Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature

Bc. Jitka Pelíšková

Old Filth Trilogy by Jane Gardam

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

2014
 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Jitka Pelíšková
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.. for her
patient guidance, valuable advice and kind support she has provided me during the
writing of the thesis. I would also like to thank my friends Andrea Goldbergerová,
Kamila Rozkošová, Ondřej Bachurek, Vanda Sobková and Etra Perbanová for their
endless support and motivation.
Table of Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Jane Gardam's Old Filth Trilogy

3. Childhood: "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

3.1. Edward Feathers

3.2. Elisabeth Macintosh/Feathers

3.3. Terry Veneering

3.4. Isobel Ingoldby

4. Adulthood: "Double-Glazed Silence"

4.1. Sexuality: "This Tiresome Sex Business"

4.1.1. Edward Feathers

4.1.2. Elisabeth Macintosh/Feathers

4.1.3. Vanessa and Oliver

4.1.4. Sir, Isobel, and Susan

4.2. "Dead. Gone. Happened. Lost. Over."

4.3. "Memory and Desire"

5. Symbols: "The Music of the Rooks"

5.1. "The Wild, Returning "

5.2. Objects: "Heavy with All the Miseries of the World"

6. Conclusion

7. Bibliography

8. Resume (English)

9. Resumé (Czech)
1. Introduction

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse Jane Gardam's Old Filth trilogy, namely

novels Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends, focusing on the main

characters and the way the same story is told from several points of view. For the

purpose of this thesis the novel Old Filth will be further reffered to as OF, The Man in

the Wooden Hat as MWH, and Last Friends as LF.

The thesis is organized into four chapters. The names of the chapters are derived

from the trilogy itself1.The first chapter serves as an introduction to the critical

reception of the novels as well as provides the fundamental facts about the trilogy and

the story it tells. Since the serious studies of Jane Gardam's novels are still lacking, this

chapter will mainly draw on the literary reviews by Martin Levin, Tessa Hadley,

Katherine A. Powers, Ryan Williams, Frances Itani, Becky Toyne, Amanda Craig,

Robert Fulford, and the interviews with Jane Gardam by Alex Clark and Jane Shilling.

The second chapter analyses the development of the main characters, Edward

Feathers, his wife Elisabeth Feathers, Terry Veneering and Isobel Ingoldby, with focus

on their childhood experiences. This chapter will mainly draw on the studies of Lesley

McDowell, Courtney Cook, Maureen Corrigan, Ryan Williams, Elisabeth Lowry, Stevie

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The titles of the chapters are citations taken from the trilogy, namely:

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. (OF)

Double-Glazed Silence (MWH 171)

This tiresome sex business (OF 54)

Dead. Gone. Happened. Lost. Over. (OF 108)

Memory and Desire (OF 226)

The music of the rooks (MWH 174)

The wild, returning (MWH 242)

Heavy with all the miseries of the world (MWH 223)

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Davies, Ruth Scurr, Rachel Hore, Mary Whipple, Edmund Gordon, Nicole Perrin, Tessa

Hadley, Tom Cunliffe, Roslyn Sulcas, the interviews of Jane Gardam by Alex Clark and

Jane Shilling, and the work about Hong Kong by Paul Wilding.

The third chapter is divided into three subchapters. The first one deals with the

representation of sexuality in the trilogy, including analysis of Edward Feathers's

attitude to women and sexuality in general, Elisabeth's love relationships with her

husband and Terry Veneering, the relationship of Vanessa and Oliver, and the different

aspects of homosexuality as they are presented in the trilogy. This subchapter will

mainly draw on the studies by Courtney Cook, Corinna Lothar, and Lesley McDowell.

The second subchapter discusses different ways the characters in the trilogy deal

with death and loss, focusing on the decline of the British Empire as experienced by

Edward Feathers and his wife, Elisabeth Feathers response to her miscarriage and the

death of Herry Veneering, as well as Edward Feathers's behaviour after losing his wife

and his lifelong enemy and one of his last friends - Terry Veneering. This section will

mainly draw on the reviews by Rachel Hore, Courtney Cook, Ryan Williams, Corinna

Lothar, Marie Cloutier, Becky Toyne, the interview of Jane Gardam by Alex Clark, and

the study of the history of Hong Kong by Max J. Skidmore.

The third subchapter studies the importance of memory and desire in the lives of

characters of Edward Feathers, Elisabeth Feathers, and Dulcie Williams. This part will

mainly draw on Hugo Lindgren, Frances Itani, and the interview of Jane Gardam by

Jane Shilling.

The fourth chapter focuses on the symbolic meaning of several natural

phenomenons appearing throughout the trilogy with a special focus on the symbolic

meaning of the character of Albert Ross. This chapter will mainly draw on the reviews

by Mary Whipple, and Louisa Thomas.

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2. Jane Gardam's Old Filth Trilogy

This chapter serves as an introduction to the critical reception of the novels as

well as provides the fundamental facts about the author, the trilogy and the story it tells.

Jane gardam is British contemporary woman writer who has been active from

the 1970s. She writes mostly fiction: novels, short stories and children stories. She has

been awarded the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial

Prize for Black Faces, White Faces (1975) (British Council). As Maureen Corrigan

claims, "she's the best contemporary British writer you probably haven't heard of". Her

latest work include the novels Old Filth published in 2004, The Man in the Wooden Hat

published in 2009, and Last Friend published in 2013. Those three novels are parts of

Old Filth trilogy. Apart from the trilogy, the characters from the story also appear in two

shortstories, namely Old Filth published in 1997 as a part of the collection Missing the

Midnight, and The People on Privilege Hill that appeared in 2007 in the collection of

stories of the same name. Martin Levin highlights the trilogy's "wit, its compassion, its

tragicomic view of life, its deep staccato probings of human action" and predicts that

"Jane Gardam's Filth series will rank as one of the great literary achievements of recent

years".

This chapter, as well as the whole thesis, deals with the trilogy as one unit

instead of treating the novels separately. As Tessa Hadley points out, "usually a trilogy

moves forward through time, each book taking up more or less where the previous one

left off". That is not the case with Gardam's Old Filth trilogy. The individual novels do

not depict events chronologically one after another. The novels tell the same story but

from different perspectives. All main characters appear to a certain extend in all the

novels. Gardam herself exlains in the interview by Jane Shilling that "I thought it would

be interesting just to look at it from another character’s point of view". Katherine A.

7
Powers writes in her review that "the second and third novels in the sequence are not so

much sequels or "prequels" to the first as augmentations". Ryan Williams observes that

Gardam "manages to find room for a series of startling revelations that completely

transform the reader’s understanding of the events related in Old Filth" and Hadley

elaborates on this idea saying that the "repetition (of events) feels less like the necessary

work of plot construction, more as if these are originary mysteries, revisited because

they signify differently in different contexts" ("Thank God for Betty"), and Frances Itani

comments that "each character ... has a fragment to tell. Through the fog of age and

shifting memories, each brings to light certain bits of the larger story, which, when

pieced together, add up to all of their lives".

The novels of Old Filth trilogy offer different retelling of the same story, each

novel from a different point of view. The first novel, Old Filth, is told maily from the

point of view of Edward Feathers, the second novel The Man in the Wooden Hat is

devoted to Edward's wife Elisabeth, and the third novel Last Friends is partly told from

the point of view of Terry Veneering and partly from the perspective of two minor

characters, Dulcie Williams and Frederick Fiscal-Smith. Each novel thus concentrates

on one of the main characters. However, the novels are not entirely about the characters

from whose point of view they are told, but they also provide crucial details about other

characters, creating a complex recollection of the past and present. As Becky Toyne

observes, "each character plays both starring and supporting roles". It is imortant to

point out that several passages that focus on a supporting character are not necessarilly

told from the point of view of this particular character. There is a possibility that "the

storyteller in each case isn’t omniscient about anyone other than Eddie (Edward

Feathers) in Old Filth and Betty (Elisabeth Feathers) in The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Maybe what we think are Betty’s views in Old Filth are things that Eddie thinks are

8
important and maybe the views of Eddie in The Man in the Wooden Hat are really how

Betty imagines Eddie is" (Alone With Each Other, "The Man in the Wooden Hat by

Jane Gardam").

The story of the trilogy is accurately summarized by Itani who writes that "lives

are linked eccentrically, irritatingly and with abiding affection and loyalty. Friendships

were formed either during childhood or while out and about the Empire, where two

titans of English and international law — Filth and the late Sir Terence Veneering —

practiced their professions, loved the same woman and despised each other". The

trilogy, however, does not only focus on the love triangle of the main characters, it also

concentrates on other "vast and painful subjects" as Alex Clark writes in the interview

with Jane Gardam, and those include:

imperial decline ... themes of abandonment, fidelity and the tragic

circumstances that surround Betty's childlessness ... the animation of the

past, despite the light that they shed on a vanished world ... the horrible

binds that people find themselves cast into by circumstance or character,

and – crucially – the strategies they use in order to survive... To describe

human nature and interaction in that light is the task that Gardam has set

herself, along with that of making her work new each time.

Several critics utilize a metaphorical way to describe what Gardam does in the

trilogy. Amanda Craig observes that "lives connect, interconnect and fail to connect in

this odyssey ... Gardam shuffles time like a pack of cards", Hadley perceives the trilogy

as a "story (that) shifts from past to present, and from England to elsewhere, like pieces

shaken up in a kaleidoscope" ("Last Friends by Jane Gardam – Review"). Rather

scientific view is that of Robert Fulford who writes that "it’s a fictional version of an

archeological dig, each level revealing fresh secrets. In the second and third books the

9
reader often comes upon familiar events that startle us by at first appearing unfamiliar".

This is true not only of the three novels that belong to the trilogy. When reading,

for instance, the short story called Old Filth and comparing it with the first chapter of

the first novel of the series, the reader becomes aware of the fact that althoug the text

seem exactly the same, there are some minor differences. These differences, changed

facts, ommitted words or phrases, and added passaged are important for the story as

being developed in the trilogy. One of the crucial changes have been made in the case of

Edward Feathers's family background - his childhood and upbringing is the main focus

in the first novel. Elisabeth's daily activities are different in the two versions, she mostly

takes care of the garden in the novel and it is important because she dies while doing so.

Edward sells the jewellery in the short story, but not in the novel - this, although a

detail, is important because in the novel he sets off on a journey to give the jewels to his

cousin - the journey is the crucial part of the story. The reader, if aware of these

changes, can suspect some kind of foreshadowing. If something is changed or added, it

is because it is of a crucail importance in the story.

10
3. Childhood: "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

The main objective of this chapter is to analyse the development of the main

characters, Edward Feathers, his wife Elisabeth Feathers, Terry Veneering and Isobel

Ingoldby, with focus on their childhood experiences, and also to explore Edward's and

Elisabeth's decision to marry each other.

