ineffectual husband, and to love Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on her husband's
estate. In the process of leaving her husband and conceiving a child with Mellors, Lady
Chatterley moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a
vital and profound connection rooted in sensuality and sexual fulfillment.
Oliver Mellors -The lover in the novel's title. Mellors is the gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley's
estate, Wragby. He is aloof, sarcastic, intelligent and noble. He was born near Wragby, and
worked as a blacksmith until he ran off to the army to escape an unhappy marriage. In the army
he rose to become a commissioned lieutenant--an unusual position for a member of the working
classes--but was forced to leave the army because of a case of pneumonia, which left him in poor
health. Disappointed by a string of unfulfilling love affairs, Mellors lives in quiet isolation, from
which he is redeemed by his relationship with Connie: the passion unleashed by their
lovemaking forges a profound bond between them. At the end of the novel, Mellors is fired from
his job as gamekeeper and works as a laborer on a farm, waiting for a divorce from his old wife
so he can marry Connie. Mellors is the representative in this novel of the Noble Savage: he is a
man with an innate nobility but who remains impervious to the pettiness and emptiness of
conventional society, with access to a primitive flame of passion and sensuality.
Clifford Chatterley - Connie's husband. Clifford Chatterley is a minor nobleman who becomes
paralyzed from the waist down during World War I. As a result of his injury, Clifford is
impotent. He retires to his familial estate, Wragby, where he becomes first a successful writer,
and then a powerful businessman. But the gap between Connie and him grows ever wider;
obsessed with financial success and fame, he is not truly interested in love, and she feels that he
has become passionless and empty. He turns for solace to his nurse and companion, Mrs. Bolton,
who worships him as a nobleman even as she despises him for his casual arrogance. Clifford
represents everything that this novel despises about the modern English nobleman: he is a weak,
vain man, but declares his right to rule the lower classes, and he soullessly pursues money and
fame through industry and the meaningless manipulation of words. His impotence is symbolic of
his failings as a strong, sensual man.
Mrs. Bolton - Ivy Bolton is Clifford's nurse and caretaker. She is a competent, complex, stillattractive middle-aged woman. Years before the action in this novel, her husband died in an
accident in the mines owned by Clifford's family. Even as Mrs. Bolton resents Clifford as the
owner of the mines--and, in a sense, the murderer of her husband--she still maintains a
worshipful attitude towards him as the representative of the upper class. Her relationship with
Clifford--she simultaneously adores and despises him, while he depends and looks down on her-is probably the most fascinating and complex relationship in the novel.
Michaelis - A successful Irish playwright with whom Connie has an affair early in the novel.
Michaelis asks Connie to marry him, but she decides not to, realizing that he is like all other
intellectuals: a slave to success, a purveyor of vain ideas and empty words, passionless.
Hilda Reid - Connie's older sister by two years, the daughter of Sir Malcolm. Hilda shared
Connie's cultured upbringing and intellectual education. She remains unliberated by the raw
sensuality that changed Connie's life. She disdains Connie's lover, Mellors, as a member of the
lower classes, but in the end she helps Connie to leave Clifford.
Sir Malcolm Reid - The father of Connie and Hilda. He is an acclaimed painter, an aesthete and
unabashed sensualist who despises Clifford for his weakness and impotence, and who
immediately warms to Mellors.
Tommy Dukes - One of Clifford's contemporaries, Tommy Dukes is a brigadier general in the
British Army and a clever and progressive intellectual. Lawrence intimates, however, that Dukes
is a representative of all intellectuals: all talk and no action. Dukes speaks of the importance of
sensuality, but he himself is incapable of sensuality and uninterested in sex.
Charles May, Hammond, Berry - Young intellectuals who visit Wragby, and who, along with
Tommy Dukes and Clifford, participate in the socially progressive but ultimately meaningless
discussions about love and sex.
Duncan Forbes - An artist friend of Connie and Hilda. Forbes paints abstract canvases, a form
of art both Mellors and D.H. Lawrence seem to despise. He once loved Connie, and Connie
originally claims to be pregnant with his child.
Bertha Coutts - Although Bertha never actually appears in the novel, her presence is felt. She is
Mellors' wife, separated from him but not divorced. Their marriage faltered because of their
sexual incompatibility: she was too rapacious, not tender enough. She returns at the end of the
novel to spread rumors about Mellors' infidelity to her, and helps get him fired from his position
as gamekeeper. As the novel concludes, Mellors is in the process of divorcing her.
Squire Winter - A relative of Clifford. He is a firm believer in the old privileges of the
aristocracy.
Daniele, Giovanni - Venetian gondoliers in the service of Hilda and Connie. Giovanni hopes
that the women will pay him to sleep with them; he is disappointed. Daniele reminds Connie of
Mellors: he is attractive, a "real man".
“The Sound and the Fury” – William Faulkner
Context
W.Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, to a prominent Southern
family. A number of his ancestors were involved in the Mexican-American War, the Civil War,
and the Reconstruction, and were part of the local railroad industry and political scene. Faulkner
showed signs of artistic talent from a young age, but became bored with his classes and never
finished high school. Faulkner grew up in the town of Oxford, Mississippi, and eventually
returned there in his later years and purchased his famous estate, Rowan Oak. Oxford and the
surrounding area were Faulkner's inspiration for the fictional Yoknapatawpha County,
Mississippi, and its town of Jefferson. These locales became the setting for a number of his
works. Faulkner's “Yoknapatawpha novels” include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay
Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Hamlet (1940), and Go
Down, Moses (1942), and they feature some of the same characters and locations.
Faulkner was particularly interested in the decline of the Deep South after the Civil War.
Many of his novels explore the deterioration of the Southern aristocracy after the destruction of
its wealth and way of life during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Faulkner populates
Yoknapatawpha County with the skeletons of old mansions and the ghosts of great men,
patriarchs and generals from the past whose aristocratic families fail to live up to their historical
greatness. Beneath the shadow of past grandeur, these families attempt to cling to old Southern
values, codes, and myths that are corrupted and out of place in the reality of the modern world.
The families in Faulkner's novels are rife with failed sons, disgraced daughters, and smoldering
resentments between whites and blacks in the aftermath of African-American slavery.
Faulkner's reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century is largely
due to his highly experimental style. Faulkner was a pioneer in literary modernism, dramatically
diverging from the forms and structures traditionally used in novels before his time. Faulkner
often employs stream of consciousness narrative, discards any notion of chronological order,
uses multiple narrators, shifts between the present and past tense, and tends toward impossibly
long and complex sentences. Not surprisingly, these stylistic innovations make some of
Faulkner's novels incredibly challenging to the reader. However, these bold innovations paved
the way for countless future writers to continue to experiment with the possibilities of the
English language. For his efforts, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.
He died in Mississippi in 1962.
First published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury is recognized as one of the most
successfully innovative and experimental American novels of its time, not to mention one of the
most challenging to interpret. The novel concerns the downfall of the Compsons, who have been
a prominent family in Jefferson, Mississippi, since before the Civil War. Faulkner represents the
human experience by portraying events and images subjectively, through several different
characters' respective memories of childhood. The novel's stream of consciousness style is
frequently very opaque, as events are often deliberately obscured and narrated out of order.
Despite its formidable complexity, The Sound and the Fury is an overpowering and deeply
moving novel. It is generally regarded as his most important and remarkable literary work.
Plot Overview
Attempting to apply traditional plot summary to The Sound and the Fury is difficult. At a
basic level, the novel is about the three Compson brothers' obsessions with the their sister Caddy,
but this brief synopsis represents merely the surface of what the novel contains. A story told in
four chapters, by four different voices, and out of chronological order, The Sound and the Fury
requires intense concentration and patience to interpret and understand.
The first three chapters of the novel consist of the convoluted thoughts, voices, and
memories of the three Compson brothers, captured on three different days. The brothers are
Benjy, a severely retarded thirty-three-year-old man, speaking in April, 1928; Quentin, a young
Harvard student, speaking in June, 1910; and Jason, a bitter farm-supply store worker, speaking
again in April, 1928. Faulkner tells the fourth chapter in his own narrative voice, but focuses on
Dilsey, the Compson family's devoted “Negro” cook who has played a great part in raising the
children. Faulkner harnesses the brothers' memories of their sister Caddy, using a single
symbolic moment to forecast the decline of the once prominent Compson family and to examine
the deterioration of the Southern aristocratic class since the Civil War.
The Compsons are one of several prominent names in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi.
Their ancestors helped settle the area and subsequently defended it during the Civil War. Since
the war, the Compsons have gradually seen their wealth, land, and status crumble away. Mr.
Compson is an alcoholic. Mrs. Compson is a self-absorbed hypochondriac who depends almost
entirely upon Dilsey to raise her four children. Quentin, the oldest child, is a sensitive bundle of
neuroses. Caddy is stubborn, but loving and compassionate. Jason has been difficult and meanspirited since birth and is largely spurned by the other children. Benjy is severely mentally
disabled, an “idiot” with no understanding of the concepts of time or morality. In the absence of
the self-absorbed Mrs. Compson, Caddy serves as a mother figure and symbol of affection for
Benjy and Quentin.
As the children grow older, however, Caddy begins to behave promiscuously, which
torments Quentin and sends Benjy into fits of moaning and crying. Quentin is preparing to go to
Harvard, and Mr. Compson sells a large portion of the family land to provide funds for the
tuition. Caddy loses her virginity and becomes pregnant. She is unable or unwilling to name the
father of the child, though it is likely Dalton Ames, a boy from town. Caddy's pregnancy leaves
Quentin emotionally shattered. He attempts to claim false responsibility for the pregnancy, lying
to his father that he and Caddy have committed incest. Mr. Compson is indifferent to Caddy's
promiscuity, dismissing Quentin's story and telling his son to leave early for the Northeast.
Attempting to cover up her indiscretions, Caddy quickly marries Herbert Head, a banker
she met in Indiana. Herbert promises Jason Compson a job in his bank. Herbert immediately
divorces Caddy and rescinds Jason's job offer when he realizes his wife is pregnant with another
man's child. Meanwhile, Quentin, still mired in despair over Caddy's sin, commits suicide by
drowning himself in the Charles River just before the end of his first year at Harvard.
The Compsons disown Caddy from the family, but take in her newborn daughter, Miss
Quentin. The task of raising Miss Quentin falls squarely on Dilsey's shoulders. Mr. Compson
dies of alcoholism roughly a year after Quentin's suicide. As the oldest surviving son, Jason
becomes the head of the Compson household. Bitterly employed at a menial job in the local
farm-supply store, Jason devises an ingenious scheme to steal the money Caddy sends to support
Miss Quentin's upbringing. Miss Quentin grows up to be an unhappy, rebellious, and
promiscuous girl, constantly in conflict with her overbearing and vicious uncle Jason. On Easter
Sunday, 1928, Miss Quentin steals several thousand dollars from Jason and runs away with a
man from a traveling show. While Jason chases after Miss Quentin to no avail, Dilsey takes
Benjy and the rest of her family to Easter services at the local church.
A Note on the Title
The title of The Sound and the Fury refers to a line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Macbeth, a Scottish general and nobleman, learns of his wife's suicide and feels that his life is
crumbling into chaos. In addition to Faulkner's title, we can find several of the novel's important
motifs in Macbeth's short soliloquy in Act V, scene v:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (V.v.18–27)
The Sound and the Fury literally begins as a “tale / Told by an idiot,” as the first chapter
is narrated by the mentally disabled Benjy. The novel's central concerns include time, much like
Macbeth's “[t]omorrow, and tomorrow”; death, recalling Macbeth's “dusty death”; and
nothingness and disintegration, a clear reference to Macbeth's lament that life “[s]ignif[ies]
nothing.” Additionally, Quentin is haunted by the sense that the Compson family has
disintegrated to a mere shadow of its former greatness.
In his soliloquy, Macbeth implies that life is but a shadow of the past and that a modern
man, like himself, is inadequately equipped and unable to achieve anything near the greatness of
the past. Faulkner reinterprets this idea, implying that if man does not choose to take his own
life, as Quentin does, the only alternatives are to become either a cynic and materialist like Jason,
or an idiot like Benjy, unable to see life as anything more than a meaningless series of images,
sounds, and memories.
Character List
Jason Compson III - The head of the Compson household until his death from alcoholism in
1912. Mr. Compson is the father of Quentin, Caddy, Jason IV, and Benjy, and the husband of
Caroline.
Caroline Compson - The self-pitying and self-absorbed wife of Mr. Compson and mother of the
four Compson children. Caroline's hypochondria preoccupies her and contributes to her inability
to care properly for her children.
Quentin Compson - The oldest of the Compson children and the narrator of the novel's second
chapter. A sensitive and intelligent boy, Quentin is preoccupied with his love for his sister Caddy
and his notion of the Compson family's honor. He commits suicide by drowning himself just
before the end of his first year at Harvard.
Caddy Compson - The second oldest of the Compson children and the only daughter. Actually
named Candace, Caddy is very close to her brother Quentin. She becomes promiscuous, gets
pregnant out of wedlock, and eventually marries and divorces Herbert Head in 1910.
Jason Compson IV - The second youngest of the Compson children and the narrator of the
novel's third chapter. Jason is mean-spirited, petty, and very cynical.
Benjy Compson - The youngest of the Compson children and narrator of the novel's first
chapter. Born Maury Compson, his name is changed to Benjamin in 1900, when he is discovered
to be severely mentally retarded.
Miss Quentin - Caddy's illegitimate daughter, who is raised by the Compsons after Caddy's
divorce. A rebellious, promiscuous, and miserably unhappy girl, Miss Quentin eventually steals
money from Jason and leaves town with a member of a traveling minstrel show.
Dilsey - The Compsons' “Negro” cook, Dilsey is a pious, strong-willed, protective woman who
serves as a stabilizing force for the Compson family.
Roskus - Dilsey's husband and the Compsons' servant. Roskus suffers from a severe case of
rheumatism that eventually kills him.
T.P. - One of Dilsey's sons, T.P. gets drunk with Benjy and fights with Quentin at Caddy's
wedding.
Versh - Another of Dilsey's sons and Benjy's keepers.
Frony - Dilsey's daughter. Frony is also Luster's mother and works in the Compsons' kitchen.
Luster - Frony's son and Dilsey's grandson. Luster is a young boy who looks after and
entertains Benjy in 1928, despite the fact that he is only half Benjy's age.
The man with the red tie - The mysterious man with whom Miss Quentin allegedly elopes.
Damuddy - The Compson children's grandmother, who dies when they are young.
Uncle Maury Bascomb - Mrs. Compson's brother, who lives off his brother-in-law's money.
Benjy is initially named after Uncle Maury, but Benjy's condition and Caroline's insecurity about
her family name convince her to change her son's name.
Mr. and Mrs. Patterson - The Compsons' next-door neighbors. Uncle Maury has an affair with
Mrs. Patterson until Mr. Patterson intercepts a note Maury has sent to her.
Charlie - One of Caddy's first suitors, whom Benjy catches with Caddy on the swing during the
first chapter.
Dalton Ames - A local Jefferson boy who is probably the father of Caddy's child, Miss Quentin.
Shreve MacKenzie - Quentin's roommate at Harvard. A young Canadian man, Shreve reappears
in Absalom, Absalom!, one of Faulkner's later novels, which is largely narrated by Shreve and
Quentin from their dorm room at Harvard.
Spoade - A Harvard senior from South Carolina. Spoade once mocked Quentin's virginity by
calling Shreve Quentin's “husband.”
Gerald Bland - A swaggering student at Harvard. Quentin fights with Gerald because he
reminds him of Dalton Ames.
Mrs. Bland - Gerald Bland's boastful, Southern mother.
Deacon - A black man in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to whom Quentin gives his suicide notes.
Julio - The brother of an Italian girl who attaches herself to Quentin as he wanders Cambridge
before his suicide.
Sydney Herbert Head - The prosperous banker whom Caddy marries. Herbert later divorces
Caddy because of her pregnancy.
Lorraine - Jason's mistress, a prostitute who lives in Memphis.
Earl - The owner of the farm-supply store where Jason works. Earl feels some loyalty toward
Mrs. Compson and thus puts up with Jason's surliness.
Uncle Job - A black man who works with Jason at Earl's store.
Reverend Shegog - The pastor who delivers a powerful sermon on Easter Sunday at the local
black church in Jefferson.
Analysis of Major Characters
Mr. Jason Compson III is a well-spoken but very cynical and detached man. He subscribes to a
philosophy of determinism and fatalism—he believes life is essentially meaningless and that he
can do little to change the events that befall his family. Despite his cynicism, however, Mr.
Compson maintains notions of gentlemanliness and family honor, which Quentin inherits. Mr.
Compson risks the family's financial well-being in exchange for the potential prestige of
Quentin's Harvard education, and he tells stories that foster Quentin's nearly fanatical obsession
with the family name. Though he inculcates his son with the concept of family honor, Mr.
Compson is unconcerned with it in practice. He acts indifferent to Quentin about Caddy's
pregnancy, telling him to accept it as a natural womanly shortcoming. Mr. Compson's
indifference greatly upsets Quentin, who is ashamed by his father's disregard for traditional
Southern ideals of honor and virtue. Mr. Compson dismisses Quentin's concerns about Caddy
and tells his son not to take himself so seriously, which initiates Quentin's rapid fall toward
depression and suicide. Mr. Compson dies of alcoholism shortly thereafter.
Mrs. Caroline Compson’s negligence and disregard contribute directly to the family's
downfall. Constantly lost in a self-absorbed haze of hypochondria and self-pity, Mrs. Compson
is absent as a mother figure to her children and has no sense of her children's needs. She even
treats the mentally disabled Benjy cruelly and selfishly. Mrs. Compson foolishly lavishes all of
her favor and attention upon Jason, the one child who is incapable of reciprocating her love. Mrs.
Compson's self-absorption includes a neurotic insecurity over her Bascomb family name, the
honor of which is undermined by her brother Maury's adulterous behavior. Caroline ultimately
makes the decision to change her youngest son's name from Maury to Benjamin because of this
insecurity about her family's reputation.
Candace Compson (Caddy) is perhaps the most important figure in the novel, as she represents
the object of obsession for all three of her brothers. As a child, Caddy is somewhat headstrong,
but very loving and affectionate. She steps in as a mother figure for Quentin and Benjy in place
of the self-absorbed Mrs. Compson. Caddy's muddying of her underwear in the stream as a
young girl foreshadows her later promiscuity. It also presages and symbolizes the shame that her
conduct brings on the Compson family. Caddy does feel some degree of guilt about her
promiscuity because she knows it upsets Benjy so much. On the other hand, she does not seem to
understand Quentin's despair over her conduct. She rejects the Southern code that has defined her
family's history and that preoccupies Quentin's mind. Unlike Quentin, who is unable to escape
the tragic world of the Compson household, Caddy manages to get away. Though Caddy is
disowned, we sense that this rejection enables her to escape an environment in which she does
not really belong.
Benjy Compson – A moaning, speechless idiot, Benjy is utterly dependent upon Caddy, his only
real source of affection. Benjy cannot understand any abstract concepts such as time, cause and
effect, or right and wrong—he merely absorbs visual and auditory cues from the world around
him. Despite his utter inability to understand or interpret the world, however, Benjy does have an
acute sensitivity to order and chaos, and he can immediately sense the presence of anything bad,
wrong, or out of place. He is able to sense Quentin's suicide thousands of miles away at Harvard,
and senses Caddy's promiscuity and loss of virginity. In light of this ability, Benjy is one of the
only characters who truly takes notice of the Compson family's progressing decline. However,
his disability renders Benjy unable to formulate any response other than moaning and crying.
Benjy's impotence—and the impotence of all the remaining Compson men—is symbolized and
embodied by his castration during his teenage years.
Quentin Compson – The oldest of the Compson children, Quentin feels an inordinate burden of
responsibility to live up to the family's past greatness and prestige. He is a very intelligent and
sensitive young man, but is paralyzed by his obsession with Caddy and his preoccupation with a
very traditional Southern code of conduct and morality. This Southern code defines order and
chaos within Quentin's world, and causes him to idealize nebulous, abstract concepts such as
honor, virtue, and feminine purity. His strict belief in this code causes Quentin profound despair
when he learns of Caddy's promiscuity. Turning to Mr. Compson for guidance, Quentin feels
even worse when he learns that his father does not care about the Southern code or the shame
Caddy's conduct has brought on the family. When Quentin finds that his sister and father have
disregarded the code that gives order and meaning to his life, he is driven to despondency and
eventually suicide. Quentin's Southern code also prevents him from being a man of action. The
code preoccupies Quentin with blind devotion to abstract concepts that he is never able to act
upon assertively or effectively. Quentin is full of vague ideas, such as the suicide pact with
Caddy or the desire for revenge against Dalton Ames, but his ideas are always unspecific and
inevitably end up either rejected by others or carried out ineffectively. Quentin's focus on ideas
over deeds makes him a highly unreliable narrator, as it is often difficult to tell which of the
actions he describes have actually occurred and which are mere fantasy.
Jason Compson IV
Jason's legacy, even from his earliest childhood, is one of malice and hatred. Jason remains
distant from the other children. Like his brothers, Jason is fixated on Caddy, but his fixation is
based on bitterness and a desire to get Caddy in trouble. Ironically, the loveless Jason is the only
one of the Compson children who receives Mrs. Compson's affection. Jason has no capacity to
accept, enjoy, or reciprocate this love, and eventually he manipulates it to steal money from Miss
Quentin behind Mrs. Compson's back. Jason rejects not only familial love, but romantic love as
well. He hates all women fervently and thus cannot date or marry and have children. Jason's only
romantic satisfaction as an adult comes from a prostitute in Memphis. Unlike Quentin, who is
obsessed with the past, Jason thinks solely about the present and the immediate future. He
constantly tries to twist circumstances in his favor, almost always at the expense of others. Jason
is very clever and crafty, but never uses these talents in the spirit of kindness or generosity.
Though he clearly desires personal gain, Jason has no higher goals or aspirations. He steals and
hoards money in a strongbox, but not for any particular purpose other than selfishness. On the
whole, Jason is extremely motivated but completely without ambition. Jason's lack of
achievement stems primarily from his relentless self-pity. Jason never forgives Caddy for the
loss of the job at Herbert's bank, and he is unable to move past this setback to achieve anything
worthwhile in his later life. Ironically, Jason becomes the head of the Compson household after
his father's death—an indication of the low to which the once-great family has sunk.
Miss Quentin is the lone member of the newest generation of the Compson family. Many
parallels arise between Miss Quentin and her mother, Caddy, but the two differ in important
ways. Miss Quentin repeats Caddy's early sexual awakening and promiscuity, but, unlike Caddy,
she does not feel guilty about her actions. Likewise, Miss Quentin grows up in a meaner, more
confined world than Caddy does, and is constantly subject to Jason's domineering and cruelty.
Not surprisingly, we see that Miss Quentin is not nearly as loving or compassionate as her
mother. She is also more worldly and headstrong than Caddy. Yet Miss Quentin's eventual
success in recovering her stolen money and escaping the family implies that her worldliness and
lack of compunction—very modern values—indeed work to her benefit.
Dilsey is the only source of stability in the Compson household. She is the only character
detached enough from the Compsons' downfall to witness both the beginning and the end of this
final chapter of the family history. Interestingly, Dilsey lives her life based on the same set of
fundamental values—family, faith, personal honor, and so on—upon which the Compsons'
original greatness was built. However, Dilsey does not allow self-absorption to corrupt her
values or spirit. She is very patient and selfless—she cooks, cleans, and takes care of the
Compson children in Mrs. Compson's absence, while raising her own children and grandchildren
at the same time. Dilsey seems to be the only person in the household truly concerned for the
Compson children's welfare and character, and she treats all of the children with love and
fairness, even Benjy. The last chapter's focus on Dilsey implies a hope for renewal after the
tragedies that have occurred. We sense that Dilsey is the new torchbearer of the Compson
legacy, and represents the only hope for resurrecting the values of the old South in a pure and
uncorrupted form.
