East European University

Giorgi Iashvili

Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited”:

The aspects of Faith and History

Tutor: Inga Zhghenti, PhD,

Associate Professor at East European University

Tbilisi 2020
Tradition and Faith

One of the main topics of Brideshead Revisited is the looming crisis of faith which would
inevitably engulf Charles Ryder, our protagonist, but this theme doesn’t seem to be
essential, let alone inevitable, as we start our reading. Yet the whole purpose of “first
reading” and skimming the surface of the novel is to grasp its immediate ideas, the ones
against which the narrative structure of the novel is propped up.

Charles Ryder, a typical middle-class young man, gets into a liaison with Sebastian Flyte
while studying at Oxford. Sebastian comes from a traditionally, even quintessentially English
family of settled aristocracy only with one particular quirk that would distinguish them from
the traditionally-Anglican landed gentry – they are Catholic.

There are of course some premonitions to be found throughout the beginning of the book
of the fact that all isn’t well at that great ancestral seat of Sebastian’s. During their first visit
together at Brideshead, Sebastian describes the manor as “not … my house, but where my
family lives”. There is visible tension between Sebastian and the rest of his family members,
his mother being the crux of that tension.

Later on we learn that the head of the family, Lord Marchmain, became what they call a
social pariah after abandoning his Catholic Faith and settling down far away from family in
his newly-acquired lofty residence at Venice. Lord Marchmain largely does that to defy Lady
Marchmain, his wife, whose pronounced adherence to the Catholic faith and extreme piety
renders him unsympathetic and scornful towards both her and the tradition she stands for.

Sebastian has several siblings: Lord Brideshead, his elder brother, who is the spitting image
of Lady Marchmain and is cherishing a dream of becoming a Jesuit monk. Then there are
two girls: Julia and Cordelia. Julia is the oldest, standing seemingly in defiance of Lady
Marchmain, describing her mother as a person who “all through her life, mummy had all the
sympathy of everyone except those she loved”. Cordilia, the youngest of the Flyte family,
took after Lady Marchmain and is exemplary in her piety and devotion, later on, however, as
she grows up, learning how to balance between religious zeal and crude experience of life as
it is.
Sebastian, as the expression goes, is to be found between a rock and a hard place: to him
the whole Catholic enterprise, his brother’s puffed-up piety and his mother’s fervent
devotion seems to be nothing but a sham show of cynicism and inhumanity. He tries to take
after his estranged father but is ultimately crushed by the domineering will of Lady
Marchmain. Left out of option, later on, he flees to Morocco, there descending to
alcoholism and gradually getting lost both to himself, his family, his friend Charles and
ultimately to the reader.

Then there’s Charles Ryder himself who, despite starting his life as a person completely
foreign to the issues that are plaguing the Flyte family, gradually becomes both physically
and spiritually embroidered in the rich tapestry of Brideshead. Charles himself is an atheist
and thus he remains till the very end of the novel, when the spiritual crisis finally catches up
to him.

Yet throughout the main bulk of the novel Charles is endeavouring to question the piety of
the Flytes, shedding light of doubt onto their practice and doctrine. “D’you know, Bridey, if I
ever felt for a moment like becoming a Catholic, I should only have to talk to you for five
minutes to be cured” he tells Lord Brideshead in a marked manner, as if to underline
Catholicism as being pivotal to the latter’s lifelong misgivings. It is Charles’ firm conviction,
as he spells it out, once again speaking to Lord Brideshead, that “It seems to me that
without your religion, Sebastian would have the chance to be a happy and healthy man”.