As Lesley McDowell claims, the notion that "that our childhoods mould us into

the adults we become is long-accepted". The childhood experiences are important for

the future development of the characters in Gardam's Old Filth trilogy. Several

characters in the trilogy are described as "Raj orphans", a "generation of British children

whose parents served the Empire in the Far East and who were sent back to England

when still very small, ostensibly to avoid the diseases of the warmer climates"

(Courtney Cook). Those characters include the main character Edward Feathers along

with his two cousins Claire and Babs. Their childhood experience is the main focus in

the first part of the trilogy Old Filth. The minor characters Dulcie and her daughter

Susan, who become the main protagonists of the last of the novels Last Friends, and

Mrs Ingoldby who appears in Old Filth, also belong to this cathegory. This chapter

analyses the way Edward Feathers and his cousins are influenced by their upbringing. It

also compares their experience with that of another main character Terry Veneering

whose story is the main focus of the last novel. The middle novel The Man in the

Wooden Hat concentrates on Edward's wife Elisabeth. Her childhood is not discussed to

a great detail. However, this does not mean that it is not important for the way her

character develops. Her experience will be also dealt with in this chapter. The only main

character whose childhood is not revealed to the reader is Isobel Ingoldby.

As Lucasta Miller points out in her interview with the author:

The intensity of a childhood loss, painful at the time, is still detectable

11
 beneath the layers of adult detachment, humour and resignation.

Gardam's fiction has often been concerned with the child's or adolescent's

eye-view, and with the relationship between the interior life, built up of

buried memories and fantasy, and the public faces we adopt to get

through everyday existence. Her most recent novel, Old Filth ... tells the

story of an elderly international lawyer finally catching up emotionally

with the traumatic childhood experiences he has tried to forget, but which

have formed his character.

As Jane Gardam herself in the introduction of Old Filth for The Abacus 40 Collection

describes the story as being set in:

what looks to the world like peace and harmony. But age does not often

bring these things, even to the rich and admired and supremely self-

confident. To the end they – we – have hidden lives. Particularly, there

are always hidden childhoods.

3.1. Edward Feathers

The main protagonist of the trilogy and the one after whom it is called "Old

Filth" trilogy is Sir Edward Feathers QC. Throughout the story he is reffered to by

several names. When his childhood is described, he is called Eddie. When adult (and

later retired), he is reffered to by his nickname Filth or Old Filth. The nickname is not

used as a refference to his filthiness or untidiness, for Edward Feathers is always

"spectacularly clean. You might say ostentatiously clean" (OF 5). Maureen Corrigan

explains the meaning of the nickname as follows:

"Filth" is a musty British acronym that stands for "Failed in London, Try

Hong Kong." It was applied, unkindly, to describe public-school

12
 educated Brits who scurried to the far corners of the empire to make

fortunes and careers they would otherwise have been shut out of in the

mother country.

Gardam herself provides a similar explanation in her introduction and adds "it is a joke

some two hundred years old and is inaccurate, for it is hard for anyone who is a failure

to survive in Hong Kong". For the purpose of this thesis he is reffered to as Edward.

Although Edward appears as the main character of the trilogy, the first novel

(Old Filth) can be perceived as the one that is devoted to him and the one that deals

with his life in detail and reveals the majority of secrets and information about him. The

novel is narrated by a third person omniscient narrator who focuses on Edward,

occasionally entering minds of other characters, for instance the mind of his wife

Elisabeth in the chapter called "Tulips" (OF 60- 65). McDowell describes the novel as

"showing us a man whose emotional constipation is the result of a vicious childhood".

However, this aspect of his life is not apparent to most of the characters for whom "Old

Filth is a legend" (OF 165) who has "never had anything wrong with him in his life"

(OF 225). They usually think that "nothing much ever happened to him. Except

success" (OF 169) and that "he had always been thought so. A man whose distinguished

life had run steadily and happily" (OF 5-6). But the reader is allowed to look under this

mask and see that:

Filth isn’t easy. He’s a cranky old man who has always been an actor,

both in trial and in real life. His whole life is a study in making people

think he is easy going when he isn’t. Members of the Bar are convinced

that nothing exciting has ever happened to him; we (the readers) know

differently. And he has been living with a secret most of his life; a secret

shared only with his cousins whom he hasn’t seen in years. (Alone With

13
 Each Other, "Old Filth by Jane Gardam")

Born on Borneo in Malaya, Edward grows up without his mother, who dies three

days after his birth. She was a devoted wife to Edward's father, "she had nursed him

through his war wounds of 1914, quieted his shell-shock,... borne his mad rages, loved

him" (OF 20) and she was "delighted with him (Edward)" (OF 22). His father is not

very passionate and affectionate and does not take care of Edward. He does not even

"ask to see the baby ... Alistair Feathers never came near" (OF 24). He is described as a

man "drinking heavily ... eccentrically pedantically absorbed in his work ... celibate...

He turned away from the women's beauty to the beauty of the whiskey in the glass ... He

drank alone, for he had no friends" (OF 25). He leaves his son in the care of the servants

who become Edward’s family. In the first conversation with his father, Edward rejects

him saying that "you can't be ... Because you've been here all the time without me" (OF

30). Therefore he is really an orphan with no real parents to take care of him. However,

Eddie is happy in Malaya, growing especially close to a girl called Ada who takes care

of him from the start. Williams observes that " If Gardam romanticizes colonial Malaya,

it is only because Edward does so himself: he views his birthplace as an Eden from

which he was unfairly expelled, a paradise that he longs for obscurely, and barely

remembers". At the age of five he is being taken to the city to learn the English

language and to be sent Home to England to be educated and taken care of in a more

suitable way. The idea is uncomprehensible to young Edward for "he had just left

Home... The sobs that shook his body began to become farther apart. He hiccupped and

tried to speak, but it came out jerky and odd: “Ek, ek, ek—” like the baboon on the

roof" (OF 31). The shock of being separated from the ones he became to know as his

family results in his lifelong difficulties to talk properly when disturbed and he starts to

stammer. After the separation,

14
 he had become passive and listless and glum and when he talked now it

seemed to be with some difficulty, as if he had a constriction in the throat

like an old clock trying to gear itself up to strike. “A-a-a-a-a-ack.” You

longed to say the word for him. You sometimes almost wanted to shake

him for he seemed to be doing it on purpose. (OF 32)

In adulthood he is haunted by nightmares and he speaks in Malay when asleep.

One particular dream is described in chapter called "A Light House". When staying fot

the night at his cousin Claire's after his wife's death, "a child’s voice inside him cried

out for someone to come and help him in some way. To come and love him. Explain

some fear. Only she could help. The name would not come. He tried to scream, but the

scream wouldn’t come. Terror took hold. He could not move." (OF 149) He longs for

the only person who took interest in him when he was a child, Ada, even though he does

not remember her name or anything else.

In England, his aunts who are supposed to take care of him and provide this

better life for him, deside to send him to a foster family, Ma and Pa Didds, along with

his two younger cousins, Babs and Claire. Ma Didds, "his foster mother is a sadistic

disciplinarian, and he suffers appalling abuse at her hands, an experience that leaves

him emotionally blocked" (Elisabeth Lowry). The misionary who accompanies Edward

to his new home, Auntie May, has some idea about the negative effect the separation

from parents on the young children, but she does not acknowledge the possibility of

maltreatment by the foster family. Her experiences are as follows:

She'd seen great damage. Some children forgot their parents, clung to

their adoptive families who later often forgot them. There were bad tales.

Others grew to say they'd had a much better time in England away from

their parents, whom they did not care for. There were children who

15
 worked hard at growing stolid and boring, and made marriages only in

order to have roots of their own at last. They never told anything. (OF

26)

Mrs Ingoldby is an example of a character who "completely forgot our parents"

(OF 55) and says that "I’m very grateful. I went to a marvellous woman " (OF 55). Her

son and Edward's best friend, Pat Ingoldby, claims that "they were brought up like that.

Most of them learned never to like anyone, ever, their whole lives. But they didn’t moan

because they had this safety net. The Empire" (OF 56). The one thing that Auntie May is

able to foreshadow about Edward, however, is the way the foster care will have on his

character. He grows "stolid and boring" and marries "only to have roots on his own"

(OF 26).

As Stevie Davies points out, "shuttlecocked to and fro between institutions and

colonies, Eddie's odyssey is a sad mock epic version of the wanderings of the children

of the British empire, partly based on the early life of Rudyard Kipling". Ruth Scurr

explains that "Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “Baa Baa Black Sheep” ... drew directly on

Kipling’s experience of abandonment when, aged five, he and his even younger sister

were fostered together in England while their parents went back to Bombay for five

uninterrupted years". The connection between Kipling's story and Edward's experience

is obvious. He is also sent to a foster care at the age of five accompanied by younger

female relatives. One of them, Claire is the favourite one, just as Kipling sister is in the

short story. "Her perspective on the trauma is romantic: “we were absorbed in the

process of handing over responsibility to the powers of darkness whom we had met as

children, and who had met us. We were thoroughly engaged, us three. Still untamed. We

were of the jungle”" (OF 237) (Scurr). Edward himself reffers to this period of life and

what happened there as "the Ma Didds’ affair, the affair that was—and still was—his

16
closed, locked box. " (OF 96). He tries to talk about the affair to his wife in The Man in

the Wooden Hat, but she does not want to hear about it: "I went back somewhere. I was

about eight... I killed someone - " "Oh, Eddie, shut up. I'm going" (MWH 112). To the

person who is willing to listen, Alber Ross - his loyal companion, Edward manages to

reveal just a part of it, and not the crucial one. As Ross predicts "You'll have to tell

somebody, some day" (OF 187), near the end of the novel the whole truth is revealed to

the reader: "I know that I must tell someone that when I was eight years old I killed a

woman in cold blood" (OF 239). And later he, with the help of his cousin Babs,

confesses to a priest that "I let go of her very suddenly so that she fell backwards down

the stairs" (OF 245), the incident described leads to Ma Didds' death.

The effect the maltreatment has on the children is apparent in the scene when

Auntie May along with the headmaster of Edward's new school come to collect Edward

and his cousins after Ma Didds' funeral:

When Auntie May had arrived and said, “I am Auntie May,” Claire had

smiled and raised her arms to her for an embrace. Babs had jerked away

from Auntie May, as if expecting a blow. Edward, whom Auntie May had

cared for, did not go near her...You would expect them to draw together,

Auntie May thought." (OF 37)

The only one that is able to respond to Auntie May's arrival in a natural way is Claire

who is not a victim of abuse. Babs expects everyone to treat her badly and Edward has

grown distant and distrustful.

Edward's situation improves when he moves to a private school directed by Sir.

His stammer subsides with the headmaster's help and particularly with the help of Pat

Ingoldby who, along with his parents, become Edward's new family. Edward perceives

the Ingoldbys as "blood of my blood and bone of my bone" (OF 82) and Pat Ingoldby as

17
"a part of him. Listening to Pat Ingoldby’s endless talk, Eddie, at first painfully and

hesitantly, began to talk, too. ... Ingoldby’s wit and logic expunged the nightmares of

Eddie’s past. They were balm and blessing to Eddie who had met none previously " (OF

52). However, this bond that grows between them is not as strong as Edward believes it

is. "The link turns out to be tenuous, and it is sundered by World War II" (Portico). After

Pat’s brother gets killed, the Ingoldbys start to treat Edward as a stranger. Although

apparently cured, his stammer returns from time to time to upset Edward again: "He was

apt to roar when emotionally disturbed: it was the last vestige of the terrible stammer of

his Welsh childhood" (MWH 13). Edward is unable to find family even at his aunts who

"dwelt like Siamese twins in each other's concerns and in the present moment" (OF 98).