Themes
The Corruption of Southern Aristocratic Values
The first half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a number of prominent Southern families
such as the Compsons. These aristocratic families espoused traditional Southern values. Men
were expected to act like gentlemen, displaying courage, moral strength, perseverance, and
chivalry in defense of the honor of their family name. Women were expected to be models of
feminine purity, grace, and virginity until it came time for them to provide children to inherit the
family legacy. Faith in God and profound concern for preserving the family reputation provided
the grounding for these beliefs. The Civil War and Reconstruction devastated many of these
once-great Southern families economically, socially, and psychologically. Faulkner contends that
in the process, the Compsons, and other similar Southern families, lost touch with the reality of
the world around them and became lost in a haze of self-absorption. This self-absorption
corrupted the core values these families once held dear and left the newer generations completely
unequipped to deal with the realities of the modern world. We see this corruption running
rampant in the Compson family. Mr. Compson has a vague notion of family honor—something
he passes on to Quentin—but is mired in his alcoholism and maintains a fatalistic belief that he
cannot control the events that befall his family. Mrs. Compson is just as self-absorbed,
wallowing in hypochondria and self-pity and remaining emotionally distant from her children.
Quentin's obsession with old Southern morality renders him paralyzed and unable to move past
his family's sins. Caddy tramples on the Southern notion of feminine purity and indulges in
promiscuity, as does her daughter. Jason wastes his cleverness on self-pity and greed, striving
constantly for personal gain but with no higher aspirations. Benjy commits no real sins, but the
Compsons' decline is physically manifested through his retardation and his inability to
differentiate between morality and immorality. The Compsons' corruption of Southern values
results in a household that is completely devoid of love, the force that once held the family
together. Both parents are distant and ineffective. Caddy, the only child who shows an ability to
love, is eventually disowned. Though Quentin loves Caddy, his love is neurotic, obsessive, and
overprotective. None of the men experience any true romantic love, and are thus unable to marry
and carry on the family name. At the conclusion of the novel, Dilsey is the only loving member
of the household, the only character who maintains her values without the corrupting influence
of self-absorption. She thus comes to represent a hope for the renewal of traditional Southern
values in an uncorrupted and positive form. The novel ends with Dilsey as the torchbearer for
these values, and, as such, the only hope for the preservation of the Compson legacy. Faulkner
implies that the problem is not necessarily the values of the old South, but the fact that these
values were corrupted by families such as the Compsons and must be recaptured for any
Southern greatness to return.
Resurrection and Renewal
Three of the novel's four sections take place on or around Easter, 1928. Faulkner's placement of
the novel's climax on this weekend is significant, as the weekend is associated with Christ's
crucifixion on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday. A number of symbolic events in
the novel could be likened to the death of Christ: Quentin's death, Mr. Compson's death, Caddy's
loss of virginity, or the decline of the Compson family in general. Some critics have
characterized Benjy as a Christ figure, as Benjy was born on Holy Saturday and is currently
thirty-three, the same age as Christ at the crucifixion. Interpreting Benjy as a Christ figure has a
variety of possible implications. Benjy may represent the impotence of Christ in the modern
world and the need for a new Christ figure to emerge. Alternatively, Faulkner may be implying
that the modern world has failed to recognize Christ in its own midst.
Though the Easter weekend is associated with death, it also brings the hope of renewal and
resurrection. Though the Compson family has fallen, Dilsey represents a source of hope. Dilsey
is herself somewhat of a Christ figure. A literal parallel to the suffering servant of the Bible,
Dilsey has endured Christlike hardship throughout her long life of service to the disintegrating
Compson family. She has constantly tolerated Mrs. Compson's self-pity, Jason's cruelty, and
Benjy's frustrating incapacity. While the Compsons crumble around her, Dilsey emerges as the
only character who has successfully resurrected the values that the Compsons have long
abandoned—hard work, endurance, love of family, and religious faith.
The Failure of Language and Narrative
Faulkner himself admitted that he could never satisfactorily convey the story of The Sound and
the Fury through any single narrative voice. His decision to use four different narrators
highlights the subjectivity of each narrative and casts doubt on the ability of language to convey
truth or meaning absolutely. Benjy, Quentin, and Jason have vastly different views on the
Compson tragedy, but no single perspective seems more valid than the others. As each new angle
emerges, more details and questions arise. Even the final section, with its omniscient thirdperson narrator, does not tie up all of the novel's loose ends. In interviews, Faulkner lamented the
imperfection of the final version of the novel, which he termed his “most splendid failure.” Even
with four narrators providing the depth of four different perspectives, Faulkner believed that his
language and narrative still fell short.
Motifs
Time
Faulkner's treatment and representation of time in this novel was hailed as revolutionary.
Faulkner suggests that time is not a constant or objectively understandable entity, and that
humans can interact with it in a variety of ways. Benjy has no concept of time and cannot
distinguish between past and present. His disability enables him to draw connections between the
past and present that others might not see, and it allows him to escape the other Compsons'
obsessions with the past greatness of their name. Quentin, in contrast, is trapped by time, unable
and unwilling to move beyond his memories of the past. He attempts to escape time's grasp by
breaking his watch, but its ticking continues to haunt him afterward, and he sees no solution but
suicide. Unlike his brother Quentin, Jason has no use for the past. He focuses completely on the
present and the immediate future. To Jason, time exists only for personal gain and cannot be
wasted. Dilsey is perhaps the only character at peace with time. Unlike the Compsons, who try to
escape time or manipulate it to their advantage, Dilsey understands that her life is a small sliver
in the boundless range of time and history.
Order and Chaos
Each of the Compson brothers understands order and chaos in a different way. Benjy constructs
order around the pattern of familiar memories in his mind and becomes upset when he
experiences something that does not fit. Quentin relies on his idealized Southern code to provide
order. Jason orders everything in his world based on potential personal gain, attempting to twist
all circumstances to his own advantage. All three of these systems fail as the Compson family
plunges into chaos. Only Dilsey has a strong sense of order. She maintains her values, endures
the Compsons' tumultuous downfall, and is the only one left unbroken at the end.
Shadows
Seen primarily in Benjy's and Quentin's sections, shadows imply that the present state of the
Compson family is merely a shadow of its past greatness. Shadows serve as a subtle reminder of
the passage of time, as they slowly shift with the sun through the course of a day. Quentin is
particularly sensitive to shadows, a suggestion of his acute awareness that the Compson name is
merely a shadow of what it once was.
Symbols
Water
Water symbolizes cleansing and purity throughout the novel, especially in relation to Caddy.
Playing in the stream as a child, Caddy seems to epitomize purity and innocence. However, she
muddies her underclothes, which foreshadows Caddy's later promiscuity. Benjy gets upset when
he first smells Caddy wearing perfume. Still a virgin at this point, Caddy washes the perfume off,
symbolically washing away her sin. Likewise, she washes her mouth out with soap after Benjy
catches her on the swing with Charlie. Once Caddy loses her virginity, she knows that no amount
of water or washing can cleanse her.
Quentin's Watch
Quentin's watch is a gift from his father, who hopes that it will alleviate Quentin's feeling that he
must devote so much attention to watching time himself. Quentin is unable to escape his
preoccupation with time, with or without the watch. Because the watch once belonged to Mr.
Compson, it constantly reminds Quentin of the glorious heritage his family considers so
important. The watch's incessant ticking symbolizes the constant inexorable passage of time.
Quentin futilely attempts to escape time by breaking the watch, but it continues to tick even
without its hands, haunting him even after he leaves the watch behind in his room.
April Seventh, 1928
Key Facts
full title · The Sound and the Fury; author · William Faulkner; type of work · Novel
genre · Modernist novel; language · English; time and place written · 1928; Oxford,
Mississippi
date of first publication · 1929; publisher · Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith
narrator · The story is told in four chapters by four different narrators: Benjy, the youngest
Compson son; Quentin, the oldest son; Jason, the middle son; and Faulkner himself, acting as an
omniscient, third-person narrator who focuses on Dilsey, the Compsons' servant.
point of view · Benjy, Quentin, and Jason narrate in the first person, as participants. They
narrate in a stream of consciousness style, attentive to events going on around them in the
present, but frequently returning to memories from the past. The final section is narrated in thirdperson omniscient.
tone · The world outside the minds of the narrators slowly unravels through personal thoughts,
memories, and observations. The tone differs in each chapter, depending on the narrator.
tense · Present and past
setting (time) · Three of the chapters are set during Easter weekend, 1928, while Quentin's
section is set in June, 1910. However, the memories the narrators recall within these sections
cover the period from 1898 to 1928.
setting (place) · Jefferson, Mississippi, and Cambridge, Massachusetts (Harvard University)
protagonist · The four Compson children: Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, and Jason
major conflict · The aristocratic Compson family's long fall from grace and struggle to maintain
its distinguished legacy. This conflict is manifest in Caddy's promiscuity, her out-of-wedlock
pregnancy, her short marriage, and the ensuing setbacks and deaths that her family members
suffer.
rising action · Caddy's climbing of a tree with muddy drawers; Benjy's name change; Caddy's
pregnancy and wedding; Quentin's suicide; Benjy's castration; Mr. Compson's death from
alcoholism
climax · Miss Quentin's theft of Jason's money, and her elopement with the man with the red tie
falling action · Dilsey's taking Benjy to Easter Sunday service and Benjy's trip to the cemetery
foreshadowing · Caddy's muddy drawers when she climbs the pear tree foretell an inevitable
dirtying of the Compson name that will never wash away.
Suggestions for Further Reading
1. Bleikasten, Andre. The Most Splendid Failure: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1976.
2. Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: William Faulkner's The Sound and
the Fury. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
3. Cowan, Michael H., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice, 1968.
4. Irwin, John T. Doubling and Incest / Repetition and Revenge: A Speculative Reading of
Faulkner. Expanded edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
5. Kinney, Arthur F. Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Compson Family. Boston:
G.K. Hall, 1982.
6. Minter, David. “Faulkner, Childhood, and the Making of The Sound and the
Fury.”American Literature 51 (1979): 376–93.
7. Polk, Noel, ed. The American Novel: New Essays on The Sound and the Fury.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
8. Weinstein, Philip, ed. William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: A Critical Casebook. New York:
Garland, 1982.
“This Side of Paradise” – Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
Context
This Side of Paradise is a work of a young author, and possesses some fundamental
flaws, both structural and thematic. But it is a truly important work, both in the life of its author,
and for the course of twentieth century American history and fiction. The novel contains a
number of autobiographical elements and made an enormous impact on the later life of its
author--who may never have written anything else if not for its success. The book was successful
not only because of Fitzgerald's lyrical and graceful writing, but more importantly as a telling
portrait of a new era in American history.
Fitzgerald was born Francis Scott Key in 1897 (named for the Star Spangled Banner
lyricist to whom he was distantly related), and attended an Eastern boarding school, where he did
not excel in athletics or academics, but did exhibit an early penchant for writing and producing
plays. He was admitted to Princeton University, where he maintained his academic mediocrity
but indulged and expanded his love of literature through his friendships and his prominent role in
the Triangle Club, a Princeton theater group. Without earning his degree, Fitzgerald enlisted in
the army in 1917 and, afraid that he would die in the war, rapidly dashed off a novel entitled
"The Romantic Egotist" which was praised, but rejected, by publishers.
Fitzgerald was stationed in Alabama, where he met the wild Southern belle Zelda Sayre,
with whom he instantly fell in love. He revised and submitted The Romantic Egotist again, but
again met with rejection. The war ended without Scott having to go overseas. His romance
continued, but Zelda refused to marry into poverty, insisting that Scott display an ability to earn
money first. After a failed career in advertising in New York, Zelda broke off the engagement,
and Fitzgerald returned to Minnesota to complete the novel. Adding to and revising The
Romantic Egotist, Fitzgerald completed This Side of Paradise. Upon its acceptance by a
publisher in 1919, Zelda agreed to marry him.
This novel achieved enormous success and established Fitzgerald as the chronicler of the new
post-war youth of America--of flappers, alcohol, and the Jazz Age. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald,
barely funded by the sale of Fitzgerald's critically though not commercially successful stories
and novels, enjoyed an extravagant and often Bacchic lifestyle in the post World War I
American boom era of the 1920's. They spent a great deal of time in Europe among an elite class
of artists, royalty, and wealthy American expatriates. In the late 1920's, the Fitzgeralds spent
time on the Southern coast of France, known as the Riviera. Their hosts were Gerald and Sara
Murphy, who were central among a social set that included such notables as Picasso.
In this world in 1925, Scott finished what is widely considered his masterpiece, The
Great Gatsby. But at this time, the Fitzgeralds' decadent lifestyle took a toll on them, both
financially and emotionally. Zelda's sanity suffered, and she was forced to seek expert and
expensive psychological treatments in Switzerland. Fitzgerald was forced to abandon novel
writing to pay the medical bills. Zelda's battle with mental illness is depicted in Tender Is the
Night, Fitzgerald's last complete novel, in the character of Nicole Diver. While the heroine of the
novel recovers, Zelda sadly did not, remaining in institutions the rest of her days. Fitzgerald
moved around a lot, spending some time working as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. He died in
1940 with all of his novels out of print, thinking himself a failure.
A great deal of the material Fitzgerald employed to write This Side of Paradise came
from his own experiences up to that time. The main character, Amory Blaine, is, in many ways, a
thinly veiled Fitzgerald. This semi-autobiographical literary technique is one that Fitzgerald
employed often throughout his career, and for which he often met strong criticism. However, in
the particular case of This Side of Paradise, the most commercially successful of the author's
novels, the technique met with popular acclaim. Fitzgerald managed to capture a period of
American history and a portrait of the new youth culture (which involved drinking and casual
kissing) in a way that few, if any, authors at the time were able. Though in many ways a product
and an embodiment of his times, Fitzgerald was able to see through the glamour of the lifestyle
to make incisive commentaries on its moral vacuity.
Summary
This novel chronicles the life of Amory Blaine from his childhood up through his early twenties.
Born the son of a wealthy and sophisticated woman, Beatrice, Amory travels the country with his
mother until he attends the fictitious St. Regis prep school in New England. He is handsome,
quite intelligent though lazy in his schoolwork, and he earns admission to Princeton. Though
initially concerned with being a success on campus, after failing a class he gives himself over to
idleness; he prefers to learn through reading and discussions with friends than through his
classes. Toward the end of his college career, America enters World War I and Amory dutifully
enlists, forgoing his degree. During his time overseas, Beatrice passes away. Upon his return to
America, Amory meets the young debutante Rosalind Connage, the sister of his college friend
Alec. The two fall deeply in love, but because of his family's poor investments, Amory has little
money, and Rosalind does not wish to marry into poverty. Despite Amory's best efforts to earn
money at an advertising agency, Rosalind breaks off their engagement in order to marry a
wealthier man, devastating Amory. He goes on a three week drinking binge, which is finally
terminated by the advent of the Prohibition. Amory's quest for self-knowledge begins to be
realized. He has a short summer romance with the wild Eleanor. Soon after, Alec is caught with
a girl in his hotel room, and Amory takes the blame. Amory then discovers that his last close tie,
the dear friend of his mother and his father figure, Monsignor Darcy, has passed away. Further,
the family finances have left him almost no money. He decides to walk to Princeton and is
picked up along the way by the wealthy father of a friend who died in the war. Amory expounds
his new socialist principles and then continues to walk to Princeton. He arrives late at night,
pining for Rosalind. Amory reaches his hands to the sky and says "I know myself, but that is all"
Characters
Amory Blaine - The protagonist whose development the novel chronicles. Amory grows up with
his sophisticated mother, Beatrice, until he leaves for boarding school. He then attends Princeton
University and falls in love with several women, of whom Rosalind has the most traumatic
impact (she breaks his heart by leaving him to marry a wealthier man). Amory is extraordinarily
handsome and somewhat egocentric. He enjoys idling with friends, has literary ambitions, and
ultimately achieves some portion of self-knowledge, though at the cost of losing his money and
his dearest friends.
Rosalind Connage - The debutante younger sister of Alec Connage, with whom Amory has a
brief but intense love affair. Rosalind breaks Amory's heart when she opts to marry the wealthy
Dawson Ryder instead of Amory.
Beatrice Blaine - The social, sophisticated mother of Amory who was educated in France.
Beatrice dies while Amory is away at war.
Monsignor Darcy - A man who once loved Beatrice; the end of their love affair motivated him
to join the clergy. Darcy became a well respected clergyman and somewhat like a foster father to
Amory, with whom he maintains an intense friendship and feels a strong kinship.
Dawson Ryder - Wealthy, handsome, and from an old-money family. A few years after
Rosalind leaves Amory because he is too poor, she marries Dawson.
Thomas Park D'Invilliers - The intellectual friend of Amory who gets conventionalized by the
Princeton social scene. Amory lives with him for a while in New York.
Dick Humbird - A friend of Amory's at Princeton. Despite the fact that Dick's wealth come
from new money, Amory finds in him all the ideal qualities of his generation. Dick dies in an
auto accident when returning from a party in New York.
Burne Holiday - The younger brother of Kerry and a good friend of Amory's at Princeton. This
serious young man stages a protest of the elite social clubs at Princeton and then becomes a
pacifist, refusing to fight in the war. His rejection of convention inspires Amory to look beyond
the established social scene for self-understanding.
Kerry Holiday - The older brother of Burne, with whom Amory maintains a rambunctious
friendship at Princeton. Kerry leaves school to enlist as a pilot in the chivalrous Lafayette
Espadrille in France. He is killed in the war.
Alec Connage - The older brother of Rosalind, and a dear friend of Amory's. Amory takes the
blame for Alec's immoral crime (being caught with a woman in his hotel room, unmarried).
Jesse Ferrenby - A friend of Amory's at Princeton who is killed in the war. Amory propounds
his new socialist ideals in a dialogue with Jesse's father, Mr. Ferrenby, in one of the last scenes
of the novel.
Mr. Ferrenby - The father of Jesse, who picks up Amory on the side of the road and to whom
Amory propounds his new socialist ideals in one of the last scenes of the novel
Isabelle Borges - The young debutante with whom Amory first falls in love. They share an
innocent first affair until a minor argument reveals to them that they actually do not like one
another. Isabelle derides Amory's egotism.
Clara Page - The widowed third cousin of Darcy, whom Amory visits often in Philadelphia.
Amory loves her, but Clara claims that she has never been in love and has no intention of
remarrying.
Eleanor Ramilly - A young, wild girl, educated in France, whom Amory meets on a rainy
haystack in Maryland. The two have an intense summer romance, sharing a love of literature.
They can almost read each others' thoughts, but Amory feels like he is incapable of love at this
point. The romance ends when Eleanor sends her horse charging toward a cliff, but throws
herself off the horse just before it plummets to its death.
Further Reading
1. Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. A Life in Letters: F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1994.
2. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender Is the Night. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1933.
3. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1920.
4. Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1949.
5. Turnbull, Andrew, ed. The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1963.
Study Questions
1. If you were asked to edit This Side of Paradise, would you punctuate the ending sentence
with a period or a dash? Answer this question without referring to previously published
editions and commentaries.
2. Fitzgerald described his book as a "quest novel." Do you believe that his assessment was
accurate? If so, what is the object of the quest?
3. Explain the significance of Dick Humbird and his death in relation to Amory's
development.
4. If Amory had met Eleanor before he met Rosalind, would he have fallen for her as
completely as he did for Rosalind?
5. Did Amory ruin Tom's literary career by exposing him to the social world of Princeton?
6. Fitzgerald got the name for this novel from the line of Rupert Brooke's poetry that is
quoted in the epigraph. Why did Fitzgerald choose This Side of Paradise for the title?
7. When does Amory experience his greatest change at Princeton?
8. In a short creative essay, formulate what could be the next chapter in this novel if it
continued. Bear in mind questions like: What will happen to Amory? Will he ever marry?
What profession, if any, will he choose? What about Tom? Rosalind and her marriage?
Alec after the sacrifice episode?
9. Who is the strongest female character in this book and why? Bear in mind that the
strongest female may not have to have had the most important role. Cases can be made
for Beatrice, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor and others.
10. Does Amory abandon Beatrice or vice versa? Or is their parting simply part of Amory's
maturing process?
11. Does Rosalind truly love Amory? If not, why does she pretend she does? If she does love
him, why does she break off their engagement?
“A Farewell to Arms” – Ernest Hemingway
Context
Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in the summer of 1899. He later portrayed his
middle-class parents rather harshly, condemning them for their conventional morality and values.
As a young man, he left home to become a newspaper writer in Kansas City. Early in 1918, he
joined the Italian Red Cross and served as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, in
which the Italians allied with the British, French, and Americans against Germany and AustriaHungary. During his time abroad, Hemingway had two experiences that affected him profoundly
and that would later inspire one of his most celebrated novels, A Farewell to Arms. The first
occurred on July 8, 1918, when a trench mortar shell struck him while he crouched beyond the
front lines with three Italian soldiers. Though he embellished the story over the years, it is certain
that he was transferred to a hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with a Red Cross nurse
named Agnes von Kurowsky. Scholars are divided over Agnes's role in Hemingway's life and
writing, but there is little doubt that his relationship with her informed the relationship between
Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms. After his recovery, he spent
several years as a reporter, during which time he honed the clear, concise, and emotionally
evocative writing style that generations of authors after him would imitate. In September 1921,
he married his first of four wives and settled in Paris, where he made valuable connections with
American expatriate writers like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. Hemingway's landmark
collection of stories, In Our Time, introduced Nick Adams, one of the author's favorite
protagonists, whose difficult road from youth into maturity he chronicled. Hemingway's
reputation as a writer, however, was most firmly established by the publication of The Sun Also
Rises in 1926 and A Farewell to Arms in 1929. Critics generally agree that A Farewell to Arms
is Hemingway's most accomplished novel. It offers powerful descriptions of life during and
immediately following World War I and brilliantly maps the psychological complexities of its
characters using a revolutionary, pared-down prose style. Furthermore, the novel, like much of
Hemingway's writing during what were to be his golden years, helped to establish the author's
myth of himself as a master of many trades: writing, soldiering, boxing, bullfighting, big-game
hunting. He was skilled, to a greater or lesser extent, in each of these arts, but most critics
maintain that his writing fizzled after World War II, when his physical and mental health
declined. Despite fantastic bouts of depression, Hemingway did muster enough energy to write
The Old Man and the Sea, one of his most beloved stories, in 1952. This novella earned him a
Pulitzer Prize, and three years later Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Still,
not even these accolades could soothe the devastating effects of a lifetime of debilitating
depression. On July 2, 1961, Hemingway killed himself in his home in Ketchum, Idaho.
Plot Overview
Lieutenant Frederic Henry is a young American ambulance driver serving in the Italian
army during World War I. At the beginning of the novel, the war is winding down with the onset
of winter, and Henry arranges to tour Italy. The following spring, upon his return to the front,
Henry meets Catherine Barkley, an English nurse's aide at the nearby British hospital and the
love interest of his friend Rinaldi. Rinaldi, however, quickly fades from the picture as Catherine
and Henry become involved in an elaborate game of seduction. Grieving the recent death of her
fiancé, Catherine longs for love so deeply that she will settle for the illusion of it. Her passion,
even though pretended, wakens a desire for emotional interaction in Henry, whom the war has
left coolly detached and numb. When Henry is wounded on the battlefield, he is brought to a
hospital in Milan to recover. Several doctors recommend that he stay in bed for six months and
then undergo a necessary operation on his knee. Unable to accept such a long period of recovery,
Henry finds a bold, garrulous surgeon named Dr. Valentini who agrees to operate immediately.
Henry learns happily that Catherine has been transferred to Milan and begins his recuperation
under her care. During the following months, his relationship with Catherine intensifies. No
longer simply a game in which they exchange empty promises and playful kisses, their love
becomes powerful and real. As the lines between scripted and genuine emotions begin to blur,
Henry and Catherine become tangled in their love for each other.