By the end of the novel, when Lord Marchmain – now old, infirm and sick, returns to
Brideshead manor finally to expire at his ancestral home, the family decide to summon a
Catholic priest for him, Lord Marchmain, to confess and receive absolution. This strikes
Charles as extremely forceful and hypocritical, as he castigates the family for this decision,
trying to reason them out of it: “ He has to be contrite and wish to be reconciled. But only
God knows whether he has really made an act of will; the priest can’t tell; and if there isn’t a
priest there, and he makes the act of will; the priest can’t tell, and if there isn’t a priest
there, and he makes the act of will alone, that’s as good as if there were a priest. And it’s
quite possible that the will may still be working when a man is too weak to make any
outward sign of it. What is the priest for?” Yet the family is deaf to Charles’ beseeching of
reason, the power of tradition is too strong for his remonstrance to be heard and analysed.
This topic of religion has other ramifications too. First there’s Charles and his relationship
with Lady Marchmain, as the latter tries to make Charles his confidant in order to reign in
Sebastian. Her play is subtle and charming, she tries to gain Charles’ confidence by exposing
her own weaknesses, nevertheless emphasizing the strengths that Catholicism, as faith,
gives her. On her part it was a subtle move to convert Charles and drive the wedge between
Sebastian and Lord Marchmain, yet the ploy fails. Charles is too “heathen” to be so easily
converted, he is drawn to the Flyte family and the lofty Brideshead residence not because of
their faith but rather against it – admiring the aesthetical splendours of high life which is
painting, architecture, fine wine and his extremely delicate and precious friendship with
Sebastian. Spiritually Charles is much closer to Sebastian, Lord Marchmain and his venetian
palazzo than to that art-nouveau Catholic chapel that sticks out amidst the classical majesty
of Brideshead like a sore thumb.

Rex Mottram – Julia’s lover and subsequent husband, also comes in as a participant of this
whole religious imbroglio. His role is a comical one, being subjected to acerbic mockery both
of Charles and Julia for his rude and uncouth attempts at “understanding” Catholicism and
the meaning of the catechism. For Rex it’s one of those formalities of the old world still
lingering in the new that he has to go through in order to achieve the social position he
strives for.

The most meaningful and humane, however, religion seems to appear in Cordelia’s case. As
I’ve already mentioned, she succeeds in tempering piety with life, that is for her religion
isn’t just idle servitude or blind adherence to some prescribed principles. Religious life for
Cordelia has to come through vocation – and so she does, becoming a volunteer in the war,
doing charity and social work. She sums up the essence of true faith: “If you haven’t a
vocation, it’s no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can’t
get away from it, however much you hate it”.

Then there’s of course the story of unhappy marriages, those of Charles and Julia who are
both married to the people they don’t happen to feel for or, as the matter of fact, love.
Religion isn’t lost within this topic too: on the contrary, religion and Catholicism is the hinge
upon which this whole subplot of “love and marriage” is suspended, yet its workings aren’t
too visible at first.
Julia is married to the aforementioned Rex Mottram, a figure much despised both by Charles
and the rest of the Flyte family. As it was already mentioned, for Rex this marriage is nothing
but a valuable asset that would allegedly help him climb the greasy pole of fame and
politics. They won’t have children as the only baby they have is stillborn, a major blow to
Julia as she wanted to bring the child up as a Catholic, as if to repent for the sin of straying
away from tradition by marrying Rex, who was previously married, had multiple affairs and
was generally contemptuous of the “old world” that was in a great sense dear to Julia.

Charles, after becoming a famous artist, gets hitched up with Celia – a socialite, whose sole
ambition is to be surrounded by fame and recognition. She is unfaithful to Charles – this
becomes known to him before he departs to South America for his great artistic adventure,
yet he doesn’t seem to be affected by the knowledge of his wife’s adulterous behaviour. It is
clearly visible that family life, the life of “ethic” was an empty enterprise for Charles since
the very beginning of it: as he was after his first encounter with Sebastian, Charles kept on
pursuing his dreams of high aesthetic, yet that too was about to fail him.

On his way back from America, after concluding his artistic journey through the wilderness
of South America, Charles comes across Julia – an estranged soul he hasn’t seen for almost a
decade and, as it happens, they emerge as lovers.