As a result of the series of maltreatment and abandonment, Edward feels unsafe

and uncertain, always afraid of being left. He, therefore decides to marry Elisabeth

Macintosh, instead of his true love Isobel Ingoldby, because "I feel save with her"

(MWH 17) and Isobel, on the other hand "Isobel weakened me" (LF 191). While

proposing to Elisabeth, he says:

Elisabeth, you must never leave me. That's the condition. I've been left all

my life. From being a baby, I've been taken away from people. Raj

orphan and so on... It did not destroy me but it made me bloody unsure...

Been sent away all my life ...Bad at sharing feelings." (MWH 32)

This fear of being left does not leave Edward after she makes her promise never to leave

him. Several times he believes he is going to lose her. After she spends a couple of days

recovering from an operation, he admits that "I thought you’d left me!" (MWH 186)

Not only is Edward "bad at sharing feelings" (MWH 32), he is also unable to

express them and is frightened of them when expressed by others. When Isobel tells him

that "I am in love with you, Eddie" (OF 221), the only think he is able to think about is

18
whether he will be able to get home safely. When Babs starts to talk about love she feels

towards one of her piano students, Edward abruptly leaves, saying: "So sorry, Babs.

Time to go. Sorry to leave you so . . ." (OF 125). The reason for his unability to express

and share his feelings and affection is that everytime he shows affection to someone in

his early life, it is considered inappropriate. "This ... will not do" (OF 28) is Auntie

May's reaction to his affectionate behaviour towards Ada, and his close friendship with

Pat Ingoldby is considered "unnatural" (OF 85) by Mr Oilseed, the Housemaster.

Although saved the amount of abuse Edward and Babs had suffered in Wales, Claire is

also disabled to some extent. She is physically unable to express what she feels because

of her " weak heart ... She would have liked a lover, but the heart battering about inside

her made the practice impossible" (OF 137). Babs comments on Claire's behaviour

saying that: "All that perfection, Claire. Nauseating perfection. From the start... Sorry. I

only meant that it’s a bit chilling" (OF 139). On the other hand, Babs admits that "I’m

not a very well woman" (OF 138) and also that "I’m in the dark ... I’m finished, Teddy.

Broken-hearted" (OF 122). Edward says to Claire that "Our mutual cousin, or whatever

she is, Babs, exists in perpetual darkness and you in perpetual light" (OF 142).

Claire makes a comment on Edward's relation to children: "When it comes to

people’s children, she thought, Teddy looks at emptiness" (OF 150). It seems that

Edward does not care for children at all. It was the birth of a baby, his own birth, that

took a wife from his father, who then became lonely and insane. He wants Elisabeth

never to leave him, and he does not want children because she might die at childbirth.

After the operation that prevents her from conceiving in the future, Edward says to his

wife: "D’you know, I never really wanted any children. Only you" (MWH 168)

In conclusion, Edward Feathers chooses to marry Elisabeth because she is the

safe option. During his childhood he was left by everybody who ment something to him

19
or who took care of him and in his adult life he is afraid of being left. He only marries

Elisabeth on condition she will never leave him. Isobel Ingoldby might be love and

passion of his life, however, he would not feel safe enough with her. She is

unpredictable and complicated.

3.2. Elisabeth Macintosh/Feathers

Edward's wife Elisabeth - her maiden name being Macintosh - is reffered to as

Betty by other characters and the narrator. However, in The Man in the Wooden Hat, she

is called Elisabeth by the narrator and she is Betty only for the other characters. In this

thesis she is reffered to as Elisabeth.

In the similar manner as Old Filth belonged to Edward Feathers, The Man in the

Wooden Hat is dedicated mainly to Elisabeth Macintosh/Feathers. The novel is written

in third-person omniscient narrative, focusing on Elisabeth, but entering also the mind

of Edward (for instance relatively considerable part of chapter 2 is written from

Edward's perspective and the chapter 11 is dedicated to Edward's recollection of the

wedding day). After Elisabeth dies, the focus shifts to his point of view entirely with

exception of passages in chapter 31 where the narrator enters the mind of Veneering and

chapter 32 where the focus is rather ambiguous, revealing thoughts of both Edward and

Veneering. After all the main characters - Elisabeth, Veneering and Edward - are dead,

the omniscient narrator is without focus in the last chapter of the novel.

The organisation of The Man in the Wooden Hat is different from the

organisation of Old Filth. In Old Filth there were only two parts with chapters, named

after their spacious setting. The Man in the Wooden Hat is divided into five parts that

have titles. The chapters are numbered. The first part is called "Marriage" and the main

focus here is Edward's marriage proposal and the days that lead up to the wedding when

20
Elisabeth contemplates her choice and the idea of marriage in general. The second part

of the novel is called "Happiness" and it is on the reader to consider whether the veil

Elisabeth gets from Mrs Baxter "will bring me happiness" (MWH 82) or not. . Mrs

Baxter herself doubts it and replies that "I shouldn’t count on that" (MWH 82). The

happiness comes in the form a baby but it is taken away when Elisabeth looses the baby

in fourth month. The third part is called "Life", however, it is about the failure of

bringing a new life into Edward and Elisabeth's marriage. The new life starts for

Elisabeth who has to get used to the idea she will never have children. The life she was

hoping for and appeared to be beginning - a new happy home, new neighbours and

friends, and the baby - is gone, therefore she starts a different one. A life in a new

perfect sterile house in the central London, her life in it also being sterile with no hope

for the future left, without children and without purpose. The fourth part is called "Life

After Death", and it concentrates on the life after the death of life (Elisabeth's baby) and

the life after British Empire is finally gone after the handover of Hong Kong to China in

1997. The last part of the novel is called "Peace" and focuses on Edward's life after

Elisabeth's death. Not only does Elisabeth rest in peace now, the peace also enters

Edward's lifelong hostility towards Veneering, and these two finally become friends.

Alex Clark claims that The Man in the Wooden Hat is "more of a companion

piece, reprising the story from the point of view of Filth's wife, Elisabeth" and Edmund

Gordon finds Elisabeth in this second volume:

a far thinner character than Edward, and The Man in the Wooden Hat is a

far less accomplished work than Old Filth; worse, it actually suppresses

some of the resonance of its predecessor. By shading in so many of the

open spaces of her story, Gardam undermines its former virtues of

sleekness and obliquity.

21
Gordon further observes that "the emphasis here is firmly on Betty’s dutiful attitude to

her marriage, and her unflinching resolve to see it through, even after her desire for

children is frustrated; even after her true sexual and romantic awakening with

Veneering". Elisabeth represents "a woman of her period and position. She bravely

endures childlessness, keeps up appearances; yet she soars above convention, her tact

and tolerance presaging a less suffocating modern age" (Rachel Hore).

Elisabeth, unlike Edward, comes from a family where the lack of affection was

not the issue. However, she loses both her parents while being imprisoned in the

Japanese Internment Camp in Shanghai. She is not abandoned for she is taken care of

by her godparents, the judge Pastry Willy and his wife Dulcie. Her childhood is rarely

commented on, she allows herself to remember details from the past evoked by

particular sounds or smells.

While in Old Filth the focus was primarily on Edward's growing up and his

remembering the past, Elisabeth's novel is concerned with the transformations she

undergoes in her adult life.

The first transfromation is deliberate and voluntary. By marrying Edward she

intends to begin the metamorphosis to a perfect wife and mother. Before the marriage,

she sees herself as "hole in the air" (MWH 45) and feels that:

I have no aim ... No certainty. I am a post-war invertebrate.... trying to

find something I was born to do. I have settled on exactly what my

mother would have wanted: a rich, safe, good husband and a pleasant

life. ... I should be the last woman in the world to recreate the old world

of the unswerving English wife. I am trying to please my dead mother. I

always am. (MWH 78-9)

At a hairdresser's in Hong Kong she sets eyes on an old photograph of a woman

22
she immediately recognizes as the representation of this "unswerving English wife"

(MWH 79). Although her friends warn her against the matrimony, she goes through this

"compromise which she believes will result in an overall improvement in her life"

(Mary Whipple), trying to fill in the "unsettling absence at the centre of her life"

(Edmund Gordon). "Also orphaned ... she's quickly drawn to Feathers; but while she

loves him and he cleaves to her, her free spirit can't help responding hungrily to

another" (Hore). The first test of her loyalty comes just hours after her engagement to

Edward and she fails. On a party she meets his professional rival and a man he hates,

Terry Veneering, and not only she falls in love with him, but loses her virginity to him

the next night. She understands her sudden rush of feelings and passion as being

"retarded. I want the moon, like a teenager" (MWH 26). Her friend Amy, already

married and experienced, objects that "you should want the moon. Don't do it, Bets.

Don't go for a forty-watt light bulb because it looks pretty. You'll get stuck with it when

it goes out. You are so loyal, and you'll have to soldier on in the dark for ever

afterwards" (MWH 27). However, Elisabeth does not follow this advice and decides to

marry Edward anyway. She "can't think of a reason not to" (MWH 18). She also hopes

Edward will give her something she never really had, a real family. She is willing to live

in a marriage without passion in exchange for security and children: "It won't be

romantic, but who wants that? And there will be children. And he's remarkable and I'll

grow to love him very much. There's nothing about him that's unlovable" (MWH 33). In

the end, while Mrs Baxter still sees Elisabeth as a woman "born to tears and wrong

decisions" (MWH 81), Amy encourages her by claiming that marrying Edward is "the

best thing you ever did in your life. Looking ahead at last" (MWH 88).

The second transformation occurs soon after the wedding. At first it seems to be

a happy one, Elisabeth finds out she is pregnant, she suddenly feels "madly in love"

23
(MWH 133), "happy and beautiful" (MWH 134), and that she "could do anything"

(MWH 134). However, this contented moment pases soon, as she looses the baby at

four months. Her Hong Kong friends do not see her miscarriage as something dreadful,

believing that "she's got to get over this and have another" (MWH 141). This is not what

happens. While she wants ten children and imagines herself "breastfeeding in the rose-

red chair" (MWH 103) Edward bought her on their honeymoon, Elisabeth is diagnosed

with cancer and has to undergo a complete hysterectomy that will make impossible for

her to conceive again. She spends a couple of days in Dorset, in a house let to her by her

new London friend and neighbout Delilah Dexter, to recover after the operation. She

enjoys the solitude and does not want to go back to London, where a new life in a new

house await her. The new house is a perfect clean sterile place, as sterile as her future

life will be without possibility to bring a new life into the world. She has to transform

herself for the second time from a perfect wife with a bright future ahead into a perfect

wife with no future to look forward to.