Once Henry's damaged leg has healed, the army grants him three weeks convalescence
leave, after which he is scheduled to return to the front. He tries to plan a trip with Catherine,
who reveals to him that she is pregnant. The following day, Henry is diagnosed with jaundice,
and Miss Van Campen, the superintendent of the hospital, accuses him of bringing the disease on
himself through excessive drinking. Believing Henry's illness to be an attempt to avoid his duty
as a serviceman, Miss Van Campen has Henry's leave revoked, and he is sent to the front once
the jaundice has cleared. As they part, Catherine and Henry pledge their mutual devotion.
Henry travels to the front, where Italian forces are losing ground and manpower daily.
Soon after Henry's arrival, a bombardment begins. When word comes that German troops are
breaking through the Italian lines, the Allied forces prepare to retreat. Henry leads his team of
ambulance drivers into the great column of evacuating troops. The men pick up two engineering
sergeants and two frightened young girls on their way. Henry and his drivers then decide to leave
the column and take secondary roads, which they assume will be faster. When one of their
vehicles bogs down in the mud, Henry orders the two engineers to help in the effort to free the
vehicle. When they refuse, he shoots one of them. The drivers continue in the other trucks until
they get stuck again. They send off the young girls and continue on foot toward Udine. As they
march, one of the drivers is shot dead by the easily frightened rear guard of the Italian army.
Another driver marches off to surrender himself, while Henry and the remaining driver seek
refuge at a farmhouse. When they rejoin the retreat the following day, chaos has broken out:
soldiers, angered by the Italian defeat, pull commanding officers from the melee and execute
them on sight. The battle police seize Henry, who, at a crucial moment, breaks away and dives
into the river. After swimming a safe distance downstream, Henry boards a train bound for
Milan. He hides beneath a tarp that covers stockpiled artillery, thinking that his obligations to the
war effort are over and dreaming of his return to Catherine. Henry reunites with Catherine in the
town of Stresa. From there, the two escape to safety in Switzerland, rowing all night in a tiny
borrowed boat. They settle happily in a lovely alpine town called Montreux and agree to put the
war behind them forever. Although Henry is sometimes plagued by guilt for abandoning the men
on the front, the two succeed in living a beautiful, peaceful life. When spring arrives, the couple
moves to Lausanne so that they can be closer to the hospital. Early one morning, Catherine goes
into labor. The delivery is exceptionally painful and complicated. Catherine delivers a stillborn
baby boy and, later that night, dies of a hemorrhage. Henry stays at her side until she is gone. He
attempts to say goodbye but cannot. He walks back to his hotel in the rain.
Character List
Lieutenant Frederic Henry - The novel's narrator and protagonist. A young American
ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I, Henry meets his military duties with
quiet stoicism. He displays courage in battle, but his selfish motivations undermine all sense of
glory and heroism, abstract terms for which Henry has little patience. His life lacks real passion
until he meets the beautiful Catherine Barkley.
Catherine Barkley - An English nurse's aide who falls in love with Henry. Catherine is
exceptionally beautiful and possesses, perhaps, the most sensuously described hair in all of
literature. When the novel opens, Catherine's grief for her dead fiancé launches her headlong into
a playful, though reckless, game of seduction. Her feelings for Henry soon intensify and become
more complicated, however, and she eventually swears lifelong fidelity to him.
Rinaldi - A surgeon in the Italian army. Mischievous, wry, and oversexed, Rinaldi is Henry's
closest friend. Although Rinaldi is a skilled doctor, his primary practice is seducing beautiful
women. When Henry returns to Gorizia, Rinaldi tries to whip up a convivial atmosphere.
The priest - A kind, sweet, young man who provides spiritual guidance to the few soldiers
interested in it. Often the butt of the officers' jokes, the priest responds with good-natured
understanding. Through Henry's conversations with him regarding the war, the novel challenges
abstract ideals like glory, honor, and sacredness.
Helen Ferguson - A nurse's aide who works at the American hospital and a dear friend of
Catherine. Though Helen is friendly and accepting of Henry and Rinaldi's visits to Catherine
early in the novel, her hysterical outburst over Henry and Catherine's “immoral” affair
establishes her as an unhappy woman who is paranoid about her friend's safety and anxious
about her own loneliness.
Miss Gage - An American nurse who helps Henry through his recovery at the hospital in Milan.
At ease and accepting, Miss Gage becomes a friend to Henry, someone with whom he can share
a drink and gossip.
Miss Van Campen - The superintendent of nurses at the American hospital in which Catherine
works. Miss Van Campen is strict, cold, and unpleasant. She disapproves of Henry and remains
on cool terms with him throughout his stay.
Dr.Valentini - An Italian surgeon who comes to the American hospital to contradict the
hospital's opinion that Henry must wait six months before having an operation on his leg. In
agreeing to perform surgery the next morning, Dr. Valentini displays the kind of self-assurance
and confidence that Henry (and the novel) celebrates.
Count Greffi - A spry, ninety-four-year-old nobleman. The count represents a more mature
version of Henry's character and Hemingway's masculine ideal. He lives life to the fullest and
thinks for himself. Though the count dismisses the label “wise,” Henry clearly values his
thoughts and sees him as a sort of father figure.
Ettore Moretti - An American soldier from San Francisco. Ettore, like Henry, fights for the
Italian army. Unlike Henry, however, Ettore is an obnoxious braggart. Quick to instigate a fight
or display the medals that he claims to have worked so hard to win, he believes in and pursues
the glory and honor that Henry eschews.
Gino - A young Italian whom Henry meets at a decimated village. Gino's patriotic belief that his
fatherland is sacred and should be protected at all costs contrasts sharply to Henry's attitude
toward war.
Ralph Simmons - An opera student of dubious talent. Simmons is the first person that Henry
goes to see after fleeing from battle. Simmons proves to be a generous friend, giving Henry
civilian clothes so that he can travel to Switzerland without drawing suspicion.
Emilio - A bartender in the town of Stresa. Emilio proves a good friend to Henry and Catherine,
helping them reunite, saving them from arrest, and ushering them off to safety.
Bonello - An ambulance driver under Henry's command. Bonello displays his ruthlessness when
he brutally unloads a pistol round into the head of an uncooperative engineer whom Henry has
already shot.
Analysis of Major Characters
Frederic Henry – In the sections of the novel in which he describes his experience in the war,
Henry portrays himself as a man of duty. He attaches to this understanding of himself no sense
of honor, nor does he expect any praise for his service. Even after he has been severely wounded,
he discourages Rinaldi from pursuing medals of distinction for him. Time and again, through
conversations with men like the priest, Ettore Moretti, and Gino, Henry distances himself from
such abstract notions as faith, honor, and patriotism. Concepts such as these mean nothing to him
beside such concrete facts of war as the names of the cities in which he has fought and the
numbers of decimated streets. Against this bleak backdrop, Henry's reaction to Catherine
Barkley is rather astonishing. The reader understands why Henry responds to the game that
Catherine proposes—why he pledges his love to a woman he barely knows: like Rinaldi, he
hopes for a night's simple pleasures. But an active sex drive does not explain why Henry returns
to Catherine—why he continues to swear his love even after Catherine insists that he stop
playing. In his fondness for Catherine, Henry reveals a vulnerability usually hidden by his
stoicism and masculinity. The quality of the language that Henry uses to describe Catherine's
hair and her presence in bed testifies to the genuine depth of his feelings for her. Furthermore,
because he allows Henry to narrate the book, Hemingway is able to suffuse the entire novel with
the power and pathos of an elegy: A Farewell to Arms, which Henry narrates after Catherine's
death, confirms his love and his loss.
Catherine Barkley
Much has been written regarding Hemingway's portrayal of female characters. With the advent
of feminist criticism, readers have become more vocal about their dissatisfaction with
Hemingway's depictions of women, which, according to critics such as Leslie A. Fiedler, tend to
fall into one of two categories: overly dominant shrews, like Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises,
and overly submissive confections, like Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway,
Fiedler maintains, was at his best dealing with men without women; when he started to involve
female characters in his writing, he reverted to uncomplicated stereotypes. A Farewell to Arms
certainly supports such a reading: it is easy to see how Catherine's blissful submission to
domesticity, especially at the novel's end, might rankle contemporary readers for whom lines
such as “I'm having a child and that makes me contented not to do anything” suggest a bygone
era in which a woman's work centered around maintaining a home and filling it with children.
Still, even though Catherine's excessive desire to live a lovely life may, at times, make her more
archetypal than real, it is unfair to deny her the nuances of her character. Although Catherine
alludes to her initial days with Henry as a period when she was slightly “crazy,” she seems
perfectly aware of the fact that she and Henry are, at first, playing an elaborate game of
seduction. Rather than being swept off her feet by Henry's declarations of love, she capably
draws the line, telling him when she has had enough for the night or reminding him that their
budding love is a lie. In fact, Catherine's resistance holds out much longer than Henry's: even
after Henry emphatically states that he loves her and that their lives together will be splendid,
Catherine exhibits the occasional doubt, telling him that she is sure that dreadful things await
them and claiming that she fears having a baby because she has never loved anyone. Privy only
to what Catherine says, not to what she thinks, the reader is left to explain these infrequent lapses
in her otherwise uncompromised devotion. Her premonition of dreadful things, for instance, may
simply be a general alarm about the war-torn world or residual guilt for loving a man other than
the fiancé whom she is mourning as the book opens. While the degree to which Catherine is
conflicted remains open to debate, her loyalty to Henry does not. She is a loving, dedicated
woman whose desire and capacity for a redemptive, otherworldly love makes her the inevitable
victim of tragedy.
Rinaldi's character serves an important function in A Farewell to Arms. He dominates an array
of minor male characters who embody the kind of virile, competent, and good-natured
masculinity that, for better or worse, so much of Hemingway's fiction celebrates. Rinaldi is an
unbelievable womanizer, professing to be in love with Catherine at the beginning of the novel
but claiming soon thereafter to be relieved that he is not, like Henry, saddled with the
complicated emotional baggage that the love of a woman entails. Considering Rinaldi's frequent
visits to the local whorehouses, Henry later muses that his friend has most likely succumbed to
syphilis. While this registers as an unpleasant end, it is presented with an air of detached
likelihood rather than fervent moralizing. It is, in other words, not punishment for a man's bad
behavior but rather the consequence of a man behaving as a man—living large, living boldly,
and being true to himself.
Themes
The Grim Reality of War
As the title of the novel makes clear, A Farewell to Arms concerns itself primarily with war,
namely the process by which Frederic Henry removes himself from it and leaves it behind. The
few characters in the novel who actually support the effort – Ettore Moretti and Gino – come
across as a dull braggart and a naïve youth, respectively. The majority of the characters remain
ambivalent about the war, resentful of the terrible destruction it causes, doubtful of the glory it
supposedly brings. The novel offers masterful descriptions of the conflict's senseless brutality
and violent chaos: the scene of the Italian army's retreat remains one of the most profound
evocations of war in American literature. As the neat columns of men begin to crumble, so too
do the soldiers' nerves, minds, and capacity for rational thought and moral judgment. Henry's
shooting of the engineer for refusing to help free the car from the mud shocks the reader for two
reasons: first, the violent outburst seems at odds with Henry's coolly detached character; second,
the incident occurs in a setting that robs it of its moral import– the complicity of Henry's fellow
soldiers legitimizes the killing. The murder of the engineer seems justifiable because it is an
inevitable by-product of the spiraling violence and disorder of the war. Nevertheless, the novel
cannot be said to condemn the war; A Farewell to Arms is hardly the work of a pacifist. Instead,
just as the innocent engineer's death is an inevitability of war, so is war the inevitable outcome of
a cruel, senseless world. Hemingway suggests that war is nothing more than the dark, murderous
extension of a world that refuses to acknowledge, protect, or preserve true love.
The Relationship between Love and Pain
Against the backdrop of war, Hemingway offers a deep, mournful meditation on the nature of
love. No sooner does Catherine announce to Henry that she is in mourning for her dead fiancé
than she begins a game meant to seduce Henry. Her reasons for doing so are clear: she wants to
distance herself from the pain of her loss. Likewise, Henry intends to get as far away from talk of
the war as possible. In each other, Henry and Catherine find temporary solace from the things
that plague them. The couple's feelings for each other quickly pass from an amusement that
distracts them to the very fuel that sustains them. Henry's understanding of how meaningful his
love for Catherine is outweighs any consideration for the emptiness of abstract ideals such as
honor, enabling him to flee the war and seek her out. Reunited, they plan an idyllic life together
that promises to act as a salve for the damage that the war has inflicted. Far away from the
decimated Italian countryside, each intends to be the other's refuge. If they are to achieve
physical, emotional, and psychological healing, they have found the perfect place in the safe
remove of the Swiss mountains. The tragedy of the novel rests in the fact that their love, even
when genuine, can never be more than temporary in this world.
Motifs
Masculinity
Readers of Hemingway's fiction will quickly notice a consistent thread in the portrayal and
celebration of a certain kind of man: domineering, supremely competent, and swaggeringly
virile. A Farewell to Arms holds up several of its minor male characters as examples of fine
manhood. Rinaldi is a faithful friend and an oversexed womanizer; Dr. Valentini exhibits a
virility to rival Rinaldi's as well as a bold competence that makes him the best surgeon.
Similarly, during the scene in which Henry fires his pistol at the fleeing engineering sergeants,
Bonello takes charge of the situation by brutally shooting the fallen engineer in the head. The
respect with which Hemingway sketches these men, even at their lowest points, is highlighted by
the humor, if not contempt, with which he depicts their opposites. The success of each of these
men depends, in part, on the failure of another: Rinaldi secures his sexual prowess by attacking
the priest's lack of lust; Dr. Valentini's reputation as a surgeon is thrown into relief by the three
mousy, overly cautious, and physically unimpressive doctors who precede him; and Bonello's
ruthlessness is prompted by the disloyal behavior of the soldier whom he kills.
Games and Divertissement
Henry and Catherine begin flirting with each other in order to forget personal troubles. Flirting,
which Henry compares to bridge, allows Henry to “drop the war” and diverts Catherine's
thoughts from the death of her fiancé. Likewise, the horse races that Catherine and Henry attend
enable them to block out thinking of Henry's return to the front and of their imminent separation.
Ironically, Henry and Catherine's relationship becomes the source of suffering from which Henry
needs diversion. Henry cannot stand to be away from Catherine, and while playing pool with
Count Greffi takes his mind off of her, the best divertissement turns out to be the war itself.
When Catherine instructs him not to think about her when they are apart, Henry replies, “That's
how I worked it at the front. But there was something to do then.” The transformations of the
war from fatal threat into divertissement and love from distraction into pain signal not only
Henry's attachment to Catherine but also the transitory nature of happiness. Pathos radiates from
this fleeting happiness because, even though happiness is temporary, the pursuit of it remains
necessary. Perhaps an understanding of the limits of happiness explains the count's comment that
though he values love most in life, he is not wise for doing so. The count is wiser than he claims,
however. He hedges against the transitory nature of love by finding pleasure and amusement in
games, birthday parties, and the taking of “a little stimulant.” That one can depend on their
simple pleasures lends games and divertissement a certain dignity; while they may not match up
to the nobility of pursuits such as love, they prove quietly constant.
Loyalty versus Abandonment
The notions of loyalty and abandonment apply equally well to love and war. The novel,
however, suggests that loyalty is more a requirement of love and friendship than of the grand
political causes and abstract philosophies of battling nations. While Henry takes seriously his
duty as a lieutenant, he does not subscribe to the ideals that one typically imagines fuel soldiers
in combat. Unlike Ettore Moretti or Gino, the promise of honor and the duties of patriotism mean
little to Henry. Although he shoots an uncooperative engineering sergeant for failing to comply
with his orders, Henry's violence should be read as an inevitable outcome of a destructive war
rather than as a conscious decision to enforce a code of moral conduct. Indeed, Henry eventually
follows in the engineering sergeants' footsteps by abandoning the army and his responsibilities.
While he does, at times, feel guilt over this course of action, he takes comfort in the knowledge
that he is most loyal where loyalty counts most: in his relationship with Catherine. That these
conflicting allegiances cannot be reconciled does not suggest, however, that loyalty and
abandonment lie at opposite ends of a moral spectrum. Rather, they reflect the priorities of a
specific individual's life.
Illusions and Fantasies
Upon meeting, Catherine and Henry rely upon a grand illusion of love and seduction for comfort.
Catherine seeks solace for the death of her fiancé, while Henry will do anything to distance
himself from the war. At first, their declarations of love are transparent: Catherine reminds
Henry several times that their courtship is a game, sending him away when she has played her
fill. After he is wounded, however, his desire for Catherine and the comfort and support that she
offers becomes more than a distraction from the world's unpleasantness; his love begins to
sustain him and blossoms into something undeniably real. Her feelings for Henry follow a
similar course. While the couple acts in ways that confirm the genuine nature of their passion,
however, they never escape the temptation of dreaming of a better world. In other words, the
boundary between reality and illusion proves difficult to identify. After they have spent months
of isolation in Switzerland, Hemingway depicts their relationship as a mixture of reality and
illusion. Boredom has begun to set in, and the couple effects small daily changes to reinvigorate
their lives and their passion: Catherine gets a new haircut, while Henry grows a beard. Still, or
perhaps because of, the comparative dullness of real life (not to mention the ongoing war), the
couple turns to fantasies of a more perfect existence. They dream of life on a Swiss mountain,
where they will make their own clothes and need nothing but each other, suggesting that
fantasizing is part of coping with the banal, sometimes damaging effects of reality.
Symbols
Rain serves in the novel as a potent symbol of the inevitable disintegration of happiness in life.
Catherine infuses the weather with meaning as she and Henry lie in bed listening to the storm
outside. As the rain falls on the roof, she admits that the rain scares her and says that it has a
tendency to ruin things for lovers. Of course, no meteorological phenomenon has such power;
symbolically, however, her fear proves to be prophetic, for doom does eventually come to the
lovers. After Catherine's death, Henry leaves the hospital and walks home in the rain. Here, the
falling rain validates Catherine's anxiety and confirms one of the novel's main contentions: great
love, like anything else in the world – good or bad, innocent or deserving – can’t last.
Catherine's Hair
Although it is not a recurring symbol, Catherine's hair is an important one. In the early, easy days
of their relationship, as Henry and Catherine lie in bed, Catherine takes down her hair and lets it
cascade around Henry's head. The tumble of hair reminds Henry of being enclosed inside a tent
or behind a waterfall. This lovely description stands as a symbol of the couple's isolation from
the world. With a war raging around them, they manage to secure a blissful seclusion, believing
themselves protected by something as delicate as hair. Later, however, when they are truly
isolated from the ravages of war and living in peaceful Switzerland, they learn the harsh lesson
that love, in the face of life's cruel reality, is as fragile and ephemeral as hair.
Key Facts
full title · A Farewell to Arms; author · Ernest Hemingway; type of work · Novel
genre · Literary war novel; language · English; time/place written · 1926-28; America, abroad
date of first publication · 1929; publisher · Charles Scribner's Sons
narrator · Lieutenant Frederic Henry
point of view · Henry narrates the story in the first person but sometimes switches to the second
person during his more philosophical reflections. Henry relates only what he sees and does and
only what he could have learned of other characters from his experiences with them.
tone · As the autobiographical nature of the work suggests, Hemingway's apparent attitude
toward the story is identical to that of the narrator.
tense · Past
setting (time) · 1916-18, in the middle of World War I; setting (place) · Italy and Switzerland
protagonist · Frederic Henry
major conflict · While there is no single, clear-cut conflict, friction does arise when Henry's love
for Catherine cannot quell his innate restlessness.
rising action · Henry and Catherine's flirtatious games prepare and sometimes foreshadow their
love for each other; their last days together before Henry's return to the front zero in on the
demands of love versus Henry's life outside his relationship with Catherine.
climax · Broadly speaking, the Italian retreat, but more specifically, Henry's capture and nearexecution by the battle police
falling action · Henry's decision to flee and quit the army marks his farewell to arms and his
commitment to Catherine.
foreshadowing · Catherine's conviction that dreadful things are going to occur; the rainfall that
scares her in the night; the doctor's warning that Catherine's hips are narrow; Henry's musing on
how life kills the good, the gentle, and the brave
Suggestions for Further Reading
1. Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. New York: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1987.
2. Donaldson, Scott, ed. New Essays on A Farewell to Arms. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
3. Gellens, Jay, ed. Twentieth-Century Interpretations of A Farewell to Arms: A Collection
of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970.
4. Lewis, Robert W. A Farewell to Arms: The War of the Words. New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1992.
5. Monteiro, George, ed. Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. New
York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1994.
6. Reynolds, Michael S. Ernest Hemingway. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000.
7. Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Ernest Hemingway: Seven Decades of Criticism. East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998.
“The Black Prince” – Iris Murdoch
Context
Iris Murdoch was born on July 15, 1919 in Dublin, Ireland to Anglo-Irish parents. Her
familiy moved to London when she was one year old. She was an only child, a status that she
enjoyed. Her mother was an opera singer and her father was a civil servant. After winning a
scholarship to Oxford College, she studied philosophy and classics, including Greek and Latin.
She graduated in 1938, just before World War II, and was drafted into the civil service as a
Treasury worker. After the war, she continued working for the government as an administrative
officer with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Belgium and Austria.
While on the European continent, she came in contact with both Jean-Paul Sartre, the
existentialist philosopher, and Raymond Queneau, the French novelist. This period of her life
reawakened her love for philosophy. She applied for a visa to study in the United States, but was
denied since she had recently registered as a communist. Soon after, she returned to Oxford for
an advanced philosophy degree and studied with Ludwig Wittgenstein. After receiving her
degree, she took a teaching post at Oxford, which she maintained until she was nearly sixty years
old. She was an amazingly prolific writer, producing in her lifetime twenty- six novels, eight
books of philosophy, and eight plays. Her writing career began in 1952 with Sartre: Romantic
Rationalist, a critical assessment of his writings. She published four novels in the 1950s, starting
in 1954. Between 1961 and 1971, she published ten novels and one book of philosophy, more
than one per year. When asked by an interviewer how much time she took off between novels,
she responded "half an hour." In another interview, she noted that she writes fiction in the
morning and philosophy in the afternoon, while still maintaining her teaching post. Murdoch's
means of writing her novels also were noteworthy since she hated typewriters and usually just
wrote two or three drafts of the novel in longhand before delivering it to the publisher in a brown
paper bag. Once she finished her book, she would not let anyone edit so much as a word, another
rare privilege for an author. Many of Murdoch's novels met with mixed criticism, especially
those published rapidly in the sixties. Critics cited the insubstantial nature of her characters, the
occasionally pretentious presentation of philosophy, and poorly written narrative that needed
editing. Frank Kermode stated in the early 1970s that each of her books contains "somewhere
inside, the ghost of a major novel." With the arrival of The Black Prince in 1973, many believed
that that novel had come. The Black Prince is widely considered the best of Murdoch's novels. It
won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in its year of publication. It was, like almost all of her
novels, a resounding popular success.
Iris Murdoch admired the great nineteenth-century English and Russian novels written by
Tolstoy, Doestovesky, James, Dickens, and Eliot. With her books, she longed to replicate the
complex characterization and detailed scenery of those authors. In comparison, she believed 20th
century novels to be weak and uninteresting. In her effort to recreate a 19th century style of
fiction, Murdoch combined a variety of techniques, so that her novels usually contained the
intrigue of a thriller, the twists of an adventure story, the dynamics of a romance tale, and the
comic patterns of Shakespearean and Greek literature. Some have compared her novels to soap
operas because of their romantic intrigues and bizarrely coincidental plot twists that rely upon
doorbells bringing trouble and phone calls bringing disaster. Murdoch's background as a
philosopher is obvious in her fiction, as her texts are frequently interspersed with philosophical
commentary. Such direct philosophical restatement is particularly prominent in The Black
Prince. Its primary themes are the possibility of glimpsing eternal truth through the experience of
erotic love, and possibility of presenting truth through the creation of art. As Murdoch was a
Platonist, she believed, like Plato, that people go through life with only a limited sense of truth
since our "everyday" world is a world of illusion. Behind this world however, Plato believed, is
an world full of "ideal forms". It is this world, which contains truth, that Bradley Pearson, the
main character of The Black Prince, is able to touch upon as a result of his experience with erotic
love. Structurally, Murdoch's tendency to shift into philosophical discourse while telling her
stories may be slightly disconcerting and difficult for some to follow. Her use of philosophy
often gives her novels a fragmented style. Overall, her ability to merge philosophy and fiction,
however, leads to a profound reading experience.