Divorces and re-marriages are being planned; everything seems fine at least on the surface.
Yet the religious leitmotif is growing only stronger: as Charles and Julia announce their
engagement they are confronted with strong admonition and castigation from Lord
Brideshead, who (after announcing his own engagement to an otherwise unremarkable lady
if not for her ostentatious piety and devotion) tells them off bluntly by saying that they
“choose to live in sin”. Julia is outraged by this severe chiding and ultimately breaks down,
swinging like a pendulum between two polar opposites: the family tradition (which is, first
and foremost Faith and Piety) and her own ideas of emancipation and happiness. She feels
extremely exposed when she says that “Mummy dying with it (sin); Christ dying with it,
nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in
the dark little study at Farm street; hanging at noon, hanging among the crowds and the
soldiers,; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging
forever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab; always the
midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat”.
And there’s much more to her words that just sense of guilt or discomfiture. It’s on of those
eternal questions of “parts” and “wholes”. Julia, as a whole, a human being, is made out of
“parts” – psychological parts of personal history and upbringing. This family of hers with its
Catholicism, tradition, piety, love of Christ and Sacrament, judgement of sin and etc
happens to be a part of her character, her psychological and personal makeup which, like or
not like, is impossible to disregard or cast away. Julia isn’t just some abstract “Julia”
suspended in thin air like a tethered balloon, she’s Julia Flyte, daughter of Lady and Lord
Marchmain, sister of Lord Brideshead and Sebastian Flyte, blood to blood and sinew to
sinew of this tradition. She was largely made by this tradition and were she to blindly cast it
away that would become her immediate unmaking. This breakdown of hers is epistemically
“the beginning of an end” to ‘Julia – the Emancipated’, it’s plainly visible to Charles – yet not
to Julia herself. Regaining her composure, she carries on with her divorce, whilst at the
same time Charles realises that the chance for them to be linked together is now gone.

Naturally, Julia’s crisis affects Charles too: he becomes contemplative and God, after many
years of disregarding faith, becomes central to Charles’ ponderings. This ‘crisis of faith’ is
precipitated by the culmination of the novel: the return of Lord Marchmain, who being at
death’s door, is brought back to his old family seat at Brideshead.

As it was mentioned, a Catholic priest, Father Mackay was brought to Lord Marchmain – an
idea to which Charles was extremely opposed, at least on the surface. But watching Lord
Marchmain refuse absolution and Julia, tormented by her father dying as it is “without
faith”, Charles finally gives in, subjecting himself to the form of thought he had never
previously tried on – Charles prays. “O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is
such a thing as sin”. Now is Charles praying for himself? It looks like he’s praying more for
Julia and her old father, words like “if there is a God” and “if there is such a thing as sin” give
away that, though moved, Charles nevertheless isn’t convinced in whatever the idea of
prayer stands for.

The pivotal moment that ushers in the shift in Charles’ outlook happens when Lord
Marchmain, laying prostrate upon his deathbed, makes the sign of the cross with his
trembling hand, before expiring and leaving our mortal plane forever. Filled with the sense
of divine grace, Julia says: “The worse I am, the more I need God. I cannot shut myself out
from His mercy” and finally refuses to put her personal happiness above the
commandments of God and tradition. To her consternation, Charles seems to understand
her reasoning, as he is also deeply affected by this new outlook on things.

Time and History

“The new outlook on things” must be quite an appropriate phrase to characterise the
historic background of the novel. Now why is it important? Some would argue that it, as the
matter of fact, isn’t and any critique could easily go by without grounding itself into the
historical background of the period.

Yet history, in its own inimitable way and fashion, is one of those forces that usually
dominates writing (and, therefore, writers) as any writing of any discernible value is usually
projected against or played off the domineering historical landscape. History, that is the
product of humanity’s decision-making, creates the clime with or against which the writer
sets his literary produce. Even those texts which explicitly disregard history and take no
heed of any particular writerly tradition (Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ would be a good
example) are yet still interweaved and interpleached by the rich tapestry of history. For
history, above everything else, defines our modes of thought.

That is a thing that must be carefully examined and understood, for we usually take our
mode of thought as something rather natural, a phenomenon which needs no explanation,
an a-priori setting that pre-exists whatsoever text, it’s underlying art-forms, the surrounding
critical scholarship and etc. This, however, is far from being true. The deconstruction of
realism for example – an idea, ushered into our modern consciousness not so long time ago
and being nowadays accepted as one of the realities of literary criticism, is far from being ‘a-
priori’. It is, along many other such ideas, historically contingent: whether realized in the
Platonic idea of a world turned inside-out or in the ideological sensuous dream that hides in
the shadowy walls of its societies and obscures its facts in a lacuna of metaphor, - no matter,
history has its transformative way with human thought.