The third transformation the reader witnesses Elisabeth to go through is the final

one. When Edward finally decides to retire, they do not stay in Hong Kong since the

handover to China is rawing near and Edward is worried about the uncertain future life

in the formal British colony. Instead they retire to Dorset, to the house where Elisabeth

experiences her second transformation and recovery from the operation. Yet again

Elisabeth has to metamorphose into a new self: "Just as she had rearranged herself into a

copy of her dead mother on her marriage, now she began to work on being the wife of a

distinguished old man" (MWH 216). The marriage is not a happy one, but it does not

seem unbearable after all. It seems, however, empty, lacking something, love and desire.

This absence is apparent from the start. On the ferry just after their engagement,

Elisabeth observes a couple sitting next to them: "she was ... gazing up at him,

24
whispering to him, kissing him all the time below the ear" (MWH 30). This couple are

able to show affection to each other in a way that Edward and Elisabeth never can. This

ability to show affection and perhaps the affection itself is missing from their

relationship right from the start, and although together, "Edward and Elisabeth walked a

foot or so apart" (MWH 30) for the rest of their lives.

3.3. Terry Veneering

Old Filth focuses on Edward Feathers, The Man in the Wooden Hat on Edward's

wife Elisabeth, and the last volume of the trilogy belongs to Terry Veneering. He is

usually reffered to as Veneering, only in passages concerned with his childhood and

sometimes by Betty he is reffered to as Terry. In the thesis he is called Veneering. The

novel Last Friends is narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, focusing mainly on

Veneering, Dulcie Williams and Fred Fiscal-Smith, but entering also minds of other

minor characters: Susan - Dulcie's daughter, Anna - the new owner of Veneering's

house, Isobel Ingoldby, and Florrie Benson - Veneering's mother. The novel is arranged

in two layers, the first one focusing on Veneering's childhood and early adulthood, while

the other one taking place in the present day when all the main characters (Edward,

Elisabeth and Veneering) are dead, and the focus shifts to the developing "romance"

between a widow Dulcie Williams and a retired lawyer Fred Fiscal-Smith - the last

remaining friends of the recently deceased main protagonists.

"I wanted him to be special ... Strange and brilliant and utterly un-English"

(Shilling, "Jane Gardam Interview") says Gardam about Veneering in her interview for

The Telegraph. Born to a family of a poor coalwoman Florrie Benson and a disabled

acrobat of unknown origin, Anton, Veneering's family background is significantly

different from that of Edward Feathers and Elisabeth Macintosh. In Old Filth, Edward

25
believes that "Terry Veneering was all that was wrong with the British masters of this

divine Colony—jumped-up, arrogant, blustering, loud, cynical and common. And far

too good at games" (OF 11). In The Man in the Wooden Hat his opinion on Veneering

serves as an explanation for Elisabeth's interest in him, for he is described as "bold, ugly

and unstoppable, irrepressibly merry in a way a great many women and many men

found irresistable" (MWH 11). In Last Friends Dulcie offers her own view of

Veneering: "He was a glorious man once... He was noisy and funny and sweet to

women, and he could read your thoughts. Could read your thoughts! And a constant

friend" (LF 148). However, no one except for Fred Fiscal-Smith knows anything about

his childhood, origin, or his way to success at the Bar. Nicole Perrin argues that the

"readers may find the history offered in Last Friends superficial compared with the

psychological insights offered about other characters in other works". The psychological

layer here is the one concentrating on Dulcie and Fred, while Veneering's story

resembles a fairy-tale.

Gardam begins the second part of the novel, called Teesside after Veneering's

birthplace, by telling the story of how his parents met. His mother, Florrie Benson

"didn’t fit in. Her essence seemed to be far away somewhere, way beyond her stocky

figure. She suggested another life, a secret civilisation. She looked a solitary... an

invisible string seemed to pass between them" (LF 50). The passage about her encounter

with Anton in the circus, has a mystical atmosphere:

Florrie Benson saw an angel that night. ... was at once translated. She

heard a new music, a new fierce rapture. She watched the superhuman

contortions of the exciting male bodies. Her skin prickled all over at their

wild cries. In a way she recognised them. There was one dancer she

couldn’t take her eyes off. ... She went every night that week and the final

26
 night she was up beside him on the platform when he fell from a rope.

She was ordering a doctor, roaring out in her lion’s voice. People seemed

to think she must be his woman. She never left his side. (LF 56)

Florrie, who does not "fit in", and accoding to Hadley "the most romantic character in

the trilogy", falls in love with a mysterious foreign man and Veneering is the offspring

of their union. Although the bond between him and his mother whose "faith in the little

boy never lessened" (LF 64) is powerul, the relationship of Veneering and his father

resembles that of Edward Feathers and his father in Malaya. Both men, Anton Venetski

and Alistair Feathers, find themseves isolated from the outside world. Anton, unable to

leave his room due to his back injury he suffers after the accident in the circus, spends

his days "like a torturer but it’s himself ’e’s torturing. ... He needs whisky. The Mam

don’t know. ... He’s beginning to need more and more" (LF 71). However, this does not

prevent Veneering from becoming a boy for whom the "life was an urgent affair of haste

and action and nothing in it should be missed" (LF 49). Seeing his father crippled and

unable to even get up from his bed, he develops an active attitute towards life.

Tom Cunliffe describes Veneering's part of Last Friends as "the story ... of

Terry’s climb from his inauspicious start, helped up along the way by benevolent adults

who took an interest in him ... With no resources of his own ... Terry depends on luck

and good hunches". The first of these benefactors is Mr Parable, a solicitor, who meets

Veneering on the beach. Their meeting has also traces of mystery, for Veneering "had no

idea why he was drawn to the place" (LF 65). The "insect figure" - Parable - directs him

to study the Law, thus shaping his future. He also makes sure he leaves the town just

before it gets bombed during the war, and secures for him a place on board of an

evacuee ship to Canada. As Jane Shilling points out, "Last Friends is a fiction full of

bold, almost Dickensian, coincidence. There is a last-minute decision by the child Terry

27
not to travel on an evacuee ship which is later torpedoed by a German U-boat; the

unexpected offer of an education; a great legacy that launches his legal career"

(Shilling, "Jane Gardam Interview"). His life resembling a fairy-tale, it is worth noting

that he in fact runs away from a fairy-tale when jumping the ship:

What was before him was The Arabian Nights. It must be a film! Terry

felt very much afraid. He was being mocked ...They were all princes, all

bowing at him and all false ... ‘I don’t think I am meant to be here,’ he

said. ... You, all you children, are going to be in heaven. ... ‘I have to go

back. I am not meant to be here. It’s a dream.’ ‘Perhaps the whole world

is a dream.’ (LF 122-3)

By running away - the act that is either "directed by some spiritual force of nature, by

instinct or by selfish whim" (LF 130), he escapes yet another disaster. The sailor on the

ship is right when saying that the children "are going to be in heaven" (LF 123), for the

ship is torpedoed by the Germans four days after it leaves Liverpool. Most of the

children die that night.

The second benefactor who directs Veneering to a better future is Sir, the

headmaster of the private school Edward Feathers attends in Old Filth. Since the

surname of Anton is never known for certain, Sir names Terry after a character from

Charles Dickens's novel Our Mutual Friend, Veneering. There is also a resemblence

between Terry Veneering's story and the story of John Harmon, the main character of

Our Mutual Friend. They both come form families of coalmen and their fortunes come

from coal. Furthermore, Sir foreshadows both Edward Feather's and Veneering's future

by saying that:

Feathers will have a charmed life and he deserves it for he had a terrible

start. He was unloved from birth. Whereas you— boy—I understand

28
 have had a loving home and interesting parents. This will get you through

everything. Almost. Because you were loved you’ll know how to love.

And you will recognise real love for you ... Remember ... You will

outshine him. I know, I am never wrong. (LF 132-3)

Like a prophet or a godfather in a fairy-tale, he predicts what will happen to both

Edward and Veneering in the future.

The third benefactor is the Judge Pastry Willy, who recognizes Hong Kong's

potential that "from a sleepy outpost … emerged in twenty years as a thriving

commercial and financial centre" (Paul Wilding, 5). He establishes the new set of

chambers specialising on the Construction Law, and asks both Veneering and Edward

Feathers to join him. Edward is already a successful lawyer under the supervision of

Albert Ross, hovewer, Veneering benefits from Pastry Willy's invitation and with his

help becomes the success Sir had predicted.

3.4. Isobel Ingoldby

Isobel Ingoldby might seem a minor character however, her character is of

crucial importance in the story. Gardam herself admits that Isobel is important and with

her not having enough space in the trilogy, the substantial part of the story remains

unrevealed. In the interview for The Telegraph, Jane Shilling claims that Gardam "can’t

let her publishers call this (Last Friends) the “final volume” while the story of Filth’s

first love, the fascinating Isobel Ingoldby, remains untold" ("Jane Gardam Interview").

Gardam agrees saying that "In fact the whole idea at the beginning was to write about

Isobel. Instead I wrote this one" (Shilling, "Jane Gardam Interview"). In another

interview, by Roslyn Sulcas, she adds that Isobel

has Filth’s built-in English class background but fights its restrictions,

29
 and she has the confidence to disregard them, and the ferocious

emotional temperament to overcome them ... I had better say that yes, I

would like to write about Isobel.

Throughout the trilogy, Isobel is presented to the reader as a mysterious

character. Nobody really knows her. Elisabeth perceives Isobel as a person who is

"burdened with her own secrets but she never lets on" (MWH 78). The reader is offerred

only some basic facts about her life: "Lizzie was an intellectual. She’d been at Bletchley

Park. And she was, or said she was, a lesbian" (MWH 66). The only character who

seems to get to know her in some depth is Edward. From the start a special connection

develops between them, they even initiate a love-affair which is, nevertheless it is never

fully developed or converted to a marriage.

Both Elisabeth and Edward experience love and passion, Elisabeth with

Veneering and Edward with Isobel, but they choose for themselves the safer option, the

partner who seems stable and reliable. Veneering is already married and having an affair

with him would prevent Elisabeth from having a tradicional family. Edward chooses

Elisabeth over Isobel, a woman who is wild and unpredictable. The reader still knows

where the true passion is. The first meeting of Edward and Isobel is described in detail,

and so is the meeting of Elisabeth and Veneering, while there is nothing mentioned in

the trilogy about Elisabeth and Edward's first meeting. This clearly shows what is

important for the characters to remember all their lives.

30
4. Adulthood: "Double-Glazed Silence"

This chapter is divided into three subchapters. The first one deals with the

representation of sexuality in the trilogy, including analysis of Edward Feathers's

attitude to women and sexuality in general, Elisabeth's love relationships with her

husband and Terry Veneering, the relationship of Vanessa and Oliver, and the different

aspects of homosexuality as they are presented in the trilogy.

The second subchapter discusses different ways the characters in the trilogy deal

with death and loss, focusing on the decline of the British Empire as experienced by

Edward Feathers and his wife, Elisabeth Feathers response to her miscarriage and the

death of Herry Veneering, as well as Edward Feathers's behaviour after losing his wife

and his lifelong enemy and one of his last friends - Terry Veneering.