Iris Murdoch was made a Dame of the British Order in 1987 for her scholarly
achievements. Her writing stopped in 1994, sometime after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's
Disease. Murdoch died in 1999. Her personal struggle at the end of her life was chronicled in a
book by her husband, John Bayley, entitled Elegies for Iris.
Plot Overview
The Black Prince tells the story of Bradley Pearson, a fifty-eight year old man who has
previously published three books. In order to write a great novel, he quits his lifelong job as a tax
inspector, but soon finds himself struck with writer's block. He decides to spend the summer in a
rented cottage on the coast for inspiration. Before he can leave for the coast, however, a series of
events keeps him home. When his detested ex-wife's brother, Francis visits him he finds out that
his ex wife, Christian, has returned to London. He is called to intervene in a marital dispute
between his close friends, Arnold and Rachel Baffin. Arnold is a successful but unartistic writer.
During the fight, Rachel Baffin hits her head on the fireplace poker, but is not dead, as Arnold
initially fears. After leaving their house, Bradley runs into the Baffins' twenty-year-old daughter,
Julian, by the subway station. She wants Bradley to teach her how to write. The next morning,
Bradley's sister, Priscilla, unexpectedly arrives, because she has left her husband. She almost
immediately tries to commit suicide with sleeping pills. During the confusion of her suicide
attempt, for which all of the Baffins and Francis Marloe are present, Christian, Bradley's ex-wife,
appears, but is taken away by Arnold before Bradley sees her.
After Priscilla gets back from the hospital, Bradley visits Christian in order to tell her to
leave him alone. Bradley then goes to Bristol to pick up his sister's jewels. He is unable to do so,
and finds that Priscilla's husband has a younger, pregnant mistress. Priscilla starts staying at
Christian's house so Francis Marloe, a former doctor, can care for her. While all of this is
happening, Arnold Baffin becomes interested in having an affair with Christian and Rachel
Baffin becomes interested in sleeping with Bradley. During Rachel and Bradley's attempted
lovemaking, however, he cannot perform sexually. He and Rachel later determine to become
platonic friends. Julian has been pestering Bradley to teach her about Hamlet and arrives one day
for a tutorial. During the tutorial, Bradley falls passionately in love with her. He initially tries to
keep his love secret. After becoming physically ill while watching Der Rosenkavalier with Julian
however, he confesses his emotions. He tells Julian that he is forty-six, instead of fifty-eight.
Julian considers the issue of his love thoughtfully. By the next morning, she has determined that
she loves him. Julian later confesses her love to her parents. They respond by locking her in her
room and yelling at Bradley. Despite Rachel and Arnold's anger, Bradley refuses to see that his
love is inappropriate. When Julian sneaks away from her parents' house, she and Bradley meet
and leave for his rented cottage. On their first day away, Julian entertains romantic fantasies
about marrying Bradley. Their initial attempts at lovemaking are not successful. The next day,
Bradley finds out that Priscilla has killed herself. He keeps the news from Julian to maintain their
bliss. When he returns home, he finds Julian dressed up as Hamlet. He drags her to the bed and
makes violent love to her in such a rough way that Julian later weeps. Arnold finds them later
that night and begs Julian to leave. He tells her of Priscilla's death and Bradley's true age. Julian
seems confused, but refuses go. After her father leaves, she isolates herself in a separate
bedroom to think, but is gone by the time Bradley wakes in the morning.
Bradley goes back to London for Priscilla's funeral. He believes that Arnold stole Julian
away in the night. Bradley cannot find her anywhere. Christian wants to start a relationship with
Bradley, but he declines. Rachel tells Bradley that Julian left him freely because she learned of
Bradley's recent sexual encounter with Rachel (Rachel had described the encounter in a letter
that Arnold delivered). Bradley is so angry at Rachel's interference that he spitefully shows her a
letter that Arnold wrote describing Arnold's love for Christian. Rachel is furious and vows never
to forgive Bradley. A few days later, Bradley receives a letter from Julian. Despite her saying
otherwise, he decides that she still loves him and that she is in Venice. He makes plans to go
there. Before he can leave, however, Rachel calls and begs for his immediate assistance. After
arriving at the Baffins' house, Bradley finds Arnold dead, having been hit with the same fire
poker that once hit Rachel. When Bradley tries to cover up Rachel's crime, he is accused of it
himself. He is later convicted because everyone believes that he killed Arnold out of envy.
Bradley has written his novel from prison. In the final postscript of the book, the editor,
P.Loxias, notes that soon after finishing the book, Bradley Pearson died of a fast growing cancer.
Character List
Bradley Pearson - The protagonist and the author of the novel. Bradley is the novel's most fully
developed character and also the one who changes the most within it. Bradley starts the book as
a cold and occasionally cruel character. He treats Francis and Christian with blunt rudeness. He
ignores his very depressed sister, Priscilla, and it is his neglect, in part, that leads to her suicide.
In the beginning Bradley acts only with self-interest, but after his experience of love he changes
into a content, more generous creature, who is finally able to write a master novel.
Arnold Baffin - The very successful popular writer whom Bradley is accused of killing at the
end of the novel. Arnold and Bradley's friendship is one of the primary relationships within the
novel. Although Bradley frequently dislikes Arnold, Arnold is portrayed very favorably. He is a
polite, interesting man who always wants to know more about people's characters and who
always longs to talk to them. He takes great pleasure in hearing about Francis Marloe's life, for
example, while Bradley at the same time is trying to get Francis out the door. Arnold's
compassionate interest contrasts Bradley's coldness.
Rachel Baffin - The wife of Arnold Baffin. Rachel is a forceful woman whom both Arnold and
Bradley underestimate. Arnold seems to think that all is well between him and his wife; Bradley
regards Rachel as a benign, older woman. Rachel's firm speech and unforgiving tone, however,
suggests the power within her personality, even if the other characters cannot see it. Rachel
herself predicts her fierceness when she tells Bradley that she still has "real fire" in her. Despite
Rachel's fierceness, she is also a sympathetic character who also helps to articulate the
difficulties of being a middle-aged housewife.
Julian Baffin- The daughter of Arnold and Rachel Baffin and the person with whom Bradley
falls desperately in love. Julian is a youthful, naïve girl who frequently appears foolish. Because
Bradley Pearson is in love with her, and because he retells her story, her naïve nature is not
always apparent and she occasionally comes across as sexually aggressive. Her naïveté however
can be seen in her actions. F. ex., although she has broken up with her boyfriend just a week
before, she decides that she is completely in love with Bradley and that she wants to marry him.
Francis Marloe - Christian's brother and Bradley Pearson's ex-brother-in-law. Francis is a comic
character who exists for other characters and readers to laugh at. Francis's comic nature comes
from his pitiful physical condition and his constantly groveling behavior. Furthermore, the way
that the other characters verbally abuse Francis provides comic effect, in a slapstick manner.
Francis basically is a kind man who wants to treat other people kindly, but his constant fumbling
makes it difficult to fully respect and sympathize with him. For example, Francis wants to help
Priscilla, but leaves her for the whole night to go get drunk with Bradley's homosexual neighbor,
during which time she kills herself. The foolishness of Francis's behavior is characteristic of his
way and is one of the reasons that he fits the role of the buffoon in the novel.
Priscilla Saxe - The sister of Bradley Pearson. Priscilla is a sympathetic, but pitiful woman who
spends the majority of the book moaning about the ruined state of her life. Priscilla's life, it
appears, is somewhat ruined, since she spent most of it in an unloving marriage. Her painful
experience testifies to the difficulties of life as well as the specific difficulties of being a woman.
Priscilla's great regret is the abortion that left her unable to have children. Priscilla's sadness
helps to establish Bradley's coldness as a character, because, despite her needs, he basically
ignores her.
Christian Evansdale - Bradley Pearson's ex-wife. Christian is a confident, strong woman who
has aged but still remains sexually attractive. She has lived in America for the past few years and
appears slightly brassy and American. Christian's character is seen entirely through her
interaction with Bradley, which is not entirely credible given his previous hatred of her. She, like
Rachel, is a woman of power, even though she has aged. Christian is a sympathetic and even
admirable character, given the strength of her personality, but at the same time her brassy quality
gives her a slightly comic edge.
Roger Saxe - Priscilla's husband and Bradley Pearson's brother-in-law. Bradley always has
disliked Roger's chummy, non-intellectual style. Roger has done bad things in the past, namely
having Priscilla have an abortion and then making her father pay for half of it. Her current affair
with Marigold in some ways also seems cruel since he is abandoning his wife, who cannot have
children due to the abortion that Roger insisted upon. Still, while Roger has flaws, he is not all
bad. Although Priscilla trick him into marrying her, he stayed with her for twenty years, despite
their unhappiness. Furthermore, although he did have an affair, he kept it a secret until after she
left him; then he asked for a divorce. Generally, the tendency to have an affair during marriage
does not appear honorable, but since Roger and Priscilla's marriage was so terrible, his actions
actually seem understandable.
Marigold - Roger Saxe's mistress who is pregnant with his child. Little is known about Marigold
except that she is a dentist. Her name suggests her freshness and youth. Her presence in Roger's
life testifies to the terrible state of his marriage. She and Roger also are a couple that mirror
Bradley and Julian, since Roger is significantly older that Marigold.
P. Loxias - The editor of the novel. "Loxias" is a pseudonym for Apollo, the Greek god of the
Arts. The prophetess Cassandra refers to Apollo as "Loxias" in Aeschylus's The Oresteia. Loxias
is not truly a developed character in the novel, as he only serves to provide a foreword and
postscript. His primary role is to alert the readers to the primary theme of the book: the
importance of art in articulating truth. Since Apollo is the God of Arts, it seems appropriate that
he is the one to supervise a novel that debates its relative merits.
Hartbourne - A friend of Bradley's from work. Little is known about Hartbourne except that
Bradley frequently has lunch with him and Christian later marries him.
Oscar Belling - Julian's ex-boyfriend. He never appears in the novel. At the end of the novel
however, Julian's name has changed to "Julian Belling" signifying that she has married him. His
presence merely serves to suggest Julian's youthful approach the art of loving, since it is just
after breaking up with him that she decides that is passionately in love with Bradley.
Themes
Art as a Vehicle for Truth
As Loxias and Bradley Pearson explain in their forewords and postscripts, art is one of the rare
venues that allows for the articulation of truth. As Loxias says in the conclusion of the novel, "art
tells the only truth that ultimately matters." As a follower of the ideas of Plato, Iris Murdoch
believes that the world of everyday life is a world of illusions, behind which exists a world of
truth, containing "ideal forms". When one is finally able to see the world of ideal forms, one is
glimpsing truth. In a realm with both illusory and "true" worlds, art holds a special place,
because through it an artist is able to bring viewers out of the illusory plane and into the true one.
Art serves as a fundamental philosophical tool that can alert the world to higher meanings in life.
Bradley Pearson's struggle to write a deeply meaningful novel in The Black Prince captures one
artist's attempt to preserve a glimmer of truth for others. Although Pearson is struck by writer's
block for most of the novel, his experience of Eros allows him to create the ultimate master
work. In doing so, as P.Loxias (the God Apollo) suggests, he is able to bring truth to us, the
readers.
Eros's Facilitation of Expression
Bradley Pearson's experience of Eros gives him the ability to write. "Eros" refers both to erotic
love and to a deeper lust for power, love, and desire. Bradley's experience of Eros originally
starts as pure love for Julian Baffin: he becomes happy and pleasant after feeling it. As his love
turns towards lust, however, he begins to refer to his Eros as "black Eros," referencing the
negative qualities that overtake him during his obsession with Julian. Despite the potentially
destructive power of Eros that Bradley experiences, it still is the avenue that allows him to
glimpse truth. After such a sudden and intense voyage with Eros, Bradley emerges changed and
is finally able to express truth through the creation of art.
The Randomness of Life
Iris Murdoch was not an existentialist, but she shares the existentialist idea that life has no
greater purpose than what individual humans designate. For Murdoch and existentialists, there is
no God who has preordained one's life path before one is born. Instead, one is born with freedom
to create whatever type of life that one chooses. Despite the ability to be free, most people
generally prefer to cling to a preordained meaning by believing in God, or by assigning meaning
to everything that happens to them. In an effort to counter this tendency, Murdoch attempts to
argue for the random nature of life in her novel. For example, Bradley and Julian randomly meet
twice, but there is no sense that their coincidental meetings were meant to be. Likewise, a series
of random arrivals and meetings drive the entire plot of her novel. These events are what make
up people's lives, but they were not each individually plotted by the Fates. As Murdoch
demonstrates, life is just a series of random accidents connected together.
Motifs
Marriage
The Black Prince begins and ends with a domestic quarrel between a married couple. During the
novel, Murdoch analyzes the institution of marriage by looking at it through three different
couples. For each of these couples, marriage fails. Furthermore, in two of the marriages,
Priscilla's and Roger's, and Rachel's and Arnold's, the marriage proves fatal; one of the partners
is dead by the end of the book. Given the failure of marriages in her novel, Murdoch suggests
that it is a consistently painful institution, which might be better avoided. Bradley Pearson
himself articulates a similar perspective when he suggests that the state of being married is
inconsistent with a human's natural desire and that marriage generally leads one towards a state
of perpetual loneliness.
Hamlet
Hamlet is major motif in the novel. Hamlet's characters, text, and themes recur several times.
The play primarily appears because Julian Baffin wants to study Hamlet, so she keeps asking
Bradley to teach it to her. By explaining it to Julian, Bradley is able to articulate his
interpretation of what Hamlet actually means. The theme in Hamlet that is most important to The
Black Prince is that of identity and the ability to create one's identity through the use of words.
As Bradley Pearson writes his narrative, he struggles with this issue, which may be the reason
for which the novel is called The Black Prince—a title usually given to Hamlet. Hamlet's
appearance in the novel also plays an important role in the growing rapport between Julian and
Bradley, since their initial tutorial is a symbolic sex scene, and when Julian eventually dresses up
as Hamlet, Bradley proceeds to make violent love to her. Murdoch's frequent references to
Hamlet also indicate her textual allegiance to Shakespearian techniques, which she greatly
admired.
Feet and Boots
Attention to Julian's feet is a motif that chronicles the sexual awakening of Bradley. The motif
begins when Bradley sees Julian walking barefoot by the subway station. He proceeds to buy her
a pair of purple boots, but not before his socks tumble out of his pocket and she puts them on. It
is when she finally puts on the boots in the store, that Bradley feels his first swell of lust. Later
during their Hamlet tutorial, Julian arrives wearing the same purple boots. As the room grows
hot, she asks if she can take them off. She asks Bradley if her feet smell and he says that they do,
but that he finds it "charming". As lust and unrealized love overwhelm him, Bradley comments
that he could smell "her sweat, her feet, her breasts." Julian's exposure of her feet galvanizes
Bradley's sexuality and serves as one of the symbolic steps towards the awakening of his love.
Symbols
Kites
When Bradley leaves Rachel's house after kissing her, Julian releases her kite and Bradley
follows it faithfully as he walks to the subway station. The kite symbolizes the glimpse of the
eternal that he is soon to get, but has not yet received. Bradley already has philosophized about
the importance of kites when he was drunk in Bristol noting that kites are distant high things that
are "an image of our condition." As he follows Julian's kite to the train station, he feels that it is
the "bearer of some potent as yet unfathomed destiny." The kite's ability to fly and to see the
world from a higher perspective is something that all humans aspire to and is something that
Bradley shall be able to do by the end of the novel. The kite symbolizes the ability to see beyond
the world of illusionary forms that dominates the everyday world.
Priscilla's jewels
Priscilla is obsessed with her jewels and believes that if she receives them, all of her troubles
shall be over. This belief is false and represents the sad state of her life. Priscilla's jewels
represent the one thing that she was able to gather during her married years. To some extent, they
represent her sole legacy, since she has lived a childless existence. But it is a sad legacy, as
jewels are cold, meaningless items whose primary significance is their monetary value. Priscilla's
inability to see the illusionary and meaningless nature of these items is consistent with her
inability to have seen, or looked for, a deeper layer of truth during her entire life. When Priscilla
finally receives her longed after jewels, she not surprisingly does not feel happier. Her jewels are
meaningless items that suggest the way in which she, and most people, waste their lives by not
trying to aspire for more meaningful truths.
Der Rosenkavalier is Strauss's opera that Bradley and Julian attend. The opera has a special
symbolic role because it contains sexual partners of grossly different ages, similar to the one in
The Black Prince. Bradley's realization of the similarity between the opera and his own sexuality
causes him to vomit after only several minutes of watching it. The color red that plays such a
large role in the opera's setting also is significant in bringing out Bradley's silenced sexual
desires. Although Bradley may not know this at the beginning of the novel, the plot of Der
Rosenkavalier also foreshadows that of The Black Prince. While Bradley and Julian will have a
love affair, as the Princess and Octavian did, both Julian and Octavian will eventually leave their
older lovers and find partners their own age.
Key Facts
full title · The Black Prince; author · Iris Murdoch; type of work · Novel
genre · Modernist Novel; language · English; time and place written · England, 1972
date of first publication · 1973; publisher · Viking Press
narrator · Bradley Pearson; point of view · First Person; tone · Ironic; tense · Past tense
setting (time) · Early 1970s; setting (place) · London, England
protagonist · Bradley Pearson
major conflict · Bradley's need to break out of his writing block
rising action · Arnold Baffin's fight with his wife; Tutorials of Julian; Date at the opera with
Julian Rachel's attempted seduction
climax · Arnold Baffin's murder
falling action · Bradley's trial and conviction; Bradley's writing of his novel; Bradley's death
foreshadowing · Arnold's initial call to Bradley; Rachel's prediction of her fire; Bradley's
threatening note to Arnold; Der Rosenkavalier; Bradley's destruction of Arnold's books
Suggestions for Further Reading
1. Antonaccio, Maria, and William Schweiker, editors, Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human
Goodness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
2. Baldanza, Frank. Iris Murdoch. New York: Tawyne Publishers, 1974.
3. Bove, Cheryl K. Understanding Iris Murdoch. Columbia: University of S. Carolina Press, 1993.
4. Byatt, A.S. Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch. London: Vintage Press, 1965.
5. Conradi, Peter. Iris Murdoch: the Saint and the Artist. London: Macmillan, 1989.
6. Dipple, Elizabeth. Iris Murdoch: work for the spirit. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982.
7. Hague, Angela. Iris Murdoch's Comic Vision. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1984.
8. Johnson, Deborah. Iris Murdoch Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
9. Todd, Richard. Iris Murdoch. London: Methuen, 1984.
10. Todd, Richard. Irish Murdoch: the Shakespearian Interest. New York: Barnes and noble, 1979.
Emily Dickinson’s Poetry (1830-1886)
E.Dickinson led one of the most prosaic lives of any great poet. At a time when fellow
poet Walt Whitman was ministering to the Civil War wounded and travelling across America – a
time when America itself was reeling in the chaos of war, the tragedy of the Lincoln
assassination, and the turmoil of Reconstructio – Dickinson lived a relatively untroubled life in
her father's house in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she was born in 1830 and where she died in
1886. Although popular myth often depicts Dickinson as the solitary genius, she, in fact,
remained relatively active in Amherst social circles and often entertained visitors throughout her
life. However, she was certainly more isolated than a poet such as Whitman. Her world was
bounded by her home and its surrounding countryside; the great events of her day play little role
in her poetry. Dickinson, one of the great poets of inwardness ever to write in English, was no
social poet with almost no sense of the time in which she lived. Of course, social and historical
ideas and values contributed in shaping her character, but Emily Dickinson's ultimate context is
herself, the milieu of her mind. She is simply unlike any other poet; her compact, forceful
language, characterized formally by long disruptive dashes, heavy iambic meters, and angular,
imprecise rhymes, is one of the singular literary achievements of the nineteenth century. Her
aphoristic style, whereby substantial meanings are compressed into very few words, can be
daunting, but many of her best and most famous poems are comprehensible even on the first
reading. During her lifetime, she published hardly any of her massive poetic output (fewer than
ten of her nearly 1,800 poems) and was utterly unknown as a writer. After Dickinson's death, her
sister discovered her notebooks and published the contents, thus, presenting America with a
tremendous poetic legacy that appeared fully formed and without any warning. As a result,
Dickinson has tended to occupy a rather uneasy place in the canon of American poetry; writers
and critics have not always known what to make of her. Today, her place as one of the two finest
American poets of the nineteenth century is secure. Along with Whitman, she literally defines
the very era that had so little palpable impact on her poetry.
Dickinson is such a unique poet that it is very difficult to place her in any single tradition
– she seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Her poetic form, with her customary
four-line stanzas, ABCB rhyme schemes, and alternations in iambic meter between tetrameter
and trimeter, is derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns, but Dickinson so thoroughly
appropriates the forms – interposing her own long, rhythmic dashes designed to interrupt the
meter and indicate short pauses--that the resemblance seems quite faint. Her subjects are often
parts of the topography of her own psyche; she explores her own feelings with painstaking and
often painful honesty but never loses sight of their universal poetic application; one of her
greatest techniques is to write about the particulars of her own emotions in a kind of universal
homiletic or adage-like tone ("After great pain, a formal feeling comes") that seems to describe
the reader's mind as well as it does the poet's. Dickinson is not a "philosophical poet"; unlike
Wordsworth or Yeats, she makes no effort to organize her thoughts and feelings into a coherent,
unified worldview. Rather, her poems simply record thoughts and feelings experienced naturally
over the course of a lifetime devoted to reflection and creativity: the powerful mind represented
in these records is by turns astonishing, compelling, moving, and thought-provoking, and
emerges much more vividly than if Dickinson had orchestrated her work according to a
preconceived philosophical system. Of course, her greatest achievement as a poet of inwardness
is her brilliant, diamond-hard language. She often writes aphoristically, meaning that she
compresses a great deal of meaning into a very small number of words. This can make her
poems hard to understand on a first reading, but when their meaning does unveil itself, it often
explodes in the mind all at once, and lines that seemed baffling can become intensely and
unforgettably clear. Other poems – many of her most famous, in fact – are much less difficult to
understand, and they exhibit her extraordinary powers of observation and description. Her
imagination can lead her into very peculiar territory – some of her most famous poems are
bizarre death-fantasies and astonishing metaphorical conceits – but she is equally deft in her
navigation of the domestic, writing beautiful nature-lyrics alongside her wild flights of
imagination and often combining the two with great facility.
"Success is counted sweetest..."
The speaker says that "those who ne'er succeed" place the highest value on success.
(They "count" it "sweetest".) To understand the value of a nectar, the speaker says, one must feel
"sorest need." She says that the members of the victorious army ("the purple Host / Who took the
flag today") are not able to define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a
distance the music of the victors.
Form – The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimester – with the exception of
the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth stress at the end of the line. (Virtually
all of Dickinson's poems are written in an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly between three and
four stresses.) As in most of Dickinson's poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB
scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the stanza's only rhyme.
Commentary
Many of Dickinson's most famous lyrics take the form of homilies, or short moral
sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe complicated moral and
psychological truths. "Success is counted sweetest" is such a poem; its first two lines express its
homiletic point, that "Success is counted sweetest/ By those who ne'er succeed" (or, more
generally, that people tend to desire things more acutely when they do not have them). The
subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair of images that exemplify it:
the nectar – a symbol of triumph, luxury, "success" – can best be comprehended by someone
who "needs" it; the defeated, dying man understands victory more clearly than the victorious
army does. The poem exhibits Dickinson's keen awareness of the complicated truths of human
desire (in a later poem on a similar theme, she wrote that "Hunger was a way/ Of Persons outside
Windows/ The Entering – takes away"), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted
style, whereby complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases (e.g., "On
whose forbidden ear").
“Hope' is the thing with feathers..."