According to Michel Foucault’s pioneering work in what he called his “archaeological

project”, we can discern three main historical periods of human thought, these which he
called ‘Epistemes’. First comes what Foucault calls the “Renaissance Episteme” which, far
from encapsulating just the Renaissance era, is a blanket term to the form of domineering
though that stretches from Greek and Roman antiquity up to the Renaissance period.
According to Foucault this episteme is characterised by the referential status of “words and
things”. Things stand in direct referential relationship with words, words – in their own way
directly reflect things. Every mystery of the world, the point behind the great Creation (the
idea of God as the ultimate Creator is necessary to this episteme) is already given within the
world itself, being encoded within the vast plethora of its multiple and varying phenomena.
This is the beginning of the “commonwealth” idea: the phenomenology and ontology of the
world is already contained within it so the project of knowledge is confined within the
realms of hermeneutics, or “exegesis” as Foucault puts it. That which is to be done in order
to obtain Knowledge is but to decipher, understand and translate the variety of symbols
scattered about the world.

The Renaissance and, following it, the Classical episteme offers a new outlook on thought
and knowledge, transforming the whole landscape of it. If, as we’ve already noted, within
the “Renaissance Episteme” knowledge is obtained by deciphering the symbols that are
directly given and referenced by the words and things in the world, then the project of
knowledge for the Classical Episteme takes a new shape: of organising these references and
symbols.

The encapsulating idea of this new outlook is the table, like the periodical table of chemical
elements or the table of animals with vertebrae, or the table of different celestial objects
organised according to their size, mass and trajectory of movement. Yet the idea of the
table isn't really just about the tabulated form of organising data – that represents the
surface. The table is about reality. Its structure construes the view of reality that people
take as a given, the organic nature of the Classical society is reflected in a table. Therefore,
the project of knowledge also boils down to tabulation: for the Classical episteme
knowledge is hierarchical, categorical and organised. Think both of Empiricism and
Rationalism: despite some stark differences in the way these projects construe reality and
its principle, the ideas of hierarchy, category and organisation are pivotal and crucial for
both of these projects.

By the middle of the nineteenths century this outlook also undergoes a drastic change. The
“Modern Episteme” of knowledge is born. If previously knowledge is construed by
organising and categorising “words and things”, under the guise of the new episteme
knowledge, first and foremost, is construed by the idea of a system: an abstract entity which
doesn’t fall under any of the tabulated and distributed categories, yet underlies everything
that is being tabulated, ordered and categorised.

The scientists of the Classical era like Carl Linnaeus were preoccupied with ordering and
categorising things: Carl Linnaeus was famous for his nomenclatures of zoological and
botanical nature. The Modern Episteme of knowledge, however, postulated that behind the
ordered nomenclature of zoological and botanical entities there is a systemic entity – life.

Likewise, under Modern Episteme of knowledge, legal conduits and codices were
underpinned by the systemic idea of law and order, medical and psychiatric practices were
defined by the systemic idea of clinic, endeavours in chemistry, physics, applied math and
other sciences were construed according to the systemic idea of what is science and so on.

The system. Evelyn Waugh and his celebrated ‘Brideshead’ were conceived within the
Modern Episteme of thought and everything within (and without) the novel could be largely
understood as a lengthy commentary on the idea of a system and its multiple ramifications.
Waugh considered everything within his novel to be in some way an object of commentary,
many of which I consider to be commentary on the modern discourse surrounding news and
social issues. Perhaps this was no coincidence; it could be said that Waugh wanted his novel
to create an "out of the box" context for readers that this world was actually standing on,
rather than just a reflection on any anachronistic alternate quasi-history that “might just
happen” within the given historical period.