The third subchapter studies the importance of memory and desire in the lives of

characters of Edward Feathers, Elisabeth Feathers, and Dulcie Williams.

4.1. Sexuality: "This Tiresome Sex Business"

This subchapter deals with the representation of sexuality in the trilogy,

including analysis of Edward Feathers's attitude to women and sexuality in general,

Elisabeth's love relationships with her husband and Terry Veneering, the relationship of

Vanessa and Oliver - the son of Edward's cousin Claire, and the different aspects of

homosexuality as they are presented in the trilogy.

4.1.1. Edward Feathers

Edward Feathers's life is, from the beginning, marked by a peculiar attitude

towards women and sexuality in general. In the first chapter his inability to express

feelings was discussed. Even his parents behave in a reserved manner. The reader

31
witnesses "their goodbye - for them, a very affectionate goodbye - a kiss on the cheek

(however had this child been conceived?) ... A quick embrace" (OF 22). Ironically

enough, by leaving Edward in the care of the villagers and servants, Alistair Feathers

provides his son with a childhood filled with love and affection, the only period of in his

life that feels natural. Edward "was satisfied by the nourishment of the wetnurse but

passionate in his love for the girl" (OF 24). He is happy then, and showing affection

comes naturally to him. What seems natural to him does not necessarilly seem natural to

the members of the society he originally belongs to:

Edward splashed forward and took Ada round the waist and buried his

face against her thighs. “You are my leopard,” cried Edward Feathers in

the Malay of the compound. “My beautiful leopard and I want to eat you

alive.” This, thought Auntie May, will not do. (OF 28)

Auntie May, the missionary whose mission is to make sure that Edward receives the

education and upbringing of an English gentleman might be regarded as someone who

believes in the rules of this society, but Gardam lets the reader into her mind to see that

it is not the case, not entirely:

She looked at Alistair and had to admire. She wanted to take his hand.

Her hardest task now as she grew older in the Ministry was to deal with

her longing to be touched—hugged, stroked by anyone, any human

being—a friend, a lover, a child or even (and here she scented danger) a

servant. Of either sex. She prayed about it, asking that God’s encircling

arms would bring comfort. They did not. (OF 27)

Even the missionary who is in charge of supervision on the following of the rules and

who has to follow much higher rules than the others, has doubts and desires to be

touched. However oppressed she feels herself, she takes Edward from the people who

32
make him feel save and loved, and the real damage is set in motion.

The separation and the years spent under Ma Didds's cruel supervision, Edward

loses his ability to give and receive affection. When leaving Wales and saying goodbye

to his cousin, Claire - who is lucky enough to escape the cruelty of their stepmother,

embraces Edward showing her sadness and love for him, but he "looked down at

Claire’s top-knot, felt her arms round him, did not know what to do about it and

carefully removed himself" (OF 38).

Antie May's separation him from his family and Ma Didds's cruelty result not

only in Edward's difficulty to feel and show affection, but also unable him to trust

women in general. Isobel Ingoldby, "a crush he could never respond to naturally"

(McDowell), awakens sexual desire in Edward for the first time. He gets excited

everytime he sees her, he cannot "take his eyes off her" (OF 73), but he is terrified.

When she comes to his bedroom one night to seduce him, "he knew that something was

expected of him but had no idea what it was" (OF 73). In this moment when he is

offered an opportunity to express his feelings, the memory of Ma Didds emerges in his

mind, the idea of women being all the same:

She’s old and she’s evil and she only wants to hurt, he thought ... Eddie

would finish her, as once already in his life he had finished a woman. “I

think you’re bad. A bad woman,” he said. “Get out.”... The weird dream

(or whatever it was) was never quite obliterated ... Why ever? Nothing

had happened. He had won. He had silenced the sirens ... Yet, all his

life—regret. (OF 74)

In Northern Ireland, waiting for the evacuee ship, Edward loses his virginity to a

girl who works in the house he is staying in. The first time he also sends her away,

however, the next night he "turned to the girl and let her do what she wanted. Which he

33
found was what he wanted" (OF 178). This sexual experience changes Eddie, and for a

brief period he becomes more open, free to tell some of his secrets to Albert Ross.

When he meets Isobel Ingoldby again, in London during the war, he is finally

able to express himself, at least sexually. However, when Isobel reveals to him her

feelings and tells him that "I have something very important to say...I am in love with

you, Eddie” (OF 221), Edward leaves her abruptly and does not "look back to see

whether she was watching" (OF 221). Although sexually drawn to her, and spending

two nights after his engagement with Isobel, he elects to marry Elisabeth. Isobel feels

dangerous, risky, real, a woman of complicated sexuality - she claims to be a lesbian.

For Edward she might be a better choice than Elisabeth but he wants to be safe, to know

what to expect. He chooses Elisabeth over Isobel because he feels save with her, she is

not as complicated as Isobel (or at least everybody thinks that). With Isobel Edward

experiences passion but these strong feelings scare him, he is afraid to take risks, he

does not want to be left yet again. He chooses safety over love and passion.

Edward is afraid of women in general, he does not trust them. His story is full of

situations he is being treated by women and all the women he meets seem terrifying to

him; Auntie May, Ma Didds, the nurser in the hospital, his aunts, the Irish maid, Isobel

Ingoldby, Chloe - the slightly mad woman in Dorset, his cousins Babs and Claire, Mrs

Robertson on the evacuee ship, all of them impersonate something vile and dangerous.

Elisabeth is the only one that makes these unpleasant feelings subside. But it is Isobel

who gets to know him from theviewpoint Elisabeth never does: "everyone always loved

you in your extraordinary never-revealed or unravelled private world. I am one of those

who know that you were not really cold" (OF 76).

34
 4.1.2. Elisabeth Macintosh/Feathers

When Elisabeth Macintosh becomes engaged to Edward Feathers, she is still a

virgin. However, she does not wait for her future husband, the next day she begins an

affair with his opponent IN the case he is working on, Terry Veneering.

Fred Fiscal-Smith, a lawyer and one of the few friends still alive in Last Friends,

remembers the night Elisabeth meets Veneering and he recongnizes the beginning of the

affair: "And I was present when Betty saw Veneering for the first time ... I saw him get

hold of a pillar. White and gold. Fluted. His face became very still and serious. Yes. I

saw the beginning of it. The disgraceful love affair" (LF 35-6). The same scene is

familiar to the reader, for it was already told from Elisabeth's point of view in The Man

in the Wooden Hat: "Then he saw Elisabeth in the pearls and gingham and stood

perfectly still. “I’m Veneering,” he said to her, “Terry Veneering.” His eyes were bright

light blue. Elisabeth thought: And it is just one hour too late" (MWH 37). However, this

is not the first time these two meet. In Last Friends the reader finds out that Veneering

actually met Elisabeth several years before the Hong Kong party, even though she did

not notice him.

At the Judge Pastry Willy’s house he sees Elisabeth Macintosh for the first time

passing him on the doorsteps; "she passed Veneering by like a whip-lash, but he had the

impression of happiness, good temper, laughter, excitement ... She had not seen him"

(LF 183); and immediatelly falls in love with her. He is already married to a beautiful

Chinese woman, Elsie, and has a child with her, a boy called Harry. He meets Elisabeth

in Honk Kong and they very soon realize the powerful attraction between them. They

spend the next night together in a tree house in the forests.

The night is not described by the narrator at all. The reader observes Veneering

closing the door behind them and starting to take Elisabeth's dress off and the rest stays

35
untold. The reader is left only with Elisabeth's later recollections of her feelings and

passion she felt then and the way this experience makes her feel long afterwards. The

green dress she was wearing that night becomes a symbol of ultimate pleasure for her, a

souvenir:

I can hardly bear to touch it. (But she held it to her face.)... But just

touching it, looking at it, makes me want to cry. With happiness, private

happiness, not with guilt. Once only. It is a sacred dress. And she pressed

her face into it and remembered Veneering’s hands and skin and hair and

sweat as the dress lay like a slop of spinach on the wood floor of the

weird tree house. I will never wear it again. (MWH 65)

She reffers to the night as "a dream of years (that) can take a second" (MWH 57)

and "the hours of the sweltering, wonderful night" (MWH 57). Just as Edward feels

happy and becomes more open after his first sexual intercourse, Elisabeth enjoys to be

in her "new, used, happy body" and she has "never felt so awake." (MWH 58). She feels

"wonderfully, deeply tired and I want him again. And again. And for ever. And I don’t

mean Edward" (MWH 66). She also feels confused and does not understand why she

spend the night with someone she hardly knows instead of her future husband. At one

point she tries to even persuade herself that it actually was Edward to whom she lost her

virginity: "Oh! It must have been Edward! I’m marrying him. He hates—she couldn’t

say the name. I’ve been bewitched. Then, thinking of the night, she moaned with

pleasure. No, it was you. Not Eddie" (MWH 57-8). Later she tells her friend Amy that

"it was hypnosis" (MWH 60) but Amy believes "it was lust. It was natural desire. You

did it to have something to remember and to have known desire" (MWH 60-1). Then

finally Elisabeth admits that "it is love. Is it so wrong to want a glorious memory?"

(MWH 61). Amy thinks this to be "sentimental and obscene. You won’t like yourself for

36
it in the end" (MWH 61) and tells her to "Pray you’re not pregnant” (MWH 62). This

warning foreshadows the future. Elisabeth, soon after the honeymoon, finds out she is

pregnant and it is most probable that the child was conceived that night with Veneering,

since the honeymoon with Edward was "dizzy ... not with releasing passions, but with

altitude sickness" (MWH 100). However, the identity of Elisabeth's child is never

known neither to Elisabeth or to the reader. Nevertheless the possibility that the father

of the child was Veneering is ostentatiously suggested by the frequent comments on

Edward's possible infertility.

Elisabeth tends to keep the one-night affair only to herself and in her letter to

Isobel Ingoldby she tries to deny the fact that she remembers the night and it gives her

pleasure to think about it: "I’ve put it out of my mind. It was some sort of hypnosis.

Terrifying! No, I never think about it" (MWH 96). But as Cook claims "It is a passion

that will stay with her all her long and faithful married life, underscoring her failed

attempts to transform herself from a naïve missionary’s daughter to a perfectly put

together British expatriate".

The long years that follow are marked by Elisabeth's loyalty to Edward, even

though she is asked by Veneering to run away with him on several occasions. Veneering

himself comments on Elisabeth's decision as follows: "For Betty it was a tremendous

march. A brave and glorious and well, comical sometimes, endurance. All governed by

love. Passion—well she’d forgone passion when she married. Her own choice. She’d

taken her ration with me. She wouldn’t forget that night" (LF 198). Lauren Bufferd

observes that "from the outside, and perhaps even to Filth, Betty is a capable,

conservative matron, a pillar of church and garden club, but readers get a glimpse of the

clever and impetuous girl she once was and the warm, affectionate woman she still

could be".