The speaker describes hope as a bird ("the thing with feathers") that perches in the soul. There, it
sings wordlessly and without pause. The song of hope sounds sweetest "in the Gale," and it
would require a terrifying storm to ever "abash the little Bird/ That kept so many warm." The
speaker says that she has heard the bird of hope "in the chillest land/ And on the strangest Sea",
but never, no matter how extreme the conditions, did it ever ask for a single crumb from her.
Form – Like almost all of Dickinson's poems, "Hope' is the thing with feathers..." takes the form
of an iambic trimeter that often expands to include a fourth stress at the end of the line (as in
"And sings the tune without the words"). Like almost all of her poems, it modifies and breaks up
the rhythmic flow with long dashes indicating breaks and pauses ("And never stops – at all–").
The stanzas, as in most of Dickinson's lyrics, rhyme loosely in an ABCB scheme, though in this
poem there are some incidental carryover rhymes: "words" in line three of the first stanza rhymes
with "heard" and "Bird" in the second; "Extremity" rhymes with "Sea" and "Me" in the third
stanza, thus, technically conforming to an ABBB rhyme scheme.
Commentary
This simple, metaphorical description of hope as a bird singing in the soul is another example of
Dickinson's homiletic style, derived from Psalms and religious hymns. Dickinson introduces her
metaphor in the first two lines ("'Hope' is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the sou"), then
develops it throughout the poem by telling what the bird does (sing), how it reacts to hardship (it
is unabashed in the storm), where it can be found (everywhere, from "chillest land" to "strangest
Sea"), and what it asks for itself (nothing, not even a single crumb). Though written after
"Success is counted sweetest," this is still an early poem for Dickinson, and neither her language
nor her themes here are as complicated and explosive as they would become in her more mature
work from the mid-1860s. Still, we find a few of the verbal shocks that so characterize
Dickinson's mature style: the use of "abash," for instance, to describe the storm's potential effect
on the bird, wrenches the reader back to the reality behind the pretty metaphor; while a singing
bird cannot exactly be "abashed," the word describes the effect of the storm--or a more general
hardship--upon the speaker's hopes.
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?"
The speaker exclaims that she is "Nobody," and asks, "Who are you? / Are you – Nobody
– too?" If so, she says, then they are a pair of nobodies, and she admonishes her addressee not to
tell, for "they'd banish us – you know!" She says that it would be "dreary" to be "Somebody" – it
would be "public" and require that, "like a Frog," one tell one's name "the livelong June–/ To an
admiring Bog!"
Form – The two stanzas of "I'm Nobody!" are highly typical for Dickinson, constituted of loose
iambic trimeter occasionally including a fourth stress ("To tell your name – the livelong June–").
They follow an ABCB rhyme scheme (though in the first stanza, "you" and "too" rhyme, and
"know" is only a half-rhyme, so the scheme could appear to be AABC), and she frequently uses
rhythmic dashes to interrupt the flow.
Commentary
Ironically, one of the most famous details of Dickinson lore today is that she was utterly unfamous during her lifetime – she lived a relatively reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts, and
though she wrote nearly 1,800 poems, she published fewer than ten of them. This poem is her
most famous and most playful defense of the kind of spiritual privacy she favored, implying that
to be a Nobody is a luxury incomprehensible to the dreary Somebodies – for they are too busy
keeping their names in circulation, croaking like frogs in a swamp in the summertime. This poem
is an outstanding early example of Dickinson's often jaunty approach to meter (she uses her
trademark dashes quite forcefully to interrupt lines and interfere with the flow of her poem, as in
"How dreary– to be – Somebody!"). Further, the poem vividly illustrates her surprising way with
language. The juxtaposition in the line "How public – like a Frog" shocks the first-time reader,
combining elements not typically considered together, and, thus, more powerfully conveying its
meaning (frogs are "public" like public figures – or Somebodie – because they are constantly
"telling their name" – croaking – to the swamp, reminding all the other frogs of their identities).
"A Bird came down the Walk–..."
The speaker describes once seeing a bird come down the walk, unaware that it was being
watched. The bird ate an angleworm, then "drank a Dew/ From a convenient Gras," then hopped
sideways to let a beetle pass by. The bird's frightened, bead-like eyes glanced all around.
Cautiously, the speaker offered him "a Crumb," but the bird "unrolled his feathers" and flew
away – as though rowing in the water, but with a grace gentler than that with which "Oars divide
the ocean" or butterflies leap "off Banks of Noon"; the bird appeared to swim without splashing.
Form – Structurally, this poem is absolutely typical of Dickinson, using iambic trimeter with
occasional four-syllable lines, following a loose ABCB rhyme scheme, and rhythmically
breaking up the meter with long dashes. (Here, the dashes serve a relatively limited function,
occurring only at the end of lines, and simply indicating slightly longer pauses at line breaks.)
Commentary
Dickinson's life proves that it is not necessary to travel widely or lead a life full of Romantic
grandeur and extreme drama in order to write great poetry; alone in her house at Amherst,
Dickinson pondered her experience as fully, and felt it as acutely, as any poet who has ever
lived. In this poem, the simple experience of watching a bird hop down a path allows her to
exhibit her extraordinary poetic powers of observation and description. She keenly depicts the
bird as it eats a worm, pecks at the grass, hops by a beetle, and glances around fearfully. As a
natural creature frightened by the speaker into flying away, the bird becomes an emblem for the
quick, lively, ungraspable wild essence that distances nature from the human beings who desire
to appropriate or tame it. But the most remarkable feature of this poem is the imagery of its final
stanza, in which Dickinson provides one of the most breath-taking descriptions of flying in all of
poetry. Simply by offering two quick comparisons of flight and by using aquatic motion (rowing
and swimming), she evokes the delicacy and fluidity of moving through air. The image of
butterflies leaping "off Banks of Noon," splashlessly swimming though the sky, is one of the
most memorable in all Dickinson's writing.
"I died for Beauty--but was scarce..."
The speaker says that she died for Beauty, but she was hardly adjusted to her tomb before a man
who died for Truth was laid in a tomb next to her. When the two softly told each other why they
died, the man declared that Truth and Beauty are the same, so that he and the speaker were
"Brethren." The speaker says that they met at night, "as Kinsmen," and talked between their
tombs until the moss reached their lips and covered up the names on their tombstones.
Form – This poem follows many of Dickinson's typical formal patterns – the ABCB rhyme
scheme, the rhythmic use of the dash to interrupt the flow – but has a more regular meter, so that
the first and third lines in each stanza are iambic tetrameter, while the second and fourth lines are
iambic trimeter, creating a four-three-four-three stress pattern in each stanza.
Commentary
This bizarre, allegorical death fantasy recalls Keats ("Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty," from Ode
on a Grecian Urn), but its manner of presentation belongs uniquely to Dickinson. In this short
lyric, Dickinson manages to include a sense of the macabre physicality of death ("Until the Moss
had reached our lips–"), the high idealism of martyrdom ("I died for Beauty. . . One who died for
Truth"), a certain kind of romantic yearning combined with longing for Platonic companionship
("And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night--"), and an optimism about the afterlife (it would be nice to
have a like-minded friend) with barely sublimated terror about the fact of death (it would be
horrible to lie in the cemetery having a conversation through the walls of a tomb). As the poem
progresses, the high idealism and yearning for companionship gradually give way to mute, cold
death, as the moss creeps up the speaker's corpse and her headstone, obliterating both her
capacity to speak (covering her lips) and her identity (covering her name). The ultimate effect of
this poem is to show that every aspect of human life – ideals, human feelings, identity itself – is
erased by death. But by making the erasure gradual – something to be "adjusted" to in the tomb –
and by portraying a speaker who is untroubled by her own grim state, Dickinson creates a scene
that is, by turns, grotesque and compelling, frightening and comforting. It is one of her most
singular statements about death, and like so many of Dickinson's poems, it has no parallels in the
work of any other writer.
"I heard a Fly buzz--when I died–..."
The speaker says that she heard a fly buzz as she lay on her deathbed. The room was as still as
the air between "the Heaves" of a storm. The eyes around her had cried themselves out, and the
breaths were firming themselves for "that last Onset," the moment when, metaphorically, "the
King/ Be witnessed – in the Room –." The speaker made a will and "Signed away / What portion
of me be/ Assignable –" and at that moment, she heard the fly. It interposed itself "With blue –
uncertain stumbling Buzz –" between the speaker and the light; "the Windows failed"; and then
she died ("I could not see to see –").
Form – "I heard a Fly buzz" employs all of Dickinson's formal patterns: trimeter and tetrameter
iambic lines (four stresses in the first and third lines of each stanza, three in the second and
fourth, a pattern Dickinson follows at her most formal); rhythmic insertion of the long dash to
interrupt the meter; and an ABCB rhyme scheme. Interestingly, all the rhymes before the final
stanza are half-rhymes (Room/Storm, firm/Room, be/Fly), while only the rhyme in the final
stanza is a full rhyme (me/see). Dickinson uses this technique to build tension; a sense of true
completion comes only with the speaker's death.
Commentary
One of Dickinson's most famous poems, "I heard a Fly buzz" strikingly describes the mental
distraction posed by irrelevant details at even the most crucial moments – even at the moment of
death. The poem then becomes even weirder and more macabre by transforming the tiny,
normally disregarded fly into the figure of death itself, as the fly's wing cuts the speaker off from
the light until she cannot "see to see." But the fly does not grow in power or stature; its final
severing act is performed "With Blue--uncertain stumbling Buzz–."
This poem is also remarkable for its detailed evocation of a deathbed scene – the dying person's
loved ones steeling themselves for the end, the dying woman signing away in her will "What
portion of me be/ Assignable" (a turn of phrase that seems more Shakespearean than it does
Dickinsonian).
Study Questions
1. Think about Dickinson's descriptions of nature, such as in "A Bird came down the Walk"
and "A narrow Fellow in the Grass." What techniques does she use to create her indelible
images? What makes poems such as these memorable despite their thematic simplicity?
2. Dickinson is often described as a poet of "inwardness." What do you think this means?
How does Dickinson convey the inner workings of the mind in a poem such as "I cannot
live with You"?
3. Think about Dickinson's tone. Does she seem to be writing for other people or only for
herself? How might she universalize private feelings?
4. Compare and contrast two of Dickinson's poems that deal with the subject of death. How
does Dickinson portray the fact of death in a new and startling way in each? What are her
apparent attitudes about dying?
5. Throughout her poetic career, Dickinson relied largely on a single, powerfully focused
style and on a single set of formal characteristics for her poems. What are some of these
characteristics? How might her style be described? What is the effect of this kind of
uniformity on the work of a poet with so much imaginative range?
6. Dickinson's poems often introduce an idea, then develop it with a sequence of metaphoric
images. Name two examples of this kind of poem. What are some of her images? How do
they work as metaphors?
7. Compare an early Dickinson poem (such as "'Hope' is the thing with feathers") to a later
one (such as "My life closed twice before its close"). How has her work changed? How
has it remained the same? Did Dickinson experience much development as a poet as she
grew older, or did her work largely remain the same?
Study Questions
1. Think about Dickinson's descriptions of nature, such as in "A Bird came down the Walk"
and "A narrow Fellow in the Grass." What techniques does she use to create her indelible
images? What makes poems such as these memorable despite their thematic simplicity?
2. Dickinson is often described as a poet of "inwardness." What do you think this means?
How does Dickinson convey the inner workings of the mind in a poem such as "I cannot
live with You"?
3. Think about Dickinson's tone. Does she seem to be writing for other people or only for
herself? How might she universalize private feelings?
4. Compare and contrast two of Dickinson's poems that deal with the subject of death. How
does Dickinson portray the fact of death in a new and startling way in each? What are her
apparent attitudes about dying?
5. Throughout her poetic career, Dickinson relied largely on a single, powerfully focused
style and on a single set of formal characteristics for her poems. What are some of these
characteristics? How might her style be described? What is the effect of this kind of
uniformity on the work of a poet with so much imaginative range?
6. Dickinson's poems often introduce an idea, then develop it with a sequence of metaphoric
images. Name two examples of this kind of poem. What are some of her images? How do
they work as metaphors?
7. Compare an early Dickinson poem (such as "'Hope' is the thing with feathers") to a later
one (such as "My life closed twice before its close"). How has her work changed? How
has it remained the same? Did Dickinson experience much development as a poet as she
grew older, or did her work largely remain the same?
Walt Whitman’s Poetry(1819-1892)
Whitman was born in 1819 on Long Island (the Paumanok of many of his poems).
During his early years he trained as a printer, then became a teacher, and finally a journalist and
editor. He was less than successful; his stridently radical views made him unpopular with
readers. After an 1848 sojourn in the South, which introduced him to some of the variety of his
country, he returned to New York and began to write poetry. In 1855 he self-published the first
edition of Leaves of Grass, which at the time consisted of only twelve poems. The volume was
widely ignored, with one significant exception. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote him a
congratulatory letter, in which he offered his "greet[ings]... at the beginning of a great career."
Whitman promptly published another edition of Leaves of Grass, expanding it by some twenty
poems and appending the letter from Emerson, much to the latter's discomfort. 1860 saw another
edition of a now much larger Leaves – containing some 156 poems – which was issued by a
trade publisher. At the outset of the Civil War Whitman volunteered as a nurse in army hospitals;
he also wrote dispatches as a correspondent for the New York Times. The war inspired a great
deal of poetry, which was published in 1865 as Drum Taps. Drum Taps was then incorporated
into an 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, as was another volume of wartime poetry, Sequel,
which included the poems written on Lincoln's assassination.
Whitman's wartime work led to a job with the Department of the Interior, but he was
soon fired when his supervisor learned that he had written the racy poems of Leaves of Grass.
The failure of Reconstruction led him to write the best known of his prose works, Democratic
Vistas, which, as its title implies, argues for the maintenance of democratic ideals. This volume
came out in 1871, as did yet another edition of Leaves of Grass, expanded to include more
poems. The 1871 edition was reprinted in 1876 for the centennial. Several other prose works
followed, then a further expanded version of Leaves of Grass, in 1881. His health had been
shaky since the mid-1870s, and by 1891 it was clear he was dying. He therefore prepared his socalled "Deathbed" edition of Leaves of Grass, which contained two appendices of old-age poems
as well as a review essay in which he tries to justify his life and work. The "Deathbed Edition"
came out in 1892; Whitman died that year.
Whitman's lifetime saw both the Civil War and the rise of the United States as a commercial and
political power. He witnessed both the apex and the abolition of slavery. His poetry is thus
centered on ideas of democracy, equality, and brotherhood. In response to America's new
position in the world, Whitman also tried to develop a poetry that was uniquely American, that
both surpassed and broke the mold of its predecessors. Leaves of Grass, with its multiple editions
and public controversies, set the pattern for the modern, public artist, and Whitman, with his
journalistic endeavors on the side, made the most of his role as celebrity and artist.
Whitman's poetry is democratic in both its subject matter and its language. As the great
lists that make up a large part of Whitman's poetry show, anything – and anyone – is fair game
for a poem. Whitman is concerned with cataloguing the new America he sees growing around
him. Just as America is far different politically and practically from its European counterparts, so
too must American poetry distinguish itself from previous models. Thus we see Whitman
breaking new ground in both subject matter and diction.
In a way, though, Whitman is not so unique. His preference for the quotidian links him
with both Dante, who was the first to write poetry in a vernacular language, and with
Wordsworth, who famously stated that poetry should aim to speak in the "language of ordinary
men." Unlike Wordsworth, however, Whitman does not romanticize the proletariat or the
peasant. Instead he takes as his model himself. The stated mission of his poetry was, in his
words, to make "[a]n attempt to put a Person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the
19th century, in America) freely, fully, and truly on record." A truly democratic poetry, for
Whitman, is one that, using a common language, is able to cross the gap between the self and
another individual, to effect a sympathetic exchange of experiences. This leads to a distinct
blurring of the boundaries between the self and the world and between public and private.
Whitman prefers spaces and situations – like journeys, the out-of-doors, cities – that allow for
ambiguity in these respects. Thus we see poems like "Song of the Open Road" and "Crossing
Brooklyn Ferry," where the poet claims to be able to enter into the heads of others. Exploration
becomes not just a trope but a mode of existence. For Whitman, spiritual communion depends on
physical contact, or at least proximity. The body is the vessel that enables the soul to experience
the world. Therefore the body is something to be worshipped and given a certain primacy.
Eroticism, particularly homoeroticism, figures significantly in Whitman's poetry. This is
something that got him in no small amount of trouble during his lifetime. The erotic interchange
of his poetry, though, is meant to symbolize the intense but always incomplete connection
between individuals. Having sex is the closest two people can come to being one merged
individual, but the boundaries of the body always prevent a complete union. The affection
Whitman shows for the bodies of others, both men and women, comes out of his appreciation for
the linkage between the body and the soul and the communion that can come through physical
contact. He also has great respect for the reproductive and generative powers of the body, which
mirror the intellect's generation of poetry. The Civil War diminished Whitman's faith in
democratic sympathy. While the cause of the war nominally furthered brotherhood and equality,
the war itself was a quagmire of killing. Reconstruction, which began to fail almost immediately
after it was begun, further disappointed Whitman. His later poetry, which displays a marked
insecurity about the place of poetry and the place of emotion in general (see in particular "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"), is darker and more isolated.
Whitman's style remains consistent throughout, however. The poetic structures he
employs are unconventional but reflect his democratic ideals. Lists are a way for him to bring
together a wide variety of items without imposing a hierarchy on them. Perception, rather than
analysis, is the basis for this kind of poetry, which uses few metaphors or other kinds of
symbolic language. Anecdotes are another favored device. By transmitting a story, often one he
has gotten from another individual, Whitman hopes to give his readers a sympathetic experience,
which will allow them to incorporate the anecdote into their own history. The kind of language
Whitman uses sometimes supports and sometimes seems to contradict his philosophy. He often
uses obscure, foreign, or invented words. This, however, is not meant to be intellectually elitist
but is instead meant to signify Whitman's status as a unique individual. Democracy does not
necessarily mean sameness. The difficulty of some of his language also mirrors the necessary
imperfection of connections between individuals: no matter how hard we try, we can never
completely understand each other. Whitman largely avoids rhyme schemes and other traditional
poetic devices. He does, however, use meter in masterful and innovative ways, often to mimic
natural speech. In these ways, he is able to demonstrate that he has mastered traditional poetry
but is no longer subservient to it, just as democracy has ended the subservience of the individual.
"Starting from Paumanok"
"Starting from Paumanok" first appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass and was
modified several times. The final version is that of the 1881 edition. This poem is Whitman's
literary manifesto, an elaborate and often confounding statement of his poetic project. Whitman
intends to quite literally start from Paumanok (a Native American name for Long Island, New
York), the place of his birth. He will journey forth geographically as well as philosophically, and
his travels will qualify him to "strike up for a New World": to lose himself in the maelstrom of
American life and become the first truly American poet. "Starting from Paumanok" delineates
poetic materials as well as principles. Whitman dictates not only how but what he will write, in
his lengthy lists of place-names, people, machines, and actions. The lists contained in this poem
are a good example of Whitman's ability to encode meaning in form. By listing without
analyzing, by refusing to subject his materials to linguistic devices such as metaphor, Whitman
creates a more democratic form of poetry, in which not even the almighty poet himself has pride
of place. The voice of the poet submerges and surfaces at odd intervals, losing itself in a list at
one moment only to trumpet forth a series of proclamations the next. This suggests a loss of
control, but also freedom. Whitman wants to catalogue, not master.
Commentary
Whitman makes several major statements about the purpose of poetry in this piece. The
first comes at the beginning of the sixth section, when he proclaims that he "will make the poems
of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems/ And I will make the poems of
my body and of mortality, / For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and
of immortality." Here Whitman questions several traditional assumptions about poetry.
Transcendence, universality of emotion, and immortality have long been considered the basis of
poetry: good verse, previous generations of poets have proclaimed, situates itself outside its time
and place, and through the common ground of human experience ensures immortality for itself
and its author. Whitman wants to stand this premise on end. Only by capturing his specific
moment and– importantly– a sense of his physical self can he write poetry that achieves a
maximum intellectual and spiritual content. In part there is a very practical reason for Whitman
to take this stance: as the open frontiers, factories, steamboats, and printing presses that show up
in this poem suggest, Whitman was living and writing during a period of great change. The
world was modernizing, and the assumption that a common ground existed between generations
had to be challenged. Perhaps too much had changed already, and this suggests that perhaps too
much would change in the future for the kind of transcendental, anti- material poems favored in
the past to survive. By focusing on the material world Whitman can at least recreate enough of
his surroundings to enable a future reader to read the poem sympathetically. In other words,
Whitman's poems ensure their survival by encapsulating their own context.
At the same time, though, Whitman makes statements that seem to contradict this
principle of specificity and materiality. As he writes in the twelfth section, he "will not make
poems with reference to parts,/ But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to
ensemble,/ And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days,/ And I will
not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul,/ Because having
look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one nor any particle of one but has
reference to the soul." Again this has to do with Whitman's sense of the modern world. True to
his democratic principles of inclusivity, he feels that "modern" does not necessarily equate with
"superior." While the world may seem to be a very different place than it was in Shakespeare's
time, Whitman understands that he is too submerged in it to be able to evaluate it clearly. Thus it
is not for him to pick and choose which things are truly significant, and it is not for him to try to
make claims for his specific place and time. Instead, he must try to capture himself as accurately
as possible in the moment of perceiving: without judging, he must write down what he sees in its
entirety, because everything has some relevance, no matter how hidden it may be. Therefore he
cannot choose, say, the Fourth of July to epitomize an American day: he must try to depict all of
his days. The final section of "Starting from Paumanok" seems to leave all of Whitman's
abstract, universalizing aspirations behind. Instead the poet exhorts a "camerado" (a comrade–
Whitman loves to invent or bastardize words) to join with him so the two of them, hand in hand,
can journey forth. The desire for intimacy spelled out in so many of Whitman's poems is at odds
with his more worldly or materialist writings. Again this can be read as a response to modernity:
the rapidly changing world often leads to geographical and social dislocation and therefore
isolation. At the same time, Whitman also wants to point out the erotic energy of his poetry. The
furious torrents of words force one to try to make connections between them, just as one tries to
make connections with other human beings. The sense of movement and urgency in the final
"haste on with me" suggests a new way of relating that is technological and physical rather than
emotional or spiritual.
"Song of Myself"
This most famous of Whitman's works was one of the original twelve pieces in the 1855 first
edition of Leaves of Grass. Like most of the other poems, it too was revised extensively,
reaching its final permutation in 1881. It is a sprawling combination of biography, sermon, and
poetic meditation. It is not nearly as heavy-handed in its pronouncements as "Starting at
Paumanok"; rather, Whitman uses symbols and sly commentary to get at important issues. "Song
of Myself" is composed more of vignettes than lists: Whitman uses small, precisely drawn
scenes to do his work here. This poem did not take on the title "Song of Myself" until the 1881
edition. Previous to that it had been titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American" and, in the
1860, 1867, and 1871 editions, simply "Walt Whitman." The poem's shifting title suggests
something of what Whitman was about in this piece. As Walt Whitman, the specific individual,
melts away into the abstract "Myself," the poem explores the possibilities for communion
between individuals. Starting from the premise that "what I assume you shall assume" Whitman
tries to prove that he both encompasses and is indistinguishable from the universe.
Commentary
Whitman's grand poem is, in its way, an American epic. "Missing me one place search another,"
he tells his reader, "I stop somewhere waiting for you." In its catalogues of American life and its
constant search for the boundaries of the self "Song of Myself" has much in common with
classical epic. This epic sense of purpose, though, is coupled with an almost Keatsian
valorization of repose and passive perception. Since for Whitman the birthplace of poetry is in
the self, the best way to learn about poetry is to relax and watch the workings of one's own mind.