Throughout the whole novel Charles Ryder, the main protagonist, faces three major types of
being: aesthetical, ethical and religious. On could say this directly reflects the famous
Kierkegaardian paradigm of life that he belaboured and expounded throughout the whole
body of his scholarship. Certainly, the structure of the novel is just exemplary in this regard,
Charles slowly shifting from one stage – the “aesthetic” stage of Oxford that slowly wilts and
wanes as his art becomes more and more a job, a profession giving Charles no fulfilment.
One of the main support characters of the novels, a self-proclaimed aesthete and hedonist
Anthony Blanche, clearly points that out, telling Charles that the results of his latest artistic
escapade, his travels to the wilderness of South America is but “terrible tripe” and Charles
finds himself agreeing with that judgement. The sap of aesthetic has quenched and so is his
family, “ethical” life: his wife cheats on Charles and he, far from being an ideal husband,
finds himself drawn to Julia who is also married. Charles tries to avail himself of the “ethics
of love” but it all falls apart, unable to sustain the tension of the qualitative leap or the “leap
of faith” that is in store for Charles and indeed becomes the last step to his spiritual self-
fulfilment and final destination.

The major forms of being described are given throughout the novel as systems: first Oxford,
which is as itself a systemic entity – a system of education, a certain system of thought that
produces the given aesthetic. Then friendship with Sebastian and the splendours of high art
nature of the Brideshead manor and Venetian palazzos: they aren’t just vapid splendours
but are grounded by systemic natures of what is architecture and history of art.

Systems are captivating but on the whole unimpressive. For constituting and construing the
core value of the entities that they represent, the systems contribute surprisingly few value
to the life of a person that is immersed within them. Charles can find no rest, no fulfilment
in his “being-within-the-world” of different systems until he makes a crucial step, the “leap
of faith”, embracing Catholic faith which, according to Waugh’s vision, is radically different
from anything else: for if other things are underpinned by unfulfilling systems, Catholic Faith
is defined by the highest possible authority, the supreme benefactor – God. Therefore,
according to the age-old parable, finding proper rest is only possible withing God, accepting
the faith and its doctrine.

As of the world of human-made systems, with Waugh we can see this world falling apart,
disrupted by the tidings of time. The prologue and the epilogue of the novel set in the same
time and place frame serves to highlight the aforementioned state of affairs: it’s wartime
and Charles, encamped around and about what once was the great Brideshead country
seat, is observing how time and the changing tides of history had completely erased
everything that this monumental place stood for. The present state of history no longer
would encompass and embrace anything of the old tradition, of the “great country seat” –
“they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after
generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the
park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was
desolate and the work all brought to nothing.” It is a new world, a world of grinning and
superficial “travelling salesmen”, a world to which everything of the old and stately is
essentially foreign and, what’s more, unnecessary. The grounds, therefore, are razed to the
earth, war – the ultimate purger and “burner of books” descends upon the earth forever
altering its landscape.

Waugh is ultimately sceptical of the new systemic idea of “becoming” as opposed to

“being”, he is opposing the dissolution of the idea of solidity and stability, he is abjectly
scornful of the world that could be only conceived by things like “constant movement, flux
and vortex” – in some grand sense everything, up to the point of Charles Ryder’s Catholic
conversion, is a bitter mockery of the “becoming”. The world of becoming is a world
constant oscillations and possibilities as opposed to anything like stability. Rex Mottram, the
main representative of this world in Waugh’s novel is constantly talking about “possibilities”
and “opportunities”. Now, asks Waugh, is there nothing else one could talk about? Doesn’t
the whole idea of becoming obliterate our very sense of time and space and, by the very
same virtue, ultimately the sense of who we are?

That, I think, is the crucial question that we should ponder on after getting acquainted with
“Brideshead Revisited”. It’s major theme of Catholicism may or may not be up everyone’s
alley – after all we have different outlooks on what is “spiritual” or indeed religious. Yet
Waugh’s Catholicism is more than just doctrine (a thing that Evelyn Waugh himself would
vehemently deny) – it’s an outlook, a question, a quizzical point of view and so is, give it or
take it, his celebrated “Brideshead”.

Bibliography

1. Waugh E. “Brideshead Revisited”, Back Bay Books (1945. Reprinted: 2012);

2. Stannard M. “Evelyn Waugh, Critical Heritage”, Routledge (1984);
3. Blayac A. “Evelyn Waugh, New Directions”, Macmillan Academic and Professional
LTD (1992);
4. Foucault M. “The Order of Things”, Routledge Classics, (2002);