37
 In conclusion, the night she spends with Veneering and looses her virginity to

him is a moment she will never forget, the only time she experiences the real passion.

However, she marries Edward even though she is not sure she should do it. Corinna

Lothar explains Elisabeth's decision as follows: "Betty truly loves Edward, feels great

tenderness for him, and is bound to him and the secure life he gave her". And at first her

dream of secure family life seems to be coming true. She gets pregnant and she starts to

feel happy about her decision to marry Edward. Her life finally has purpose, it follows

the course she wants it to, she hopes this child to be the first one of the ten children she

intends to bear, she feels in love with Edward, the father of her future children.

After the miscarriage and the operation, when she no longer has any hope for this bright

future left, the gravity of her preference of the "lightbulb" - which means loyalty- over

the "Moon" - that represents passion - becomes more apparent to her. Over the course of

the next decades "her sensuality and sense of freedom rises to the fore from time to

time. When she finally decides to leave Edward, she finds she cannot, that it is too late"

(Corinna Lothar).

4.1.3. Vanessa and Oliver

Gardam's Old Filth Trilogy is a story of marriages that are unhappy, couples that

are mismatched. The only exception seems to be Claire's son's Oliver and his girlfriend

Vanessa. According to McDowell, Gardam "convincingly contrasts Filth's attitudes with

a younger generation" by letting the reader to observe for several pages the lives of

Oliver and Vanessa and more significantly to follow Vanessa's attitude towards family

life and child-bearing which changes completely after her brief but significant encounter

with Edward Feathers. Vanessa and Oliver hardly ever discuss children just as Elisabeth

and Edward, they just assume what the other thinks about the matter. Here the roles are

38
switched, it is Oliver, the man, who wants children and is believed not to want any.

Vanessa is a "Barrister in Shipping Chambers ... respected in the Chambers and held in

awe in Bournemouth" (OF 146) but her mother keeps asking her in her mind "where are

the children?" and does not recognize her daughter "I miss you ... I don’t know this

sharp-faced, black-suited, almost bald-headed, lap-top sprite" (OF 146). Oliver's attitude

seems to be more in the favour of matrimony and parenthood: "They’d been together six

years and she was thirty-two and as rich as he was. She could stop work tomorrow and .

. ." (OF 147). Vanessa perceives her boyfriend as "big. And good. He was clever. He

was loyal. He could be as ruthless as his mother. I don’t like his mother, but I do like

him" (OF 148).

When Vanessa meets Edward Feathers at Claire's house, their conversation soon

turns to the subject of children, motherhood and sexuality. The reader can see how

misled about Oliver she is when she exclaims: "Oh, he doesn’t think about it. Never has.

Marriage, kids. Good God, no!" (OF 158). She also expresses her attitude towards

marriage and committement "It’s the way of the world now ... It must be

incomprehensible to your generation ... We meet, we part. Life is pretty long nowadays

to be satisfied by a single sexual partner" (OF 158).

Edward for the first time acknowledges the pain and the consequences of the

way he was brought up. He explains to Vanessa that "If you’ve not been loved as a

child, you don’t know how to love a child. You need prior knowledge. You can inflict

pain through ignorance ... Think of being a parent like that ... A parent like you, for

instance, young woman. What child would want a parent like you?" (OF 159). This

revelation provokes a ferocious reaction in Vanessa. She starts to defend herself

claiming that "I was loved ... I have my career ... I know it’s what all women say, but it’s

true. It matters to me and to Oliver and to the economy of the country. I make a lot of

39
money. I can have a child when I’m fifty" (OF 159). Edward warns her that:

Children are cruel. They are wreckers of the soul. I hate children. I am a

paedophobe. Betty knew we must not have a child because of the child I

was myself. I would have damaged a child. I don’t mean physically, of

course. (OF 159)

What he says about his wife is, of course, a lie or rather something he came to

believe to be true, an excuse he made up to explain the reason they did not have

children. He is not able to tell anybody about his infertility and Elisabeth's health

condition. However, this speech has a notable effect on Vanessa and she says to herself:

"And I damn well will have some children. When it suits me. And with Oliver. Or

someone" (OF 159). The same day at night when preparing to go to bed, she still

reflects on Edward's monologue and "remembering the old fossil who’d thought she

was past the age of childbearing" (OF 163) she allows Oliver to have sex with her

without precaution. The career woman in Vanesa retreats and she decides to take the risk

and show the world, and herself, that she is able to be a mother as well. Gardam ends

the Vanessa episode with words "Thus is the world peopled" (OF 165). Vanessa is

finally able to follow the natural path in her life.

Under Edward's unintentional guidence, Vanessa experiences a complete

metamorphoses from a strictly career woman to a woman dedicated to her family and

children. Unaware of his influence, he provokes and helps her to follow a new path in

her life. Gardam lets her to change her attitude and experience with Oliver what

Elisabeth and Edward never can, the real family life.

40
 4.1.4. Sir and Mr Smith, Isobel, Susan

For the account of the representations of sexuality in Old Filth trilogy to be

complete, one must also mention the portrayal of homosexuality in the novels. There are

several characters whose sexuality is rather ambiguous, some of them claiming to be

homosexuals. The first of these characters is Sir, the headmaster of Edward's private

school. The reader may guess that to be gay is still not something to show freely. At

Sir's outfit strict rules must be followed, so no one can suspect any behaviour that might

be perceived as unnatural, of homosexual nature: "Despite Sir’s strictness about no best

friends and daily cold showers, nothing could be done about the oneness of Ingoldby

and Feathers" (OF 52). One may speculate whether these rules are set because of the

society still unable to accept the homosexuals, or because of the idea that homosexuality

is a disease that can be acquired, or whether the rules are there to protect Sir from

accusations of abusing his students. Mr Ingoldby obviously belongs to the part of the

society that perceives homosexuality as dangerous: "I suppose it’s just this tiresome sex

business coming on. Not, thank goodness, homo-sex for either of you" (OF 54). Edward

informs him that they "get too much about it from Sir ... And the Mr. Smiths are always

changing and Sir broken-hearted and we have to take him up Striding Edge and get his

spirits re-started" (OF 54). This comment indicates that Sir really is interested in men

and especially those that work as his secretaries. Not all of them reciprocate his feelings

and are forced to leave. Mr Oilseed, another man working at the outfit, explains that:

“... the times are moving on, but very slowly ... There is something today

that is a wonder in the school. This Victorian and bourgeois school. This

is that the unnatural closeness between you and Ingoldby has not been

terminated. There are certain explanatory circumstances but, as we who

were in the trenches know, emotions have to be contained. This, like your

41
 Prep school, is a school in which we endure ... I suggest that you go back

to your study and read Kipling.” “Kipling’s childhood was very like mine

and he was queer. I should like to appeal.”“On what grounds?” “Slander,

sir. And antediluvianism.” (OF 85-6)

Mr Oilseed and people like him are so terrified by homosexuality that they see

even a close friendship between two boys as a thread.

The second character discussed in this subchapter is Isobel Ingoldby. As was

suggested earlier, she is the love of Edward Feather's life and she keeps loving him even

after his death. However, her sexual orientation is of an ambiguous nature from the start.

Mr Ingoldby suggests that "she may be a little peculiar" (OF 69) and Mrs Ingoldby

believes that "a husband isn’t on the cards" (OF 68). Whether they think she might be a

lesbian is not clear, but Edward obviously does not take this option into account. He has

"an instinct about Jack, too; that Isobel was being kept away from him and that was why

she and Mrs. Ingoldby were off to the Lake District. That was why Isobel was peculiar"

(OF 69). And she clearly does not behave as a lesbian when making love to Edward in

London several years later, and telling him she is in love with him. Nevertheless, in The

Man in the Wooden Hat, Isobel talks openly about her homosexuality. She mentiones

Edward being "very enjoyable. It was before I was the other way" (MWH 22).

Furthemore, in Last Friends, while she is staying at Feathers's house, she is reffered to

as "something very queer and large had appeared behind it wrapped in a tarpaulin" (LF

43).

The last character mentioned in this section is Dulcie's daughter Susan, who

appears firstly in the short story The People on Privilege Hill, but mostly in Last

Friends. She got married to an American and moved with him to the United States. She

also has a son. In the novel, Susan reveals to the reader that she is not "married any

42
more" (LF 45) and believes she "can't tell her" (LF 45) mother about it. What at first

might seem only a result of a gap between mother and daughter, is later unfolds to be

more complicated than that. Dulcie's neighbours know more about Susan than she does

and they tell her that "She has her girlfriend ... Hugely rich, we hear. And no girl.

Woman almost your age" (LF 143). Dulcie, who did not know about it, is surprised and

offended. She thinks that "Susan loving someone who is a woman and not her mother!

Such an insult to me ... I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. Lesbian!" (LF 144-5). For a

woman of Dulcie's generation the idea of a lesbian and also of a wife leaving her

husband for a woman is completely outrageous and incomprehensible. However, she

herself admits that her daughter, although "married and clever and well-off and has a

son and yet she’s never happy. Never was" (LF 143)

Vanessa and Oliver, and Susan belong to the next generation, the times are

changing. What was not allowed or considered natural is now, still anusual though,

possible. Vanessa is able to change from a career woman to a wife and mother, she is

able to change her status, she no longer needs to prove to herself her ability to compete

with men in her profession. Susan is also able to change her attitude towards life, she

get divorced and starts a new, and for her also natural and fullfilling, life as a lesbian.

These three characters, Vanessa, Oliver and Susan, seem to be the only content

characters in the trilogy. There are however two more characters, that manage to find

their contentment in the end, namely Dulcie Williams and Fred Fiscal-Smith. Their

journey to happiness is discussed in the last section of this chapter.

43
 4.2. "Dead. Gone. Happened. Lost. Over."

The aim of this subchapter discusses different ways the characters in the trilogy

deal with death and loss, focusing on the decline of the British Empire as experienced

by Edward Feathers and his wife, Elisabeth Feathers's response to her miscarriage and

the death of Herry Veneering, as well as Edward Feathers's behaviour after losing his

wife and his lifelong enemy and one of his last friends - Terry Veneering.

Gardam's Old Filth trilogy tells a "complex story of a world now faded and

gone" (Hore). The author herself admits that "Empire is what the book's about, really ...

When I was young and the empire was beginning to disintegrate, the idea was

absolutely unbelievable ... that's what all my books are about, the end of empire" (Clark,

"Jane Gardam - Life Writing"). Cook further observes that "Gardam’s concern is with

human beings gone mad for having squandered entire lives confining themselves to a

truth (God, the empire, the dream of love, the possibility of peace) that does not exist".

Mary Whipple claims that "the parallels between the end of the British Empire, with its

withdrawal from Hong Kong, and issues in the marriage between Edward and Elisabeth

are obvious". According to Williams, "Gardam links the intimate story of Filth’s life to a

much larger narrative about the formation of cultural identity in the wake of the British

Empire’s collapse".

The reader of the trilogy witnesses the British Empire dying, and so do the

characters in the novel, particularly Edward and Elisabeth Feathers. ''After 140 years of

British rule … Hong Kong embarked upon a fundamental transformation as the 1984

Sino-British agreement mandated the end of British colonialism and the sovereignty

retrocession to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997'' (Max J. Skidmore, 1).