While "Song of Myself" is crammed with significant detail, there are three key episodes that
must be examined. The first of these is found in the sixth section of the poem. A child asks the
narrator "What is the grass?" and the narrator is forced to explore his own use of symbolism and
his inability to break things down to essential principles. The bunches of grass in the child's
hands become a symbol of the regeneration in nature. But they also signify a common material
that links disparate people all over the United States together: grass, the ultimate symbol of
democracy, grows everywhere. In the wake of the Civil War the grass reminds Whitman of
graves: grass feeds on the bodies of the dead. Everyone must die eventually, and so the natural
roots of democracy are therefore in mortality, whether due to natural causes or to the bloodshed
of internecine warfare. While Whitman normally revels in this kind of symbolic indeterminacy,
here it troubles him a bit. "I wish I could translate the hints," he says, suggesting that the
boundary between encompassing everything and saying nothing is easily crossed.
The second episode is more optimistic. The famous "twenty-ninth bather" can be found in the
eleventh section of the poem. In this section a woman watches twenty-eight young men bathing
in the ocean. She fantasizes about joining them unseen, and describes their semi-nude bodies in
some detail. The invisible twenty-ninth bather offers a model of being much like that of
Emerson's "transparent eyeball": to truly experience the world one must be fully in it and of it,
yet distinct enough from it to have some perspective, and invisible so as not to interfere with it
unduly. This paradoxical set of conditions describes perfectly the poetic stance Whitman tries to
assume. The lavish eroticism of this section reinforces this idea: sexual contact allows two
people to become one yet not one--it offers a moment of transcendence. As the female spectator
introduced in the beginning of the section fades away, and Whitman's voice takes over, the
eroticism becomes homoeroticism. Again this is not so much the expression of a sexual
preference as it is the longing for communion with every living being and a connection that
makes use of both the body and the soul (although Whitman is certainly using the homoerotic
sincerely, and in other ways too, particularly for shock value). Having worked through some of
the conditions of perception and creation, Whitman arrives, in the third key episode, at a moment
where speech becomes necessary. In the twenty-fifth section he notes that "Speech is the twin of
my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,/ It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, / Walt
you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?" Having already established that he can have a
sympathetic experience when he encounters others ("I do not ask the wounded person how he
feels, I myself become the wounded person"), he must find a way to re-transmit that experience
without falsifying or diminishing it. Resisting easy answers, he later vows he "will never
translate [him]self at all." Instead he takes a philosophically more rigorous stance: "What is
known I strip away." Again Whitman's position is similar to that of Emerson, who says of
himself, "I am the unsettler." Whitman, however, is a poet, and he must reassemble after
unsettling: he must "let it out then." Having catalogued a continent and encompassed its
multitudes, he finally decides: "I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,/ I sound my
barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." "Song of Myself" thus ends with a sound – a yawp –
that could be described as either pre- or post-linguistic. Lacking any of the normal
communicative properties of language, Whitman's yawp is the release of the "kosmos" within
him, a sound at the borderline between saying everything and saying nothing. More than
anything, the yawp is an invitation to the next Walt Whitman, to read into the yawp, to have a
sympathetic experience, to absorb it as part of a new multitude.
"The Sleepers"
"The Sleepers" is one of the poems from the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass. This is a
simple poem, dedicated to exploring an idea of democratic empathy. Structurally this poem is
composed of lists and anecdotes loosely arranged. The non-hierarchical nature of the poem
reinforces the idea of democracy on which it is based: a list works through juxtaposition and
random assemblage, not analysis or evaluation.
Commentary
This poem explores one of the major principles behind Whitman's poetry, that of empathy.
Whitman makes the assertion here that he can identify so completely with another human being
as to dream the same dreams they do. Through sleep, which acts as a leveler or democratizing
force (much as death does in other places in Whitman's poetry), all consciousnesses become
equally accessible and equally worthwhile. It is important to notice that while Whitman
advocates a democratic equality here he does not wish to destroy the great diversity of persons
and experiences: we are not all the same. The type of empathy Whitman claims to be able to
achieve extends so far as to allow him to incorporate others' anecdotes and past experiences into
his own narrative. That things can be vicariously experienced is a powerful concept, for it
enables the kind of democratic communion Whitman describes here. Furthermore, it makes
possible a kind of understanding between old and young, whites and Indians, masters and slaves.
This potential for sympathy can drive democracy still further. There is something highly erotic
about this communion of souls, which comes through very strongly at certain points in this
poem. Whitman focuses on a male lover here, and while certainly biographical evidence can
account for this it should also be noted as a symbol of ultimate sympathy and communication.
For Whitman, who believes that the body is an indispensable part of the soul, sex represents not
just physical eroticism but also the highest form of emotional and intellectual discourse.
Such intense communion is not endlessly sustainable, though, and thus Whitman
differentiates between this state of poetry-making and the mundane daytime world.
Unconsciousness – sleep – stands in for a kind of democratic utopia that is achievable only at
ideal moments. In its highest form this is a state of possibility and flux that washes away the
misunderstandings of the everyday and replaces them with, to quote Keats, "sleep and poetry."
"I Sing the Body Electric"
This is another of the poems from the original 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman here
explores the physical body at length. In other poems he has established the interconnectedness of
the body and the soul; here he celebrates the primacy of the body and its importance in forging
connections between people. This is yet another poem of lists, which again imply a
democratizing force at work. His egalitarianism is a particularly important aspect of this poem,
for it allows him to argue against the kind of valorization of the body implicit in slavery. The
lists alternate with anecdotal and propositional sections, which allow Whitman to work out some
of the issues surrounding the body. This makes "Body Electric" one of his more highly structured
poems. Just as various organs and features come together in the greater structure of the human
body, so too do the various bits and pieces of his poetry come together in a greater whole.
Commentary
Whitman prizes the body most for its generative qualities. This is most evident in the fifth and
sixth sections of the poem, where he examines first the female and then the male body, praising
both for their "sacred" status. The woman is much more strongly associated with reproduction:
she is "the gates of the body, and... the gates of the soul." The man is more a figure of "action
and power," although he too is associated with propagation. The small anecdote of the "common
farmer" is an interesting case. The farmer is seen through the eyes of his children, who "love
him." While the love of the children is not presented erotically, it shades into the erotic gaze of
the poet, who longs to "sit by him... that [I] and he might touch each other." The ability of this
simple man to build a sort of family dynasty seems to be what attracts the poet.
Women are of course generative in the same literal sense in this poem. The eighth stanza opens
with the image of "[a] woman's body at auction": obviously a slave auction. Strangely the poet,
in the previous stanza, has spoken of helping an auctioneer sell a male slave. The auctioneer
"does not half know his business" and the poet helps him by cataloguing the wonders of the
man's body. Both the male and the female slave are touted as the parents of multitudes. This
makes them attractive as property: they can become essentially breeding stock for their masters.
This kind of extreme valuation of the body would seem to be the extreme case of the kind of
body-centrism Whitman advocates. In fact, though, it is the opposite. For Whitman, the body has
primacy in its ability to generate experience, which can be compared metaphorically to the
generation of children. The body can connect both erotically and spiritually with the bodies of
others. In all this, the role of the body as the conduit between the soul and the world remains
crucial. The slave auctions show a kind of debased, misguided worship of the physical.
The final stanza of the poem gives a catalogue of body parts, both the poet's and others'. The
parts listed have functions, of course, but they also provide the raw materials for poetry: "these
are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul." The body becomes sacred through
its linkage with the soul; while it is only the soul's helper or accomplice, it nevertheless does not
deserve second-rate status, for it enables not only spirituality but also poetry.
Study Questions
1. Describe Whitman's conceptions of the soul and the body, and the relationship between
the two. Which is more important, in his view?
2. How do you account for the eroticism in Whitman's poetry? Does he use homosexual
eroticism differently from heterosexual eroticism?
3. What kinds of structures does Whitman use in his poetry? Why might he be using these
rather than traditional structures like rhyme?
4. Describe Whitman's diction. What kind of language does he use? Does this have
implications politically? Poetically?
5. Discuss the relationship of the poems in Leaves of Grass to one another. Are they
intended to be read together or separately? Do they form one larger document? What
about the different editions of Leaves of Grass? Why did Whitman keep revising this
work?
6. How does Whitman handle modernity and technological change? What kinds of
landscapes do we see in his poetry? What role does the city play? What role does nature
play?
7. What is uniquely American about Whitman's poetry? Consider both substance and style.
8. How does Whitman incorporate current events into his poetry? What about the Civil
War?
9. What, in Whitman's view, is the function of poetry? Does it have a public or ceremonial
role?
10. Describe Whitman's account of his development as a poet. What experiences were
important, and why?
“Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf
Context
Virginia Woolf, the English novelist, critic, and essayist, was born on January 25, 1882,
to Leslie Stephen, a literary critic, and Julia Duckworth Stephen. Woolf grew up in an uppermiddle-class, socially active, literary family in Victorian London. She had three full siblings, two
half-brothers, and two half-sisters. She was educated at home, becoming a voracious reader of
the books in her father's extensive library. Tragedy first afflicted the family when Woolf's
mother died in 1895, then hit again two years later, when her half-sister, Stella, the caregiver in
the Stephen family, died. Woolf experienced her first bout of mental illness after her mother's
death, and she suffered from mania and severe depression for the rest of her life. Patriarchal,
repressive Victorian society did not encourage women to attend universities or to participate in
intellectual debate. Nonetheless, Woolf began publishing her first essays and reviews after 1904,
the year her father died and she and her siblings moved to the Bloomsbury area of London.
Young students and artists, drawn to the vitality and intellectual curiosity of the Stephen clan,
congregated on Thursday evenings to share their views about the world. The Bloomsbury group,
as Woolf and her friends came to be called, disregarded the constricting taboos of the Victorian
era, and such topics as religion, sex, and art fueled the talk at their weekly salons. They even
discussed homosexuality, a subject that shocked many of the group's contemporaries. For Woolf,
the group served as the undergraduate education that society had denied her.
The Voyage Out, Woolf's first novel, was published in 1915, three years after her
marriage to Leonard Woolf, a member of the Bloomsbury group. Their partnership furthered the
group's intellectual ideals. With Leonard, Woolf founded Hogarth Press, which published
Sigmund Freud, Katherine Mansfield, T.S.Eliot, and other notable authors. She determinedly
pursued her own writing as well. During the next few years, Woolf kept a diary and wrote
several novels, a collection of short stories, and numerous essays. She struggled, as she wrote, to
both deal with her bouts of bipolarity and to find her true voice as a writer. Before World War I,
Woolf viewed the realistic Victorian novel, with its neat and linear plots, as an inadequate form
of expression. Her opinion intensified after the war, and in the 1920s she began searching for the
form that would reflect the violent contrasts and disjointed impressions of the world around her.
In Mrs.Dalloway, published in 1925, Woolf discovered a new literary form capable of
expressing the new realities of postwar England. The novel depicts the subjective experiences
and memories of its central characters over a single day in post – World War I London. Divided
into parts, rather than chapters, the novel's structure highlights the finely interwoven texture of
the characters' thoughts. Critics tend to agree that Woolf found her writer's voice with this novel.
At forty-three, she knew her experimental style was unlikely to be a popular success but no
longer felt compelled to seek critical praise. The novel did, however, gain a measure of
commercial and critical success. This book, which focuses on commonplace tasks, such as
shopping, throwing a party, and eating dinner, showed that no act was too small or too ordinary
for a writer's attention. Ultimately, Mrs.Dalloway transformed the novel as an art form.
Woolf develops the book's protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, and myriad other characters
by chronicling their interior thoughts with little pause or explanation, a style referred to as stream
of consciousness. Several central characters and more than one hundred minor characters appear
in the text, and their thoughts spin out like spider webs. Sometimes the threads of thought cross –
and people succeed in communicating. More often, however, the threads do not cross, leaving
the characters isolated and alone. Woolf believed that behind the “cotton wool” of life, as she
terms it in her autobiographical collection of essays Moments of Being (1941), and under the
downpour of impressions saturating a mind during each moment, a pattern exists.
Characters in Mrs.Dalloway occasionally perceive life's pattern through a sudden shock,
or what Woolf called a “moment of being.” Suddenly the cotton wool parts, and a person sees
reality, and his or her place in it, clearly. “In the vast catastrophe of the European war,” wrote
Woolf, “our emotions had to be broken up for us, and put at an angle from us, before we could
allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or fiction.” These words appear in her essay collection,
The Common Reader, which was published just one month before Mrs.Dalloway. Her novel
attempts to uncover fragmented emotions, such as desperation or love, in order to find, through
“moments of being,” a way to endure. While writing Mrs.Dalloway, Woolf reread the Greek
classics along with two new modernist writers, Marcel Proust and James Joyce. Woolf shared
these writers' interest in time and psychology, and she incorporated these issues into her novel.
She wanted to show characters in flux, rather than static, characters who think and emote as they
move through space, who react to their surroundings in ways that mirrored actual human
experience. Rapid political and social change marked the period between the two world wars: the
British Empire, for which so many people had sacrificed their lives to protect and preserve, was
in decline. Countries like India were beginning to question Britain's colonial rule. At home, the
Labour Party, with its plans for economic reform, was beginning to challenge the Conservative
Party, with its emphasis on imperial business interests. Women, who had flooded the workforce
to replace the men who had gone to war, were demanding equal rights. Men, who had seen
unspeakable atrocities in the first modern war, were questioning the usefulness of class-based
sociopolitical institutions. Woolf lent her support to the feminist movement in her nonfiction
book A Room of One's Own (1929), as well as in numerous essays, and she was briefly involved
in the women's suffrage movement. Although Mrs.Dalloway portrays the shifting political
atmosphere through the characters Peter Walsh, Richard Dalloway, and Hugh Whitbread, it
focuses more deeply on the charged social mood through the characters Septimus Warren Smith
and Clarissa Dalloway. Woolf delves into the consciousness of Clarissa, a woman who exists
largely in the domestic sphere, to ensure that readers take her character seriously, rather than
simply dismiss her as a vain and uneducated upper-class wife. In spite of her heroic and
imperfect effort in life, Clarissa, like every human being and even the old social order itself,
must face death.
Woolf's struggles with mental illness gave her an opportunity to witness firsthand how
insensitive medical professionals could be, and she critiques their tactlessness in Mrs. Dalloway.
One of Woolf's doctors suggested that plenty of rest and rich food would lead to a full recovery,
a cure prescribed in the novel, and another removed several of her teeth. In the early twentieth
century, mental health problems were too often considered imaginary, an embarrassment, or the
product of moral weakness. During one bout of illness, Woolf heard birds sing like Greek
choruses and King Edward use foul language among some azaleas. In 1941, as England entered a
second world war, and at the onset of another breakdown she feared would be permanent, Woolf
placed a large stone in her pocket to weigh herself down and drowned herself in the River Ouse.
Plot Overview
Mrs.Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one woman's life. Clarissa
Dalloway, an upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighborhood to prepare for the
party she will host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and
friend, Peter Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly. The two have always judged each other
harshly, and their meeting in the present intertwines with their thoughts of the past. Years earlier,
Clarissa refused Peter's marriage proposal, and Peter has never quite gotten over it. Peter asks
Clarissa if she is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her daughter,
Elizabeth, enters the room. Peter leaves and goes to Regent's Park. He thinks about Clarissa's
refusal, which still obsesses him. The point of view then shifts to Septimus, a veteran of World
War I who was injured in trench warfare and now suffers from shell shock. Septimus and his
Italian wife, Lucrezia, pass time in Regent's Park. They are waiting for Septimus's appointment
with Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist. Before the war, Septimus was a budding
young poet and lover of Shakespeare; when the war broke out, he enlisted immediately for
romantic patriotic reasons. He became numb to the horrors of war and its aftermath: when his
friend Evans died, he felt little sadness. Now Septimus sees nothing of worth in the England he
fought for, and he has lost the desire to preserve either his society or himself. Suicidal, he
believes his lack of feeling is a crime. Clearly Septimus's experiences in the war have
permanently scarred him, and he has serious mental problems. However, Sir William does not
listen to what Septimus says and diagnoses “a lack of proportion.” Sir William plans to separate
Septimus from Lucrezia and send him to a mental institution in the country.
Richard Dalloway eats lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, members of high
society. The men help Lady Bruton write a letter to the Times, London's largest newspaper. After
lunch, Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large bunch of roses. He intends to tell her that he
loves her but finds that he cannot, because it has been so long since he last said it. Clarissa
considers the void that exists between people, even between husband and wife. Even though she
values the privacy she is able to maintain in her marriage, considering it vital to the success of
the relationship, at the same time she finds slightly disturbing the fact that Richard doesn't know
everything about her. Clarissa sees off Elizabeth and her history teacher, Miss Kilman, who are
going shopping. The two older women despise one another passionately, each believing the other
to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia are in their
apartment, enjoying a moment of happiness together before the men come to take Septimus to
the asylum. One of Septimus's doctors, Dr. Holmes, arrives, and Septimus fears the doctor will
destroy his soul. In order to avoid this fate, he jumps from a window to his death.
Peter hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimus's body and marvels ironically at the
level of London's civilization. He goes to Clarissa's party, where most of the novel's major
characters are assembled. Clarissa works hard to make her party a success but feels dissatisfied
by her own role and acutely conscious of Peter's critical eye. All the partygoers, but especially
Peter and Sally Seton, have, to some degree, failed to accomplish the dreams of their youth.
Though the social order is undoubtedly changing, Elizabeth and the members of her generation
will probably repeat the errors of Clarissa's generation. Sir William Bradshaw arrives late, and
his wife explains that one of his patients, the young veteran (Septimus), has committed suicide.
Clarissa retreats to the privacy of a small room to consider Septimus's death. She understands
that he was overwhelmed by life and that men like Sir William make life intolerable. She
identifies with Septimus, admiring him for having taken the plunge and for not compromising his
soul. She feels, with her comfortable position as a society hostess, responsible for his death. The
party nears its close as guests begin to leave. Clarissa enters the room, and her presence fills
Peter with a great excitement.
Character List
Clarissa Dalloway - The eponymous protagonist. The novel begins with Clarissa's point of
view and follows her perspective more closely than that of any other character. As Clarissa
prepares for the party she will give that evening, we are privy to her meandering thoughts.
Clarissa is vivacious and cares a great deal about what people think of her, but she is also selfreflective. She often questions life's true meaning, wondering whether happiness is truly
possible. She feels both a great joy and a great dread about her life, both of which manifest in her
struggles to strike a balance between her desire for privacy and her need to communicate with
others. Throughout the day Clarissa reflects on the crucial summer when she chose to marry her
husband, Richard, instead of her friend Peter Walsh. Though she is happy with Richard, she is
not entirely certain she made the wrong choice about Peter, and she also thinks frequently about
her friend Sally Seton, whom she also once loved.
Septimus Warren Smith - A World War I veteran suffering from shell shock, married to an
Italian woman named Lucrezia. Though he is insane, Septimus views English society in much
the same way as Clarissa does, and he struggles, as she does, to both maintain his privacy and
fulfill his need to communicate with others. He shares so many traits with Clarissa that he could
be her double. Septimus is pale, has a hawklike posture, and wears a shabby overcoat. Before the
war he was a young, idealistic, aspiring poet. After the war he regards human nature as evil and
believes he is guilty of not being able to feel. Rather than succumb to the society he abhors, he
commits suicide.
Peter Walsh - A close friend of Clarissa's, once desperately in love with her. Clarissa rejected
Peter's marriage proposal when she was eighteen, and he moved to India. He has not been to
London for five years. He is highly critical of others, is conflicted about nearly everything in his
life, and has a habit of playing with his pocketknife. Often overcome with emotion, he cries
easily. He frequently has romantic problems with women and is currently in love with Daisy, a
married woman in India. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and a bow tie and used to be a Socialist.
Sally Seton - A close friend of Clarissa and Peter in their youth. Sally was a wild, handsome
ragamuffin who smoked cigars and would say anything. She and Clarissa were sexually attracted
to one another as teenagers. Now Sally lives in Manchester and is married with five boys. Her
married name is Lady Rosseter.
Richard Dalloway - Clarissa's husband. A member of Parliament in the Conservative
government, Richard plans to write a history of the great English military family, the Brutons,
when the Labour Party comes to power. He is a sportsman and likes being in the country. He is a
loving father and husband. While devoted to social reform, he appreciates English tradition. He
has failed to make it into the Cabinet, or main governing body.
Hugh Whitbread - Clarissa's old friend, married to Evelyn Whitbread. An impeccable
Englishman and upholder of English tradition, Hugh writes letters to the Times about various
causes. He never brushes beneath the surface of any subject and is rather vain. Many are critical
of his pompousness and gluttony, but he remains oblivious. He is, as Clarissa thinks, almost too
perfectly dressed. He makes Clarissa feel young and insecure.
Lucrezia Smith (Rezia)- Septimus's wife, a 24-year-old hat-maker from Milan. Rezia loves
Septimus but is forced to bear the burden of his mental illness alone. Normally a lively and
playful young woman, she has grown thin with worry. She feels isolated and continually wishes
to share her unhappiness with smb. She trims hats for the friends of her neighbor, Mrs.Filmer.
Elizabeth Dalloway - Clarissa and Richard's only child. Gentle, considerate, and somewhat
passive, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth does not have Clarissa's energy. She has a dark beauty that
is beginning to attract attention. Not a fan of parties or clothes, she likes being in the country
with her father and dogs. She spends a great deal of time praying with her history teacher, the
religious Miss Kilman, and is considering career options.
Doris Kilman - Elizabeth's history teacher, who has German ancestry. Miss Kilman has a
history degree and was fired from a teaching job during the war because of society's anti-German
prejudice. She is over forty and wears an unattractive mackintosh coat because she does not
dress to please. She became a born-again Christian two years and three months ago. Poor, with a
forehead like an egg, she is bitter and dislikes Clarissa intensely but adores Elizabeth.
Sir William Bradshaw - A renowned London psychiatrist. When Lucrezia seeks help for her
insane husband, Septimus, Septimus's doctor, Dr. Holmes, recommends Sir William. Sir William
believes that most people who think they are mad suffer instead from a “lack of proportion.” He
determines that Septimus has suffered a complete nervous breakdown and recommends that
Septimus spend time in the country, apart from Lucrezia. The hardworking son of a tradesman,
Sir William craves power and has become respected in his field.
Dr.Holmes - Septimus's general practitioner. When Septimus begins to suffer the delayed effects
of shell shock, Lucrezia seeks his help. Dr.Holmes claims nothing is wrong with Septimus, but
that Lucrezia should see Sir William if she doesn't believe him. Septimus despises Dr.Holmes
and refers to him as “human nature.” Dr.Holmes likes to go to the music hall and to play golf.
Lady (Millicent) Bruton - A member of high society and a friend of the Dalloways. At sixtytwo years old, Lady Bruton is devoted to promoting emigration to Canada for English families.
Normally erect and magisterial, she panics when she has to write a letter to the editor and seeks
help from Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread. She has an assistant, Milly Brush, and a chow
dog. She is a descendant of General Sir Talbot Moore.
Miss Helena Parry (Aunt Helena) - Clarissa's aunt. Aunt Helena is a relic of the strict English
society Clarissa finds so confining. A great botanist, she also enjoys talking about orchids and
Burma. She is a formidable old lady, over eighty, who found Sally Seton's behavior as a youth
shocking. She has one glass eye.
Ellie Henderson - Clarissa's dowdy cousin. Ellie, in her early fifties, has thin hair, a meager
profile, and bad eyesight. Not trained for any career and having only a small income, she wears
an old black dress to Clarissa's party. She is self-effacing, subject to chills, and close to a woman
named Edith. Clarissa finds her dull and does not want to invite her to the party, and Ellie stands
alone nearly the whole time, aware that she does not really belong.
Evans - Septimus's wartime officer and close friend. Evans died in Italy just before the armistice,
but Septimus, in his deluded state, continues to see and hear him behind trees and sitting room
screens. During the war, Evans and Septimus were inseparable. Evans was a shy Englishman
with red hair.
Mrs. Filmer - The Smiths' neighbor. Mrs. Filmer finds Septimus odd. She has honest blue eyes
and is Rezia's only friend in London. Her daughter is Mrs. Peters, who listens to the Smiths'
gramophone when they are not at home. Mrs. Filmer's granddaughter delivers the newspaper to
the Smiths' home each evening, and Rezia always makes the child's arrival into a momentous,
joyous event.
