The Season of Brideshead
Running out to the fountain
Note: On Tuesday, traffic dropped to half of what it usually is and then, yesterday, it dropped to about one tenth. People are obviously traveling for Christmas. I'm not traveling because I already live in a perfect place but I will be taking a little break. Brideshead blogging will resume on Monday.
Meanwhile, here is the question: What is wrong with the fountain scene?
When he revised the book, Waugh noted that two of the speeches—Julia at the fountain and another by Lord Marchmain coming up—simply had no place in a realistic novel. He had a point. Both are more like soliloquies than like real speech.
And yet neither harms the novel; and this is odd because they both seem crucial.
But it seems to me that there is a bigger problem with the Julia speech and that is that it isn't psychologically plausible. It's the wrong emotion. Julia simply would not break down like that. It's not that some people wouldn't react that way but Waugh has done nothing to prepare us for this. It doesn't fit the Julia we know. And in the end it is another emotion, anger, that actually makes the difference.
Anyway, much more on that and on Tintern Abbey starting Monday.
The first post in the Brideshead series is here.
The next post will be here.
Lord Marchmain's speech is one of the most memorable parts of the book to me. What was his "own victory"?
ReplyDeleteHe makes me think of Tietjens, of ancient lineage, who also abandoned his birthright in Parade's End, (written by another English convert, Ford Madox Ford).
Merry Christmas, Jules!
Thank you. I hope you had a good Christmas. I did.
ReplyDeleteI also love Lord Marchmain's speech but it is not a speech that, as Waugh says in the preface, belongs in a realist novel though.
All the best and thanks for reading.
Am I the only person in the whole world who thinks both the soliloquies render the characters richer for it. With Julia's outburst she would have been just a frump. It introduces us to the real character of Julia. On a realist level it could be problematic but I don't see exactly how.
ReplyDeleteI agree that both speeches add something to the characters, although I'm less convinced than you are about Julia's. On a realist level, the problem is not that the soliloquies aren't effective but rather that people don't typically make them in real life. It takes a convention from theatre that makes perfect sense in, for example, Hamlet but doesn't belong in a novel of this type.
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