The approaching handover of Hong Kong back to China is evident in the changes in the

behaviour of the people in Hong Kong. In The Man in the Wooden Hat, Amy's husband

44
describes the behaviour of the inhabitants of Hong Kong towards the British people as

follows: "It’s not that they dislike you so much as that they aren’t interested. They just

blot you out ...We are invisible" (MWH 68). As Elisabeth points out, there is no reason

to stay any longer in the "dying colony" (MWH 197). In the first chapter of Old Filth

the narrator expresses his interest in the reason why Edward and Elisabeth retire to

Dorset. The most probable reason seems to be "the end of Empire? The drawing-near of

1997? Was it the unbearableness of the thought of the arrival of the barbarians?" (OF 7).

In the second novel it is obvious that for Edward the idea of staying in Hong Kong after

the handover is terrifying as Elisabeth wakes up in the middle of the night because

Edward has been "yelling in his sleep ... moaning, saying that they were going to hang

him. After the handover in '97 they would take him and hang him" 'MWH 199). In a

letter to Dulcie and her husband Pastry Willy she writes that "we don’t quite know what

to do with our future" (MWH 199). The future is uncertain at the end of an era. There is

also definite uncertainty of future when the end of one's life is drawing near. The readers

along with Edward and Elisabeth see the times changing. Claire notices that

"genealogy’s over ... the withering of the family tree is one of the saddest things ever ...

They don’t marry any more... It’s over. Their children are unbaptised so there’ll be no

baptismal record ... Genes not genealogy" (OF 151) is what the future of the society

seems to lead up to.

A parallel can be drawn between the decline of the Empire and the sterility of the

egg box that hungs on a fieldgate in Donheads. There had been fresh eggs in the box for

the passersby to collect and leave money in return. One day Dulcie discovers that the

eggs are no longer put there. The times have changed, "the whole world was corrupt.

She was friendless and alone" (LF 41), Dulcie contemplates when she walks "past the

infertile egg-box" (LF 144) on the way home.

45
 Another example of a great loss followed by a noticeable change is Elisabeth's

miscarriage and sterility resulting from her illness. After she looses the child, she

becomes depressed, she " began to be elusive" (MWH 147), "grew languid and lazy, and

drifted away from Amy" (MWH 141) because she envies Amy her life and children,

things she no longer can have. Her transformation after the operation resembles the

metamorphoses of Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography who changes sex from

male to female while asleep, and she is then able to bear children. In Elisabeth's case,

the change is reversed. From a fertile woman she becomes a man-like dead person, "she

had partly woken and found that she had changed sex and century. She was a man, a

soldier being tipped into some sort of mass grave" (MWH 167). She does not feel as a

real woman any more for she is not able to have children and her existence suddenly

appears useless to her. "Her “children” are Harry, Terry’s son, and Eddie, her husband,

whose fear of abandonment created a childlike dependence on her" (Lothar). Since she

cannot have her own children, she invests her attention and motherly care in the son of

her lover, Harry. Everytime he is in trouble, she helps him without hesitation.

Before the hysterectomy, the pain she feels is like "labour, and nothing at the end

of it" (MWH 154). Nevertheless, when she is asked to accompany Harry to the hospital

- he needs to be operated on and the doctors are afraid he is going to die soon - the pain

miraculously subsides, as she sets on the journey to the hospital to meet Harry, whose

heath and well-being is more important to her than her own suffering.

The part four of The Man in the Wooden Hat is called "Life After Death". It

focuses on Elisabeth's life after the hysterectomy. For the reader who had read Old

Filth, at first sight the death might be understood as Elisabeth's, but in this part

Elisabeth is still alive. It is not her who is dead. It is her baby, her hope for a fullfilled

life and the empire that is dead. Before she dies, Elisabeth is thinking about her legacy

46
and who will inherit her money realizing that "I’ve not had a child to give it to" (MWH

231). Without any vacillation she gives part of the money to Harry when he gets into

trouble. She also does not have anybody to pass on her "guilty pearls" (MWH 242) to

and burries them in the tulip bed just a moment before she dies trying to get up.

Although Veneering who feels that after Harry's death he has "nowhere to go", it is

Elisabeth who suffers the loss of purpose and leaves the world. At the end of the part

four "we see how her life stretches out into different kinds of disappointments, finally

ending in a kind of reconciliation and acceptance of what she's made of it" (Marie

Cloutier).

Ruth Scurr acknowledges that "the trajectory of Feathers’s subsequent

breakdown provides a very versatile narrative framework". Edward's cousin Claire feels

that "Betty’s death removes barriers. It’s bringing corpses to the surface" (OF 139).

Edward himself recognizes that it is "rather frightening, what grief can uncover in you

... Remembering, then, that the cause of the grief was that she could no longer get him

through anything ... his eyes at last filled up with tears" (OF 129). For him, Elisabeth is

"(Lost. Over. Gone. Finished. Happened.) She was not here. She was dead. Not here.

But, he felt, elsewhere" (OF 110) just as "Singapore’s over, like Hong Kong. Empire

now like Rome. Not even in the history books. Lost. Over. Finished. Dead. Happened"

(OF 118). In Old Filth the reader witnesses Edward experiencing the pain he feels over

his wife's death and how this pain helps him to deal with the suffering he experiences as

a child. In The Man in the Wooden Hat the reader also sees Edward "beginning to learn

how to live again" (MWH 251). Another shock for Edward is the death of a lifelong

enemy who became his closest friend in the end. Veneering decides to go to Malta

which he reffers to as a "place to die in" (LF 158). The reader is left to speculate

whether he travels there only to die there. His death has a romantic overtone, he dies

47
because of the thrombosis caused by a "fight to the death" (LF 204) he gets involved to

while defending Elisabeth's honour. His last statement before he leaves the world is that

"he wasn’t having one word said, ever, against Elisabeth Feathers" (LF 205).

Just as he is always afraid of being left, later in his life Edward begins to feel

terrified of the idea of his own death. He feels that his life is drawing to an end and he

misinterprets the symptoms of indigestion for heart attack: "It’s the Hand of God, he

thought. And nobody but God knows where the hell I am" (OF 225). His wishes to die

in Malaya – "I shall like to die here" (OF 29), expressed when leaving it at the age of

five are fullfilled. After both Elisabeth and Veneering are dead, he starts to ask himself

"what was there left for him in the Donheads? " (OF 255). He decides to travel back to

Malaya and on the way there he "wondered if, in fact, on this journey, he had really

hoped only for death ... Lived long enough. Get the thing over. He had been waiting"

(OF 225). As he steps out of the plane, he is no longer afraid of death and he welcomes

it with calmness and equanimity. He:

forgot everything else and knew that memory was now unnecessary and

all desire fulfilled. Betty at his shoulder, he fell into the everlasting arms.

The mystery and darkness and warmth of the womb returned him to the

beginning of everything and to the end of all need" (MWH 270)

"“Nothing at all is wrong.” For he was Home" (OF 256)

Isobel understands Edwards longing for his real Home and as she takes care of his

house she inherited, she thinks that "his spirit is free. It’s back in his birth-place. It

maybe never quite left it" (LF 25).

Elisabeth suffers a great pain over the loss of her baby and feels the need to deal

with the loss alone. However, the emptiness she feels after the miscarriage and the

operation is soon filled with love for another character's child, Harry Veneering. He is

48
for her a child she never had. She dies the day after he finds out about his death,

because she no longer has any reason to live.

When Elisabeth dies, Edward for the first time feels the real pain, expresses his

feelings, his break-down caused by Elisabeth's death helps him to access and fell the

pain from the past, he finally opens his heart to others (Veneering, the priest), he is able

to talk about the trauma from his childhood. As Toyne points out, although the trilogy is

filled with characters dying, "death is not the end of the story but a catalyst for

reflection and for the overturning of memories".

4.3. "Memory and Desire"

This subchapter studies the importance of memory and desire in the lives of

characters of Edward Feathers, Elisabeth Feathers, and Dulcie Williams, and focuses on

the end of the third part of the trilogy where the memory and desire is ressurrected to a

certain extend by Dulcie and Fred Fiscal-Smith. Dulcie and Fred are minor characters in

the first and the second novel but they are introduced as two of the main characters of

the last novel, keeping the four main characters, who are now dead, alive in their

memories when there is nobody left to remember, or care. The novels, and especially

Last Friends, are "viewed from the perspective of a life that contains more past than

future" (Shilling, "Jane Gardam Interview").

In the first chapter of The Man in the Wooden Hat, the narrator tells the reader

that Edward's "memory was as mysterious and private as anybody's" (MWH 11). The

memory in Old Filth trilogy is a crucial theme, because most of the characters' lives

have already happened and they turned into memories of - often unfullfilled - desire.

Edward realizes that "without memory and desire life is pointless ... I long ago lost any

sort of desire. Now memory. Suddenly he knew that this was what had been the matter

49
with him for years. He had lost desire" (OF 226). He reflects on the finality of life and

the desire to stay alive: "Life ends. You’re tired of it anyway. No memory. No desire.

Yet you don’t want it to be over. Not quite yet" (OF 227). Nevertheless, the desire itself

is still a part of Edward's life and when it occasionally arises, "the longing had included

guilt. Why guilt? Because he was beginning to forget her. Forget his long desire.

“Memory and desire,” he said aloud, “I must keep track of them or the game’s up.”

Then he thought: Or maybe let them go?" (MWH 267)

Elisabeth feels "a sense of longing ..., of memory and loss" (MWH 80) while

staying at her friend Amy's. It is a memory of her family, long lost and gone, the longing

is for the better future she hopes to have with Edward, the longing for a family of her

own which is, however, never fullfilled. In the end, when they retire to Dorset, "memory

changed for both Edward and Elisabeth. There were fewer people now to keep it alive"

(MWH 216).

Dulcie Williams experiences the beginning of the memory fading away, and it is

a confusing experience. She "seemed to be seeing for the first time, or analysing for the

first time though she knew that it was everyday, as habitual as looking at the clock or

holding out a hand" (LF 13). While she "tried not to think of Willy in case once again

she found that she had forgotten what he had looked like" (LF 22), and feels

disillusioned when realizing that in the end "all the love and passion comes down to ...

tags and watch-words" (LF 23), a memory not lost yet, in the form of Fred Fiscal-Smith

presents itself. Although she finds him "a terrible bore" she admits to herself that "he’s

the last link. The last friend" (LF 43) and the desire returns too, in the form of "the

flames retreating" (LF 21).

After the initial doubts and confusion, Dulcie becomes desperate to keep Fred Fiscal-

Smith, her "last friend" in her life, after he does not answer any of her letters, she sets

50
on a journey to the North of England, where he lives, fo safe this "last link" (LF 43).