Daisy Simmons - Peter Walsh's lover in India, married to a major in the Indian army. Daisy is
twenty-four years old and has two small children. Peter is in London to arrange her divorce.
Evelyn Whitbread - Hugh Whitbread's wife. Evelyn suffers from an unspecified internal
ailment and spends much of her time in nursing homes. We learn about her from others. Peter
Walsh describes her as mousy and almost negligible, but he also points out that occasionally she
says something sharp.
Mr.Brewer - Septimus's boss at Sibleys and Arrowsmith. Mr.Brewer, the managing clerk, is
paternal with his employees and foresees a promising career for Septimus, but Septimus
volunteers for the war before he can reach any degree of success. Mr.Brewer promotes Septimus
when he returns from the war, but Septimus is already losing his mind. Mr. Brewer has a waxed
moustache and a coral tiepin.
Jim Hutton - An awful poet at the Dalloways' party. Jim is badly dressed, with red socks and
unruly hair, and he does not enjoy talking to another guest, Professor Brierly, who is a professor
of Milton. Jim shares with Clarissa a love of Bach and thinks she is “the best of the great ladies
who took an interest in art.” He enjoys mimicking people.
Analysis of Major Characters
Clarissa Dalloway, the heroine of the novel, struggles constantly to balance her internal life
with the external world. Her world consists of glittering surfaces, such as fine fashion, parties,
and high society, but as she moves through that world she probes beneath those surfaces in
search of deeper meaning. Yearning for privacy, Clarissa has a tendency toward introspection
that gives her a profound capacity for emotion, which many other characters lack. However, she
is always concerned with appearances and keeps herself tightly composed, seldom sharing her
feelings with anyone. She uses a constant stream of convivial chatter and activity to keep her
soul locked safely away, which can make her seem shallow even to those who know her well.
Constantly overlaying the past and the present, Clarissa strives to reconcile herself to life despite
her potent memories. For most of the novel she considers aging and death with trepidation, even
as she performs life-affirming actions, such as buying flowers. Though content, Clarissa never
lets go of the doubt she feels about the decisions that have shaped her life, particularly her
decision to marry Richard instead of Peter Walsh. She understands that life with Peter would
have been difficult, but at the same time she is uneasily aware that she sacrificed passion for the
security and tranquility of an upper-class life. At times she wishes for a chance to live life over
again. She experiences a moment of clarity and peace when she watches her old neighbor
through her window, and by the end of the day she has come to terms with the possibility of
death. Like Septimus, Clarissa feels keenly the oppressive forces in life, and she accepts that the
life she has is all she'll get. Her will to endure, however, prevails.
Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I, suffers from shell shock and is lost within
his own mind. He feels guilty even as he despises himself for being made numb by the war. His
doctor has ordered Lucrezia, Septimus's wife, to make Septimus notice things outside himself,
but Septimus has removed himself from the physical world. Instead, he lives in an internal
world, wherein he sees and hears things that aren't really there and he talks to his dead friend
Evans. He is sometimes overcome with the beauty in the world, but he also fears that the people
in it have no capacity for honesty or kindness. Woolf intended for Clarissa to speak the sane
truth and Septimus the insane truth, and indeed Septimus's detachment enables him to judge
other people more harshly than Clarissa is capable of. The world outside of Septimus is
threatening, and the way Septimus sees that world offers little hope. On the surface, Septimus
seems quite dissimilar to Clarissa, but he embodies many characteristics that Clarissa shares and
thinks in much the same way she does. He could almost be her double in the novel. Septimus and
Clarissa both have beak-noses, love Shakespeare, and fear oppression. More important, as
Clarissa's double, Septimus offers a contrast between the conscious struggle of a working-class
veteran and the blind opulence of the upper class. His troubles call into question the legitimacy
of the English society he fought to preserve during the war. Because his thoughts often run
parallel to Clarissa's and echo hers in many ways, the thin line between what is considered sanity
and insanity gets thinner and thinner. Septimus chooses to escape his problems by killing
himself, a dramatic and tragic gesture that ultimately helps Clarissa to accept her own choices, as
well as the society in which she lives.
Peter Walsh's most consistent character trait is ambivalence: he is middle-aged and fears he has
wasted his life, but sometimes he also feels he is not yet old. He cannot commit to an identity, or
even to a romantic partner. He cannot decide what he feels and tries often to talk himself into
feeling or not feeling certain things. For example, he spends the day telling himself that he no
longer loves Clarissa, but his grief at losing her rises painfully to the surface when he is in her
presence, and his obsession with her suggests that he is still attracted to her and may even long
for renewed romance. Even when he gathers his anger toward Clarissa and tells her about his
new love, he cannot sustain the anger and ends up weeping. Peter acts as a foil to Richard, who
is stable, generous, and rather simple. Unlike calm Richard, Peter is like a storm, thundering and
crashing, unpredictable even to himself. Peter's unhealed hurt and persistent insecurity make him
severely critical of other characters, especially the Dalloways. He detests Clarissa's bourgeois
lifestyle, though he blames Richard for making her into the kind of woman she is. Clarissa intuits
even his most veiled criticisms, such as when he remarks on her green dress, and his judgments
strongly affect her own assessments of her life and choices. Despite his sharp critiques of others,
Peter cannot clearly see his own shortcomings. His self-obsession and neediness would have
suffocated Clarissa, which is partly why she refused his marriage proposal as a young woman.
Peter acquiesces to the very English society he criticizes, enjoying the false sense of order it
offers, which he lacks in his life. Despite Peter's ambivalence and tendency toward analysis, he
still feels life deeply. While Clarissa comes to terms with her own mortality, Peter becomes
frantic at the thought of death. He follows a young woman through the London streets to smother
his thoughts of death with a fantasy of life and adventure. His critical nature may distance him
from others, but he values his life nonetheless.
Sally Seton exists only as a figure in Clarissa's memory for most of the novel, and when she
appears at Clarissa's party, she is older but still familiar. Though the women have not seen each
other for years, Sally still puts Clarissa first when she counts her blessings, even before her
husband or five sons. As a girl, Sally was without inhibitions, and as an adult at the party, she is
still effusive and lacks Clarissa's restraint. Long ago, Sally and Clarissa plotted to reform the
world together. Now, however, both are married, a fate they once considered a “catastrophe.”
Sally has changed and calmed down a great deal since the Bourton days, but she is still enough
of a loose cannon to make Peter nervous and to kindle Clarissa's old warm feelings. Both Sally
and Clarissa have yielded to the forces of English society to some degree, but Sally keeps more
distance than Clarissa does. She often takes refuge in her garden, as she despairs over
communicating with humans. However, she has not lost all hope of meaningful communication,
and she still thinks saying what one feels is the most important contribution one can make to
society. Clarissa considers the moment when Sally kissed her on the lips and offered her a flower
at Bourton the “most exquisite moment of her whole life.” Society would never have allowed
that love to flourish, since women of Clarissa's class were expected to marry and become society
wives. Sally has always been more of a free spirit than Clarissa, and when she arrives at
Clarissa's party, she feels rather distant from and confused by the life Clarissa has chosen. The
women's kiss marked a true moment of passion that could have pushed both women outside of
the English society they know, and it stands out in contrast to the confrontation Peter remembers
between Sally and Hugh regarding women's rights. One morning at Bourton, Sally angrily told
Hugh he represented the worst of the English middle class and that he was to blame for the plight
of the young girls in Piccadilly. Later, Hugh supposedly kissed her in the smoking room. Hugh's
is the forced kiss of traditional English society, while the kiss with Clarissa is a revelation.
Ultimately, the society that spurs Hugh's kiss prevails for both women.
Richard Dalloway's simplicity and steadfastness have enabled him to build a stable life for
Clarissa, but these same qualities represent the compromise that marrying him required. Richard
is a simple, hardworking, sensible husband who loves Clarissa and their daughter, Elizabeth.
However, he will never share Clarissa's desire to truly and fully communicate, and he cannot
appreciate the beauty of life in the same way she can. At one point, Richard tries to overcome his
habitual stiffness and shyness by planning to tell Clarissa that he loves her, but he is ultimately
too repressed to say the words, in part because it has been so long since he last said them. Just as
he does not understand Clarissa's desires, he does not recognize Elizabeth's potential as a
woman. If he had had a son, he would have encouraged him to work, but he does not offer the
same encouragement to Elizabeth, even as she contemplates job options. His reticence on the
matter increases the likelihood that she will eventually be in the same predicament as Clarissa,
unable to support herself through a career and thus unable to gain the freedom to follow her
passions. Richard considers tradition of prime importance, rather than passion or open
communication. He champions the traditions England went to war to preserve, in contrast to
Septimus, and does not recognize their destructive power. Despite his occasional misgivings,
Richard has close associations with members of English high society. He is critical of Hugh, but
they revere many of the same symbols, including the figure of the grand old lady with money,
who is helpless when it comes to surviving in a patriarchal society. Richard likes the fact that
women need him, but sometimes he wrongly assumes they do. For example, he does not
recognize that a female vagrant may not want his help but may instead enjoy living outside the
rules of his society. For Richard, this sort of freedom is unimaginable.
Themes
Communication vs. Privacy
Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and others struggle to find outlets
for communication as well as adequate privacy, and the balance between the two is difficult for
all to attain. Clarissa in particular struggles to open the pathway for communication and throws
parties in an attempt to draw people together. At the same time, she feels shrouded within her
own reflective soul and thinks the ultimate human mystery is how she can exist in one room
while the old woman in the house across from hers exists in another. Even as Clarissa celebrates
the old woman's independence, she knows it comes with an inevitable loneliness. Peter tries to
explain the contradictory human impulses toward privacy and communication by comparing the
soul to a fish that swims along in murky water, then rises quickly to the surface to frolic on the
waves. The war has changed people's ideas of what English society should be, and understanding
is difficult between those who support traditional English society and those who hope for
continued change. Meaningful connections in this disjointed postwar world are not easy to make,
no matter what efforts the characters put forth. Ultimately, Clarissa sees Septimus's death as a
desperate, but legitimate, act of communication.
Disillusionment with the British Empire
Throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire seemed invincible. It expanded into many
other countries, such as India, Nigeria, and South Africa, becoming the largest empire the world
had ever seen. World War I was a violent reality check. For the first time in nearly a century, the
English were vulnerable on their own land. The Allies technically won the war, but the extent of
devastation England suffered made it a victory in name only. Entire communities of young men
were injured and killed. In 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, England suffered 60,000
casualties—the largest slaughter in England's history. Not surprisingly, English citizens lost
much of their faith in the empire after the war. No longer could England claim to be invulnerable
and all-powerful. Citizens were less inclined to willingly adhere to the rigid constraints imposed
by England's class system, which benefited only a small margin of society but which all classes
had fought to preserve. In 1923, when Mrs. Dalloway takes place, the old establishment and its
oppressive values are nearing their end. English citizens, including Clarissa, Peter, and Septimus,
feel the failure of the empire as strongly as they feel their own personal failures. Those citizens
who still champion English tradition, such as Aunt Helena and Lady Bruton, are old. Aunt
Helena, with her glass eye (perhaps a symbol of her inability or unwillingness to see the empire's
disintegration), is turning into an artifact. Anticipating the end of the Conservative Party's reign,
Richard plans to write the history of the great British military family, the Brutons, who are
already part of the past. The old empire faces an imminent demise, and the loss of the traditional
and familiar social order leaves the English at loose ends.
The Fear of Death
Thoughts of death lurk constantly beneath the surface of everyday life in Mrs. Dalloway,
especially for Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter, and this awareness makes even mundane events and
interactions meaningful, sometimes even threatening. At the very start of her day, when she goes
out to buy flowers for her party, Clarissa remembers a moment in her youth when she suspected
a terrible event would occur. Big Ben tolls out the hour, and Clarissa repeats a line from
Shakespeare's Cymbeline over and over as the day goes on: “Fear no more the heat o' the sun /
Nor the furious winter's rages.” The line is from a funeral song that celebrates death as a comfort
after a difficult life. Middle-aged Clarissa has experienced the deaths of her father, mother, and
sister and has lived through the calamity of war, and she has grown to believe that living even
one day is dangerous. Death is very naturally in her thoughts, and the line from Cymbeline,
along with Septimus's suicidal embrace of death, ultimately helps her to be at peace with her own
mortality. Peter Walsh, so insecure in his identity, grows frantic at the idea of death and follows
an anonymous young woman through London to forget about it. Septimus faces death most
directly. Though he fears it, he finally chooses it over what seems to him a direr alternative—
living another day.
The Threat of Oppression
Oppression is a constant threat for Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway, and Septimus
dies in order to escape what he perceives to be an oppressive social pressure to conform. It
comes in many guises, including religion, science, or social convention. Miss Kilman and Sir
William Bradshaw are two of the major oppressors in the novel: Miss Kilman dreams of felling
Clarissa in the name of religion, and Sir William would like to subdue all those who challenge
his conception of the world. Both wish to convert the world to their belief systems in order to
gain power and dominate others, and their rigidity oppresses all who come into contact with
them. More subtle oppressors, even those who do not intend to, do harm by supporting the
repressive English social system. Though Clarissa herself lives under the weight of that system
and often feels oppressed by it, her acceptance of patriarchal English society makes her, in part,
responsible for Septimus's death. Thus she too is an oppressor of sorts. At the end of the novel,
she reflects on his suicide: “Somehow it was her disaster—her disgrace.” She accepts
responsibility, though other characters are equally or more fully to blame, which suggests that
everyone is in some way complicit in the oppression of others.
Motifs
Time imparts order to the fluid thoughts, memories, and encounters that make up Mrs.
Dalloway. Big Ben, a symbol of England and its might, sounds out the hour relentlessly,
ensuring that the passage of time, and the awareness of eventual death, is always palpable.
Clarissa, Septimus, Peter, and other characters are in the grip of time, and as they age they
evaluate how they have spent their lives. Clarissa, in particular, senses the passage of time, and
the appearance of Sally and Peter, friends from the past, emphasizes how much time has gone by
since Clarissa was young. Once the hour chimes, however, the sound disappears—its “leaden
circles dissolved in the air.” This expression recurs many times throughout the novel, indicating
how ephemeral time is, despite the pomp of Big Ben and despite people's wary obsession with it.
“It is time,” Rezia says to Septimus as they sit in the park waiting for the doctor's appointment on
Harley Street. The ancient woman at the Regent's Park Tube station suggests that the human
condition knows no boundaries of time, since she continues to sing the same song for what
seems like eternity. She understands that life is circular, not merely linear, which is the only sort
of time that Big Ben tracks. Time is so important to the themes, structure, and characters of this
novel that Woolf almost named her book The Hours.
Shakespeare
The many appearances of Shakespeare specifically and poetry in general suggest hopefulness,
the possibility of finding comfort in art, and the survival of the soul in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa
quotes Shakespeare's plays many times throughout the day. When she shops for flowers at the
beginning of the novel, she reads a few lines from a Shakespeare play, Cymbeline, in a book
displayed in a shop window. The lines come from a funeral hymn in the play that suggests death
should be embraced as a release from the constraints of life. Since Clarissa fears death for much
of the novel, these lines suggest that an alternative, hopeful way of addressing the prospect of
death exists. Clarissa also identifies with the title character in Othello, who loves his wife but
kills her out of jealousy, then kills himself when he learns his jealousy was unwarranted. Clarissa
shares with Othello the sense of having lost a love, especially when she thinks about Sally Seton.
Before the war, Septimus appreciated Shakespeare as well, going so far as aspiring to be a poet.
He no longer finds comfort in poetry after he returns. The presence of an appreciation for poetry
reveals much about Clarissa and Septimus, just as the absence of such appreciation reveals much
about the characters who differ from them, such as Richard Dalloway and Lady Bruton. Richard
finds Shakespeare's sonnets indecent, and he compares reading them to listening in at a keyhole.
Not surprisingly, Richard himself has a difficult time voicing his emotions. Lady Bruton never
reads poetry either, and her demeanor is so rigid and impersonal that she has a reputation of
caring more for politics than for people. Traditional English society promotes a suppression of
visible emotion, and since Shakespeare and poetry promote a discussion of feeling and emotion,
they belong to sensitive people like Clarissa, who are in many ways antiestablishment.
Trees and Flowers
Tree and flower images abound in Mrs. Dalloway. The color, variety, and beauty of flowers
suggest feeling and emotion, and those characters who are comfortable with flowers, such as
Clarissa, have distinctly different personalities than those characters who are not, such as
Richard and Lady Bruton. The first time we see Clarissa, a deep thinker, she is on her way to the
flower shop, where she will revel in the flowers she sees. Richard and Hugh, more emotionally
repressed representatives of the English establishment, offer traditional roses and carnations to
Clarissa and Lady Bruton, respectively. Richard handles the bouquet of roses awkwardly, like a
weapon. Lady Bruton accepts the flowers with a “grim smile” and lays them stiffly by her plate,
also unsure of how to handle them. When she eventually stuffs them into her dress, the
femininity and grace of the gesture are rare and unexpected. Trees, with their extensive root
systems, suggest the vast reach of the human soul, and Clarissa and Septimus, who both struggle
to protect their souls, revere them. Clarissa believes souls survive in trees after death, and
Septimus, who has turned his back on patriarchal society, feels that cutting down a tree is the
equivalent of committing murder.
Waves and Water regularly wash over events and thoughts in Mrs. Dalloway and nearly always
suggest the possibility of extinction or death. While Clarissa mends her party dress, she thinks
about the peaceful cycle of waves collecting and falling on a summer day, when the world itself
seems to say “that is all.” Time sometimes takes on waterlike qualities for Clarissa, such as when
the chime from Big Ben “flood[s]” her room, marking another passing hour. Rezia, in a rare
moment of happiness with Septimus after he has helped her construct a hat, lets her words trail
off “like a contented tap left running.” Even then, she knows that stream of contentedness will
dry up eventually. The narrative structure of the novel itself also suggests fluidity. One
character's thoughts appear, intensify, then fade into another's, much like waves that collect then
fall. Traditional English society itself is a kind of tide, pulling under those people not strong
enough to stand on their own. Lady Bradshaw, for example, eventually succumbs to Sir
William's bullying, overbearing presence. The narrator says “she had gone under,” that her will
became “water-logged” and eventually sank into his. Septimus is also sucked under society's
pressures. Earlier in the day, before he kills himself, he looks out the window and sees
everything as though it is underwater. Trees drag their branches through the air as though
dragging them through water, the light outside is “watery gold,” and his hand on the sofa
reminds him of floating in seawater. While Septimus ultimately cannot accept or function in
society, Clarissa manages to navigate it successfully. Peter sees Clarissa in a “silver-green
mermaid's dress” at her party, “[l]olloping on the waves.” Between her mermaid's dress and her
ease in bobbing through her party guests, Clarissa succeeds in staying afloat. However, she
identifies with Septimus's wish to fight the cycle and go under, even if she will not succumb to
the temptation herself.
Symbols
The Prime Minister in Mrs. Dalloway embodies England's old values and hierarchical social
system, which are in decline. When Peter Walsh wants to insult Clarissa and suggest she will sell
out and become a society hostess, he says she will marry a prime minister. When Lady Bruton, a
champion of English tradition, wants to compliment Hugh, she calls him “My Prime Minister.”
The prime minister is a figure from the old establishment, which Clarissa and Septimus are
struggling against. Mrs. Dalloway takes place after World War I, a time when the English looked
desperately for meaning in the old symbols but found the symbols hollow. When the
conservative prime minister finally arrives at Clarissa's party, his appearance is unimpressive.
The old pyramidal social system that benefited the very rich before the war is now decaying, and
the symbols of its greatness have become pathetic.
Peter Walsh's Pocketknife and Other Weapons
Peter Walsh plays constantly with his pocketknife, and the opening, closing, and fiddling with
the knife suggest his flightiness and inability to make decisions. He cannot decide what he feels
and doesn't know whether he abhors English tradition and wants to fight it, or whether he accepts
English civilization just as it is. The pocketknife reveals Peter's defensiveness. He is armed with
the knife, in a sense, when he pays an unexpected visit to Clarissa, while she herself is armed
with her sewing scissors. Their weapons make them equal competitors. Knives and weapons are
also phallic symbols, hinting at sexuality and power. Peter cannot define his own identity, and
his constant fidgeting with the knife suggests how uncomfortable he is with his masculinity.
Characters fall into two groups: those who are armed and those who are not. Ellie Henderson, for
example, is “weaponless,” because she is poor and has not been trained for any career. Her
ambiguous relationship with her friend Edith also puts her at a disadvantage in society, leaving
her even less able to defend herself. Septimus, psychologically crippled by the literal weapons of
war, commits suicide by impaling himself on a metal fence, showing the danger lurking behind
man-made boundaries.
The Old Woman in the Window
The old woman in the window across from Clarissa's house represents the privacy of the soul
and the loneliness that goes with it, both of which will increase as Clarissa grows older. Clarissa
sees the future in the old woman: She herself will grow old and become more and more alone,
since that is the nature of life. As Clarissa grows older, she reflects more but communicates less.
Instead, she keeps her feelings locked inside the private rooms of her own soul, just as the old
woman rattles alone around the rooms of her house. Nevertheless, the old woman also represents
serenity and the purity of the soul. Clarissa respects the woman's private reflections and thinks
beauty lies in this act of preserving one's interior life and independence. Before Septimus jumps
out the window, he sees an old man descending the staircase outside, and this old man is a
parallel figure to the old woman. Though Clarissa and Septimus ultimately choose to preserve
their private lives in opposite ways, their view of loneliness, privacy, and communication
resonates within these similar images.
The Old Woman Singing an Ancient Song
Opposite the Regent's Park Tube station, an old woman sings an ancient song that celebrates life,
endurance, and continuity. She is oblivious to everyone around her as she sings, beyond caring
what the world thinks. The narrator explains that no matter what happens in the world, the old
woman will still be there, even in “ten million years,” and that the song has soaked “through the
knotted roots of infinite ages.” Roots, intertwined and hidden beneath the earth, suggest the
deepest parts of people's souls, and this woman's song touches everyone who hears it in some
way. Peter hears the song first and compares the old woman to a rusty pump. He doesn't catch
her triumphant message and feels only pity for her, giving her a coin before stepping into a taxi.
Rezia, however, finds strength in the old woman's words, and the song makes her feel as though
all will be okay in her life. Women in the novel, who have to view patriarchal English society
from the outside, are generally more attuned to nature and the messages of voices outside the
mainstream. Rezia, therefore, is able to see the old woman for the life force she is, instead of
simply a nuisance or a tragic figure to be dealt with, ignored, or pitied.
Key Facts
full title · Mrs. Dalloway; author · Virginia Woolf; type of work · Novel
genre · Modernist; formalist; feminist; language · English
time and place written · Woolf began Mrs.Dalloway in Sussex in 1922 and completed the novel in
London in 1924; date of first publication · May 14, 1925
publisher · Hogarth Press, the publishing house created by Leonard and Virginia Woolf in 1917
narrator · Anonymous. The omniscient narrator is a commenting voice who knows everything about the
characters. This voice appears occasionally among the subjective thoughts of characters. The critique of
Sir William Bradshaw's reverence of proportion and conversion is the narrator's most sustained
appearance.
point of view · Point of view changes constantly, often shifting from one character's stream of
consciousness (subjective interior thoughts) to another's within a single paragraph. Woolf most often uses
free indirect discourse, a literary technique that describes the interior thoughts of characters using thirdperson singular pronouns (he and she). This technique ensures that transitions between the thoughts of a
large number of characters are subtle and smooth.
tone · The narrator is against the oppression of the human soul and for the celebration of diversity, as are
the book's major characters. Sometimes the mood is humorous, but an underlying sadness is always
present.
tense · Though mainly in the immediate past, Peter's dream of the solitary traveler is in the present tense.
setting (time) · A day in mid-June, 1923. There are many flashbacks to a summer at Bourton in the early
1890s, when Clarissa was eighteen.
setting (place) · London, England. The novel takes place largely in the affluent neighborhood of
Westminster, where the Dalloways live.
protagonist · Clarissa Dalloway
major conflict · Clarissa and other characters try to preserve their souls and communicate in an oppressive
and fragmentary post–World War I England.
rising action · Clarissa spends the day organizing a party that will bring people together, while her double,
Septimus Warren Smith, eventually commits suicide due to the social pressures that oppress his soul.
climax · At her party, Clarissa goes to a small room to contemplate Septimus's suicide. She identifies with
him and is glad he did it, believing that he preserved his soul.
falling action · Clarissa returns to her party and is viewed from the outside. We do not know whether she
will change due to her moment of clarity, but we do know that she will endure.
foreshadowing
· At the opening of the novel, Clarissa recalls having a premonition one June day at Bourton that
“something awful was about to happen.” This sensation anticipates Septimus's suicide.
