Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited is a novel by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It has become well-known to modern audiences as a result of the ITV drama serialisation of 1981, produced by Granada Television. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, the adaptation was placed 10th. It attracted attention both for its gay overtones and because of Sebastian's affection for his teddy bear.

1 Plot summary
2 Television adaptation in 1981
3 Catholic Themes
4 The Nature of the Relationship between Charles and Sebastian
5 Pop culture references
6 External links

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Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist Charles Ryder, a student at Oxford University, and Lord Sebastian Flyte, fellow student and the younger son of an aristocratic family, become fast friends. Lord Sebastian takes Charles to the palatial home of his family, Brideshead Castle, where Charles eventually meets the rest of the Flyte family, including Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte.

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

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

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Television adaptation in 1981

The book was adapted for television by John Mortimer, directed by Charles Sturridge (part of one or more episodes by Michael Lindsay-Hogg), and starred Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder, Anthony Andrews as Lord Sebastian Flyte, Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain, Claire Bloom as Lady Marchmain, Diana Quick as Lady Julia Flyte; also featuring Phoebe Nicholls as Lady Cordelia Flyte, John Gielgud as Edward Ryder, Simon Jones as Lord Brideshead, Nickolas Grace as Anthony Blanche, and Charles Keating as Rex Mottram. The Oxford scenes were largely filmed at Hertford (where Waugh studied) and Christ Church Colleges. The location for Brideshead was Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Scenes on the deck of a Transatlantic liner were filmed aboard the QE2. In 1974 Irons and Andrews had appeared, with Nicholls' sister Kate, as college friends in the last few episodes of the BBC's serialisation of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels. The memorable theme with a high baroque trumpet was composed by Geoffrey Burgon.

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Catholic Themes

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

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

Aside from Grace and Reconciliation, other Catholic themes in the book are: Communion of the Saints, Faith and Vocation.

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The Nature of the Relationship between Charles and Sebastian

One continuing controversy which has struck both readers of the novel and viewers of the miniseries was the question on the nature of Charles’s and Sebastian’s relationship; whether or not it is homosexual, and whether it is physical or merely emotional. The vast majority of analyses of the book, scholarly or not, make no mention of this question or only address it in passing. This is understandable since Charles’ and Sebastian’s relationship is not the major theme of the book; by Waugh's own admission, the book is a trumpeting of the redemptive nature of God's grace. Nevertheless, the topic is of interest, due to its being a continuing source of discussion to readers of the novel and viewers of the miniseries and because the first half of the novel is generally recognized as being more accessible and attention-grabbing than the latter, more intellectual half.

One side of the discussion interprets the relationship from the Freudian point of view, in which intentions are understood ultimately on terms of sex. From this point of view, Charles’s and Sebastian’s relationship is homosexual, whether or not it is physical. This would not be inconsistent with the general theme of the book, which is redemption. Waugh himself said that “Charles's romantic affection for Sebastian is part due to the glitter of the new world Sebastian represents, part to the protective feeling of a strong towards a weak character, and part a foreshadowing of the love for Julia which is to be the consuming passion of his mature years.” The Catholic Church, to which Waugh was a convert, considers homosexual acts as contrary to the natural law. The transition from Charles’s homosexual relationship with Sebastian to his heterosexual relationship with Julia would be seen in the Catholic perspective as a step closer and in-line with this eventual conversion.

The other interpretation is that Charles and Sebastian had a passionate yet platonic relationship, an immature albeit strongly felt attachment which prefigures future heterosexual relationships. A passage in Brideshead Revisited has Lord Marchmain's mistress, Cara, talking to Charles of his relationship with Sebastian precisely in terms of this same-sex attachment; that it forms part in a process of emotional development typical to the English and the Germans. This interpretation would seem to be challenged by the line "our naughtiness was high on the list of grave sins" by which Charles seems to be clearly referring to sodomy. However, the "Naughtiness" could also very well be the gluttony the boys commit, not to mention the sloth and greed that characterize their carefree days.

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Pop culture references

On Family Guy, when the Griffins visited Brown University, Stewie Griffin described it as "Very Brideshead Revisited."

On Family Guy, in the episode One If By Clam, Two If By Sea, a parody of Brideshead Revisited takes the form of a movie promo entitled I Dream of Cecil.

On Frasier, when Frasier was trying to tell a coworker obsessed with Star Trek that it's not real, the coworker retorted "And Brideshead Revisited was just a show."

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