· Peter thinks of Clarissa when he wakes up from his nap in Regent's Park and considers how she has the
gift of making the world her own and standing out among a crowd. Peter states simply, “there she was,” a
line he will repeat as the last line of the novel, when Clarissa appears again at her party.
“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce
Context
J.Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in the town of Rathgar, near Dublin, Ireland. He
was the oldest of ten children born to a well-meaning but financially inept father and a solemn,
pious mother. Joyce's parents managed to scrape together enough money to send their talented
son to the Clongowes Wood College, a prestigious boarding school, and then to Belvedere
College, where Joyce excelled as an actor and writer. Later, he attended University College in
Dublin, where he became increasingly committed to language and literature as a champion of
Modernism. In 1902, Joyce left the university and moved to Paris, but briefly returned to Ireland
in 1903 upon the death of his mother. Shortly after his mother's death, Joyce began work on the
story that would later become A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Published in serial form
in 1914–1915, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man draws on many details from Joyce's early
life. The novel's protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways Joyce's fictional double—Joyce
had even published stories under the pseudonym "Stephen Daedalus" before writing the novel.
Like Joyce himself, Stephen is the son of an impoverished father and a highly devout Catholic
mother. Also like Joyce, he attends Clongowes Wood, Belvedere, and University Colleges,
struggling with questions of faith and nationality before leaving Ireland to make his own way as
an artist. Many of the scenes in the novel are fictional, but some of its most powerful moments
are autobiographical: both the Christmas dinner scene and Stephen's first sexual experience with
the Dublin prostitute closely resemble actual events in Joyce's life. In addition to drawing heavily
on Joyce's personal life, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man also makes a number of
references to the politics and religion of early-twentieth-century Ireland. When Joyce was
growing up, Ireland had been under British rule since the sixteenth century, and tensions
between Ireland and Britain had been especially high since the potato blight of 1845. In addition
to political strife, there was considerable religious tension: the majority of Irish, including the
Joyces, were Catholics, and strongly favored Irish independence. The Protestant minority, on the
other hand, mostly wished to remain united with Britain. Around the time Joyce was born, the
Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell was spearheading the movement for Irish independence.
In 1890, however, Parnell's longstanding affair with a married woman was exposed, leading the
Catholic Church to condemn him and causing many of his former followers to turn against him.
Many Irish nationalists blamed Parnell's death, which occurred only a year later, on the Catholic
Church. Indeed, we see these strong opinions about Parnell surface in A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man during an emotional Christmas dinner argument among members of the Dedalus
family. By 1900, the Irish people felt largely united in demanding freedom from British rule. In
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the young Stephen's friends at University College
frequently confront him with political questions about this struggle between Ireland and England.
After completing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Zurich in 1915, Joyce
returned to Paris, where he wrote two more major novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, over the
course of the next several years. These three novels, along with a short story collection,
Dubliners, form the core of his remarkable literary career. He died in 1941.
Today, Joyce is celebrated as one of the great literary pioneers of the twentieth century. He was
one of the first writers to make extensive and convincing use of stream of consciousness, a
stylistic form in which written prose seeks to represent the characters' stream of inner thoughts
and perceptions rather than render these characters from an objective, external perspective. This
technique, used in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man mostly during the opening sections
and in Chapter 5, sometimes makes for difficult reading. With effort, however, the seemingly
jumbled perceptions of stream of consciousness can crystallize into a coherent and sophisticated
portrayal of a character's experience. Another stylistic technique for which Joyce is noted is the
epiphany, a moment in which a character makes a sudden, profound realization – whether
prompted by an external object or a voice from within – that creates a change in his or her
perception of the world. Joyce uses epiphany most notably in Dubliners, but A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man is full of these sudden moments of spiritual revelation as well. Most
notable is a scene in which Stephen sees a young girl wading at the beach, which strikes him
with the sudden realization that an appreciation for beauty can be truly good. This moment is a
classic example of Joyce's belief that an epiphany can dramatically alter the human spirit in a
matter of just a few seconds.
Plot Overview
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in
Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off all his social,
familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. As a young boy,
Stephen's Catholic faith and Irish nationality heavily influence him. He attends a strict religious
boarding school called Clongowes Wood College. At first, Stephen is lonely and homesick at the
school, but as time passes he finds his place among the other boys. He enjoys his visits home,
even though family tensions run high after the death of the Irish political leader Charles Stewart
Parnell. This sensitive subject becomes the topic of a furious, politically charged argument over
the family's Christmas dinner. Stephen's father, Simon, is inept with money, and the family sinks
deeper and deeper into debt. After a summer spent in the company of his Uncle Charles, Stephen
learns that the family cannot afford to send him back to Clongowes, and that they will instead
move to Dublin. Stephen starts attending a prestigious day school called Belvedere, where he
grows to excel as a writer and as an actor in the student theater. His first sexual experience, with
a young Dublin prostitute, unleashes a storm of guilt and shame in Stephen, as he tries to
reconcile his physical desires with the stern Catholic morality of his surroundings. For a while,
he ignores his religious upbringing, throwing himself with debauched abandon into a variety of
sins—masturbation, gluttony, and more visits to prostitutes, among others. Then, on a three-day
religious retreat, Stephen hears a trio of fiery sermons about sin, judgment, and hell. Deeply
shaken, the young man resolves to rededicate himself to a life of Christian piety. Stephen begins
attending Mass every day, becoming a model of Catholic piety, abstinence, and self-denial. His
religious devotion is so pronounced that the director of his school asks him to consider entering
the priesthood. After briefly considering the offer, Stephen realizes that the austerity of the
priestly life is utterly incompatible with his love for sensual beauty. That day, Stephen learns
from his sister that the family will be moving, once again for financial reasons. Anxiously
awaiting news about his acceptance to the university, Stephen goes for a walk on the beach,
where he observes a young girl wading in the tide. He is struck by her beauty, and realizes, in a
moment of epiphany, that the love and desire of beauty should not be a source of shame. Stephen
resolves to live his life to the fullest, and vows not to be constrained by the boundaries of his
family, his nation, and his religion. Stephen moves on to the university, where he develops a
number of strong friendships, and is especially close with a young man named Cranly. In a series
of conversations with his companions, Stephen works to formulate his theories about art. While
he is dependent on his friends as listeners, he is also determined to create an independent
existence, liberated from the expectations of friends and family. He becomes more and more
determined to free himself from all limiting pressures, and eventually decides to leave Ireland to
escape them. Like his namesake, the mythical Daedalus, Stephen hopes to build himself wings
on which he can fly above all obstacles and achieve a life as an artist.
Character List
Stephen Dedalus - The main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Growing up,
Stephen goes through long phases of hedonism and deep religiosity. He eventually adopts a
philosophy of aestheticism, greatly valuing beauty and art. Stephen is essentially Joyce's alter
ego, and many of the events of Stephen's life mirror events from Joyce's own youth.
Simon Dedalus - Stephen's father, an impoverished former medical student with a strong sense
of Irish patriotism. Sentimental about his past, Simon frequently reminisces about his youth.
Mary Dedalus - Stephen's mother and Simon Dedalus's wife. Mary is very religious, and
argues with her son about attending religious services.
The Dedalus Children - Though his siblings do not play a major role in the novel, Stephen has
several brothers and sisters, including Maurice, Katey, Maggie, and Boody.
Emma Clery - Stephen's beloved, the young girl to whom he is fiercely attracted over the
course of many years. Stephen constructs Emma as an ideal of femininity, even though he does
not know her well.
Mr. John Casey - Simon Dedalus's friend, who attends the Christmas dinner at which young
Stephen is allowed to sit with the adults for the first time. Like Simon, Mr. Casey is a staunch
believer in Irish nationalism, and at the dinner he argues with Dante over the fate of Parnell.
Charles Stewart Parnell - An Irish political leader who is not an actual character in the novel,
but whose death influences many of its characters. Parnell had powerfully led the Irish National
Party until he was condemned for having an affair with a married woman.
Dante (Mrs. Riordan) - The extremely fervent and piously Catholic governess of the Dedalus
children. Dante, whose real name is Mrs. Riordan, becomes involved in a long and unpleasant
argument with Mr. Casey over the fate of Parnell during Christmas dinner.
Uncle Charles - Stephen's lively great uncle. Charles lives with Stephen's family. During the
summer, the young Stephen enjoys taking long walks with his uncle and listening to Charles and
Simon discuss the history of both Ireland and the Dedalus family.
Eileen Vance - A young girl who lives near Stephen when he is a young boy. When Stephen
tells Dante that he wants to marry Eileen, Dante is enraged because Eileen is a Protestant.
Father Conmee - The rector at Clongowes Wood College, where Stephen attends school as a
young boy.
Father Dolan - The cruel prefect of studies at Clongowes Wood College.
Wells - The bully at Clongowes. Wells taunts Stephen for kissing his mother before he goes to
bed, and one day he pushes Stephen into a filthy cesspool, causing Stephen to catch a bad fever.
Athy - A friendly boy whom Stephen meets in the infirmary at Clongowes. Athy likes Stephen
Dedalus because they both have unusual names.
Brother Michael - The kindly brother who tends to Stephen and Athy in the Clongowes
infirmary after Wells pushes Stephen into the cesspool.
Fleming - One of Stephen's friends at Clongowes.
Father Arnall - Stephen's stern Latin teacher at Clongowes. Later, when Stephen is at
Belvedere College, Father Arnall delivers a series of lectures on death and hell that have a
profound influence on Stephen.
Mike Flynn - A friend of Simon Dedalus's who tries, with little success, to train Stephen to be a
runner during their summer at Blackrock.
Aubrey Mills- A young boy with whom Stephen plays imaginary adventure games at Blackrock.
Vincent Heron - A rival of Stephen's at Belvedere.
Boland and Nash - Two schoolmates of Stephen's at Belvedere, who taunt and bully him.
Cranly - Stephen's best friend at the university, in whom he confides his thoughts and feelings.
In this sense, Cranly represents a secular confessor for Stephen. Eventually, Cranly begins to
encourage Stephen to conform to the wishes of his family and to try harder to fit in with his
peers—advice that Stephen fiercely resents.
Davin - Another of Stephen's friends at the university. Davin comes from the Irish provinces
and has a simple, solid nature. Stephen admires his talent for athletics, but disagrees with his
unquestioning Irish patriotism, which Davin encourages Stephen to adopt.
Lynch - Another of Stephen's friends at the university, a coarse and often unpleasantly dry
young man. Lynch is poorer than Stephen. Stephen explains his theory of aesthetics to Lynch in
Analysis of Major Characters
Stephen Dedalus
Modeled after Joyce himself, Stephen is a sensitive, thoughtful boy who reappears in Joyce's
later masterpiece, Ulysses. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, though Stephen's large
family runs into deepening financial difficulties, his parents manage to send him to prestigious
schools and eventually to a university. As he grows up, Stephen grapples with his nationality,
religion, family, and morality, and finally decides to reject all socially imposed bonds and
instead live freely as an artist. Stephen undergoes several crucial transformations over the course
of the novel. The first, which occurs during his first years as Clongowes, is from a sheltered little
boy to a bright student who understands social interactions and can begin to make sense of the
world around him. The second, which occurs when Stephen sleeps with the Dublin prostitute, is
from innocence to debauchery. The third, which occurs when Stephen hears Father Arnall's
speech on death and hell, is from an unrepentant sinner to a devout Catholic. Finally, Stephen's
greatest transformation is from near fanatical religiousness to a new devotion to art and beauty.
This transition takes place in Chapter 4, when he is offered entry to the Jesuit order but refuses it
in order to attend university. Stephen's refusal and his subsequent epiphany on the beach mark
his transition from belief in God to belief in aesthetic beauty. This transformation continues
through his college years. By the end of his time in college, Stephen has become a fully formed
artist, and his diary entries reflect the independent individual he has become.
Simon Dedalus spends a great deal of his time reliving past experiences, lost in his own
sentimental nostalgia. Joyce often uses Simon to symbolize the bonds and burdens that Stephen's
family and nationality place upon him as he grows up. Simon is a nostalgic, tragic figure: he has
a deep pride in tradition, but he is unable to keep his own affairs in order. To Stephen, his father
Simon represents the parts of family, nation, and tradition that hold him back, and against which
he feels he must rebel. The closest look we get at Simon is on the visit to Cork with Stephen,
during which Simon gets drunk and sentimentalizes about his past. Joyce paints a picture of a
man who has ruined himself and, instead of facing his problems, drowns them in alcohol and
nostalgia.
Emma Clery is Stephen's "beloved," the young girl to whom he is intensely attracted over the
course of many years. Stephen does not know Emma particularly well, and is generally too
embarrassed or afraid to talk to her, but feels a powerful response stirring within him whenever
he sees her. Stephen's first poem, "To E– C–," is written to Emma. She is a shadowy figure
throughout the novel, and we know almost nothing about her even at the novel's end. For
Stephen, Emma symbolizes one end of a spectrum of femininity. Stephen seems able to perceive
only the extremes of this spectrum: for him, women are either pure, distant, and unapproachable,
like Emma, or impure, sexual, and common, like the prostitutes he visits during his time at
Belvedere.
Charles Stewart Parnell is not fictional, and does not actually appear as a character in the
novel. However, as an Irish political leader, he is a polarizing figure whose death influences
many characters. During the late nineteenth century, Parnell had been the powerful leader of the
Irish National Party, and his influence seemed to promise Irish independence from England.
When Parnell's affair with a married woman was exposed, however, he was condemned by the
Catholic Church and fell from grace. His fevered attempts to regain his former position of
influence contributed to his death from exhaustion. Many people in Ireland, such as the character
of John Casey in Joyce's novel, considered Parnell a hero and blamed the church for his death.
Many others, such as the character Dante, thought the church had done the right thing to
condemn Parnell. These disputes over Parnell's character are at the root of the bitter and abusive
argument that erupts during the Dedalus family's Christmas dinner when Stephen is still a young
boy. In this sense, Parnell represents the burden of Irish nationality that Stephen comes to believe
is preventing him from realizing himself as an artist.
Cranly, Stephen's best friend at the university, also acts as a kind of nonreligious confessor for
Stephen. In long, late-night talks, Stephen tells Cranly everything, just as he used to tell the
priests everything during his days of religious fervor. While Cranly is a good friend to Stephen,
he does not understand Stephen's need for absolute freedom. Indeed, to Cranly, leaving behind
all the trappings of society would be terribly lonely. It is this difference that separates the true
artist, Stephen, from the artist's friend, Cranly. In that sense, Cranly represents the nongenius, a
young man who is not called to greatness as Stephen is, and who therefore does not have to make
the same sacrifices.
Themes
The Development of Individual Consciousness
Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative
use of stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and
sensations that go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations
from the external standpoint of an observer. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first
chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of describing his world in simple words and
phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled together with a child's lack of
attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed with religion, he is able
to think in a clearer, more adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in the
opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is more mature
and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in
the church, and his passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get
in the way of rational thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university,
that he seems truly rational. By the end of the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has
achieved emotional, intellectual, and artistic adulthood. The development of Stephen's
consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly interesting because,
insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight into the
development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed
Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his
strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of
his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his
formative years. In the last chapter of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways
a calling, also requires great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle
to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a sense of the great task that awaits him.
The Pitfalls of Religious Extremism
Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the
morals of the church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of
which are harmful. At first, he falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes
and deliberately turning his back on religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he is always aware
that he acts in violation of the church's rules. Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to
return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme, becoming a perfect, near fanatical model
of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen realizes that both of these
lifestyles—the completely sinful and the completely devout—are extremes that have been false
and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also rejects austere
Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human.
Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a
young girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to
the fullest.
The Role of the Artist
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen's
decision at the end of the novel—to leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order
to become an artist—suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his
decision, Stephen turns his back on his community, refusing to accept the constraints of political
involvement, religious devotion, and family commitment that the community places on its
members. However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is to give a
voice to the very community that he is leaving. In the last few lines of the novel, Stephen
expresses his desire to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He
recognizes that his community will always be a part of him, as it has created and shaped his
identity. When he creatively expresses his own ideas, he will also convey the voice of his entire
community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the traditional forms of participation and
membership in a community, he envisions his writing as a service to the community.
The Need for Irish Autonomy
Despite his desire to steer clear of politics, Stephen constantly ponders Ireland's place in the
world. He concludes that the Irish have always been a subservient people, allowing outsiders to
control them. In his conversation with the dean of studies at the university, he realizes that even
the language of the Irish people really belongs to the English. Stephen's perception of Ireland's
subservience has two effects on his development as an artist. First, it makes him determined to
escape the bonds that his Irish ancestors have accepted. As we see in his conversation with
Davin, Stephen feels an anxious need to emerge from his Irish heritage as his own person, free
from the shackles that have traditionally confined his country: "Do you fancy I am going to pay
in my own life and person debts they made?" Second, Stephen's perception makes him
determined to use his art to reclaim autonomy for Ireland. Using the borrowed language of
English, he plans to write in a style that will be both autonomous from England and true to the
Irish people.
Motifs
Music, especially singing, appears repeatedly throughout A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man. Stephen's appreciation of music is closely tied to his love for the sounds of language. As a
very young child, he turns Dante's threats into a song, " [A]pologise, pull out his eyes, pull out
his eyes, apologise." Singing is more than just language, however—it is language transformed by
vibrant humanity. Indeed, music appeals to the part of Stephen that wants to live life to the
fullest. We see this aspect of music near the end of the novel, when Stephen suddenly feels at
peace upon hearing a woman singing. Her voice prompts him to recall his resolution to leave
Ireland and become a writer, reinforcing his determination to celebrate life through writing.
Flight
Stephen Dedalus's very name embodies the idea of flight. Stephen's namesake, Daedalus, is a
figure from Greek mythology, a renowned craftsman who designs the famed Labyrinth of Crete
for King Minos. Minos keeps Daedalus and his son Icarus imprisoned on Crete, but Daedalus
makes plans to escape by using feathers, twine, and wax to fashion a set of wings for himself and
his son. Daedalus escapes successfully, but Icarus flies too high. The sun's heat melts the wax
holding Icarus's wings together, and he plummets to his death in the sea. In the context of A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we can see Stephen as representative of both Daedalus and
Icarus, as Stephen's father also has the last name of Dedalus. With this mythological reference,
Joyce implies that Stephen must always balance his desire to flee Ireland with the danger of
overestimating his own abilities—the intellectual equivalent of Icarus's flight too close to the
sun. To diminish the dangers of attempting too much too soon, Stephen bides his time at the
university, developing his aesthetic theory fully before attempting to leave Ireland and write
seriously. The birds that appear to Stephen in the third section of Chapter 5 signal that it is
finally time for Stephen, now fully formed as an artist, to take flight himself.Prayers, Secular
Songs, and Latin Phrases
We can often tell Stephen's state of mind by looking at the fragments of prayers, songs, and Latin
phrases that Joyce inserts into the text. When Stephen is a schoolboy, Joyce includes childish,
sincere prayers that mirror the manner in which a child might devoutly believe in the church,
even without understanding the meaning of its religious doctrine. When Stephen prays in church
despite the fact that he has committed a mortal sin, Joyce transcribes a long passage of the Latin
prayer, but it is clear that Stephen merely speaks the words without believing them. Then, when
Stephen is at the university, Latin is used as a joke—his friends translate colloquial phrases like
"peace over the whole bloody globe" into Latin because they find the academic sound of the
translation amusing. This jocular use of Latin mocks both the young men's education and the
stern, serious manner in which Latin is used in the church. These linguistic jokes demonstrate
that Stephen is no longer serious about religion. Finally, Joyce includes a few lines from the Irish
folk song "Rosie O'Grady" near the end of the novel. These simple lines reflect the peaceful
feeling that the song brings to Stephen and Cranly, as well as the traditional Irish culture that
Stephen plans to leave behind. Throughout the novel, such prayers, songs, and phrases form the
background of Stephen's life.
Symbols
Green and Maroon
Stephen associates the colors green and maroon with his governess, Dante, and with two leaders
of the Irish resistance, Charles Parnell and Michael Davitt. In a dream after Parnell's death,
Stephen sees Dante dressed in green and maroon as the Irish people mourn their fallen leader.
This vision indicates that Stephen associates the two colors with the way Irish politics are played
out among the members of his own family.
Emma appears only in glimpses throughout most of Stephen's young life, and he never gets to
know her as a person. Instead, she becomes a symbol of pure love, untainted by sexuality or
reality. Stephen worships Emma as the ideal of feminine purity. When he goes through his
devoutly religious phase, he imagines his reward for his piety as a union with Emma in heaven.
It is only later, when he is at the university, that we finally see a real conversation between
Stephen and Emma. His diary entry regarding this conversation portrays Emma as a real,
friendly, and somewhat ordinary girl, but certainly not the goddess Stephen earlier makes her out
to be. This more balanced view of Emma mirrors his abandonment of the extremes of complete
sin and complete devotion in favor of a middle path, the devotion to the appreciation of beauty.
Key Facts
full title · A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; author · James Joyce
type of work · Novel; genre · Bildungsroman, autobiographical novel; language · English
time and place written · 1907–1915; Trieste, Dublin, Zurich
date of first publication · 1916; publisher · B. W. Huebsch, New York
narrator · The narrator is anonymous, and speaks with the same voice and tone that Stephen might.
point of view · Although most of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is in the third person, the point
of view is Stephen's: as Stephen develops as a person, the language and perspective of the narration
develop with him. We see everything in the manner in which he thinks and feels it. At the very end of the
novel, there is a brief section in which the story is told through Stephen's diary entries. This section is in
the first person.
tone · The tone is generally serious and introspective, especially during Stephen's several heartfelt
epiphanies.
setting (time) · 1882–1903; setting (place) · Primarily Dublin and the surrounding area
protagonist · Stephen Dedalus
major conflict · Stephen struggles to decide whether he should be loyal to his family, his church, his
nation, or his vocation as an artist.
rising action · Stephen's encounters with prostitutes; his emotional reaction to Father Arnall's hellfire
sermons; his temporary devotion to religious life; his realization that he must confront the decision of
whether to center his life around religion or art
climax · Stephen's decision in Chapter 4 to reject the religious life in favor of the life of an artist
falling action · Stephen's enrollment in University College, where he gradually forms his aesthetic theory;
Stephen's distancing of himself from his family, church, and nation
foreshadowing · Stephen's heartfelt emotional and aesthetic experiences foreshadow his ultimate
acceptance of the life of an artist.
Suggestions for Further Reading
1. Benstock, Bernard, and Thomas F. Staley, eds. Approaches to Joyce's Portrait: Ten Essays. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh, 1976.
2. Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: James Joyce. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
3. Connolly, Thomas E., ed. Joyce's Portrait: Criticisms and Critiques. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1962.
4. Ellmann, Richard. The Consciousness of Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
5. Levin, Harry. James Joyce: A Critical Introduction. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1960.
6. Morris, William E., and Clifford A. Nault, Jr., eds. Portraits of an Artist: A Casebook on James Joyce's A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Odyssey Press, 1962.
7. Moseley, Virginia D. Joyce and the Bible. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1967.
8. Ryf, Robert S. A New Approach to Joyce: The Portrait of the Artist as a Guidebook. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1962.
9. Tindall, William York. The Joyce Country. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1960.