This quest is described by Tom Cunliffe as "the small triumphs of ageing Dulcie as she

takes one final journey up to Yorkshire and ultimately manages to forge a new and

unexpected future for herself". As Hugo Lindgren points out about Last Friends,

Gardam "provides an unsentimental but oddly hopeful vision of old age". Dulcie and

Fred, "despite their personal tragedies, are old but not frail; they remain spirited and do

not give up".

Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat end producing a sense that something

is finished, gone. The former ends with the death of Edward Feathers and the latter with

the memorial service for the same character. Although the tone of the final passage is

always essentially possitive - Edward finally reaches his true Home and his father's

watch is discovered in Albert Ross's hat, it never got lost, he kept it in his hat along with

the pack of cards - the overall atmosphere is the one of death and termination. On the

other hand, Last Friends ends in a throughout possitive note, the "last friends" of the

story are reunited to attend the service on Easter Day, and together they "made their way

towards the Resurrection" (LF 239). Instead of the image of death, there is the one of

hope for the future and new beginnings even in the old age when everything seems to

have happened already.

51
5. Symbols: "The Music of the Rooks"

The aim of this chapter is to focus on the symbolic meaning of several natural

phenomenons appearing throughout the trilogy. These symbols present themselves in

different contexts in most of the novels and each time they can be interpreted as having

different meaning. On several occasions the same living being even has different

significance to various characters. This chapter is divided into two separate subchapters.

The first subchapter focuses on a group of symbols that includes living beings

associated with nature - a cat, a fox, a rat, rooks, tulips and bindweed; while the second

subchapter is dedicated to the symbolic meaning of Albert Ross and his hat.

5.1. "The Wild, Returning"

The first group of symbols includes living beings associated with nature - a cat

that appears both in Old Filth and Last Friends, a fox that comes to the Dexters garden

in Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat, a rat from The Man in the Wooden Hat,

the rooks appearing in all three novels, tulips and bindweed from Old Filth and The

Man in the Wooden Hat.

There are two cats in Old Filth trilogy, the first one is the cat of the Ingoldbys in

Old Filth that starts to behave in a strange way the day "Hitler ... invaded Poland" (OF

57). Edward together with Pat's family are listening to the news on the radio while the

cat "was shaking its paws crossly" (OF 58). Mr Ingoldby "threw (the cat) out of the

bedroom window ... It had done a wee on my eiderdown ... Cats and bees and the world,

all gone mad" (OF 58). The cat can feel that something has changed, it seems to be able

to predict something of significance is going to happen. In the same way the cat of Anna

and Henry in Dorset starts to behave in a peculiar way in Last Friends. "The cat

vanished into a thicket. ... Cat in the paint tins. Paws no doubt permanently damaged"

52
(LF 149). It can feel an important change coming too. However, while in Old Filth the

change was of a destructive nature - the war coming, in Last Friends the change is

possitive. Anna and Henry are repairing and redecorating the house that used to be

Veneering's. They are bringing it to life again. Dulcie, on the other hand, is starting to

realize that she misses Fred Fiscal-Smith and she is contemplating the possibility of

visiting him in the North.

The Fox first appears in Old Filth to Edward Feathers after Elisabeth's death. He

calls the name of his recently deceased wife and instead of her the fox comes to visit

him:

“Betty?” Emptiness. Silence. And silence within the house, too. Outside a

most unnatural silence ... All darkness as usual from the empty invisible

house next door. Then a fox walked tiptoe over the December grass, its

brush trailing but its ears pricked. At the steps that led up to the sun-

lounge it turned its head towards Filth and smiled. (OF 78-9)

The fox comes to soothe Edward's pain over the loss of his wife. It can be interpreted as

Elisabeth's soul. In the same way the fox in The Man in the Wooden Hat can be

interpreted as the soul of Elisabeth's baby. She comes to recover after the hysterectomy

and to accept the idea of not having children in the future. The fox

stood still in the middle of the space, staring at her with black eyes,

interested in an alteration of the scene. A dead bird hung down heavy and

soft on either side of the fox’s mouth. It turned tiptoe on its black feet and

was gone. Then the wind dropped and lemoncoloured light soaked over

the garden ... She felt perfectly happy, no more lonely than the fox.

(MWH 180)

The fox and the calm atmosphere of the place makes Elisabeth feel better and

53
calmer. "The terrain is magical, conjuring both a non-domesticated past and (for the

attentive reader) a specific future. In this weirdly fecund landscape, Betty is healed"

(James Marcus) It is the symbol of peace. Both Elisabeth in Old Filth and Elisabeth's

baby in The Man in the Wooden Hat rest in piece and those who mourn for them find

the piece after their encounter with the fox.

The rat in The Man in the Wooden Hat, on the other hand, serves as a bad omen

in relation to Elisabeth's baby. There is a certain foreshadowing present, when Elisabeth

admires a baby in Hong Kong and Amy informs her that it "will die" (MWH 60), since

this is also the fate of the child that Elisabeth conceived the night before. When

Edwards brings Elisabeth to their house in London, there "sitting on one of the rails of

the airer was a rat" (MWH 116) and she becomes terrified, urging Edward to leave,

noting that "that rat wasn’t there to write letters" (MWH 117). She believes that the rat

"was her falling point. It was the rat eternal. It had been the sign that she must now take

charge" (MWH 117), but it is also a symbol of death. She remembers the rat moments

after the miscarriage before she faints, shouting "It’s the dog of the rat!" (MWH 139).

The rooks have multiple symbolic meanings. For Edward they are the reminder

of the old times. He feels that "so long as they were there he’d never miss his

profession" (MWH 216). He listens to "the vigorous clamour of the rooks and was

comforted. So long as he could hear their passionate disputations he would never miss

his life at the Commercial Bar" (LF 5). In the context of The Man in the Wooden Hat,

the rooks seem to foretell Elisabeth's death:

all at once the rooks started a wild tumult in the ash trees: some dreadful

disagreement, some palace revolution, some premonition of change.

They began to swoop about above the branches and their ramshackle

great nests, all over the sky, like smuts flying from a burning chimney.

54
 (MWH 242)

As she plants the tulips in the garden, Edward pretends to shoot the rooks with

his walking stick and Elisabeth watches him thinking: "He’s quite potty, she thought.

It’s too late. I can’t leave him now. But then she did" (MWH 243). The rooks go wild

because they can feel the change in the form of Elisabeth's death approaching. Edward

is of the opinion that "rooks ... choose their friends. They will only abandon a friend if

they have fore-knowledge of disaster" (LF 4). After both Edward and Veneering die,

Dulcie notices that "even those awful rooks don’t seem to be there anymore" (LF 146).

However, as she walks towards the church with Fred Fiscal-Smith, she realizes that

"‘Old Filth’s rooks! They’re back again.’ ‘Were they ever away?’ he said" (LF 238). At

the end of Last Friends their symbolic meaning is again possitive one, symbol of hope

and resurrection.

The garden in Dorset becomes Elisabeth's passion and she invests a lot of time to

cultivate it. In a way it serves as a compensation for the childless life in Hong Kong.

When she visits the garden for the first time after the operation, she "imagined ... along

an old red wall a sea of European tulips" (MWH 182). However, the flower she sees

there is bindweed, a wild plant, "stirring of life under the grass ... spirals of bindweed

standing several feet high seeking some remembered support" (MWH 178). While

cultivating the garden decades later, she eliminates the weeds, but just moments before

she dies, she notices that "the bindweed was piercing the turf, rising in green spirals,

pirouetting quite high, seeking something on which to cling. The wild, returning to the

garden" (MWH 242). The wild in the form of the bindweed is taking over the garden

and it predicts Elisabeth's departure from it. Before she came to take care of the garden,

there were wild weeds and now when her life comes to an end, the wild comes again to

replace the cultivated tulips.

55
 5.2. "Heavy with All the Miseries of the World"

The character of Albert Ross also carries a symbolic meaning, he keeps

appearing throughout the whole trilogy in crucial moments. He is important to both

Edward and Elisabeth, but each time the meaning is different. Whipple claims that

"Edward’s friend Albert Ross, jokingly referred to throughout as “Albatross,”

symbolizes the stunted love and the guilt Edward feels about his life and inability to

love fully". He is, nevertheless, "Filth’s amanuensis and most trusted companion"

(Cook). Ross himself claims to be "lucky. I am The Albat Ross ... You’ll be safe. Just

look ... an albatross" (OF 190). Edward says about him that "I owe him so much. Best

person, just about, I've ever met. Most loyal. My salvation" (MWH 14). For Edward and

in Old Filth in general, Albert Ross is an albatross, a symbol of freedom and safety. In

The Man in the Wooden Hat he is also a symbol of loyalty. Edward asks him at the

beginning of the novel: "What do you keep in it? Opium?" (MWH 14) reffering to

Albert's hat. This question is answered at the end of the novel. Along with a pack of

cards, Albert keeps Edward's father's watch in it - the one that Edward gave him when

Albert did not have anything, the watch that everyone believes to be lost. The hat is the

place to store the most valuable possessions and the albatross is a symbol of loyalty.

Ross's loyalty is expressed also in the relation to Elisabeth. "Albert Ross is all-

seeing and all-knowing ... (the perfect omniscient narrator, in fact) and he shows up

everywhere"(Alone With Each Other, "The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam").

Elisabeth promises she will never leave Edward and she is too loyal to break the

promise. However, she is being haunted by Ross who knows about her night with

Veneering and threatens to break her if she ever leaves Edward: "If you leave him ... I

will break you" (MWH 72). Lothar notes that "whenever she thought of leaving him,

her promise and the sudden, mysterious appearance of loyal Albert Ross prevented her".

56
Louisa Thomas also takes notice of Ross's significance to Elisabeth: "whenever she

weakens, he materializes to remind her of her obligations". Hore explains that "Albert ...

acts like a sinister prick of conscience ... His appearance is always a pleasingly executed

novelist's trick, like one of the card games Albert plays". The most significant moments

of Ross's appearance are always connected with Elisabeth's relationship with Veneering.

When she finds out about her pregnancy, she visits Edward's chambers to tell him the

good news. But when she arrives, "the door into the clerks’ room opened and Edward

came in and stopped, astounded. Beside him ... stood Albert Ross" (MWH 134-5). This

again suggests that the baby she is expecting is not Edward's but Veneering's. Ross

appears there as a bad omen, the child is not Edward's and Elisabeth is being reminded

of her sin. Ross is also mentioned when Elisabeth meets Veneering in an art gallery in

Hague. There is a wooden statue from which the novel derives its name:

the cracked wood perfect for the seamed and ancient face, heavy with all

the miseries of the world. But it was the hat that informed the man. It was

clearly the hat that had inspired the carving ...The hat of a religious? A

pilgrim? A wandering poet? ... She became hypnotised by the hat. She

had to touch it. (MWH 223)

It is Veneering who connects the statue with Albert Ross pointing out "“this

bugger in the hat, he’s like that dwarf who, history relates, nicked Filth’s watch when

they were kids and sold it,” and he got up and whispered in the man’s oak ear,

“Albertross—I gotcher!”" (MWH 225). Veneering urges Elisabeth to leave Edward for

him, but the presence of the statue reminds her again of her promise and she refuses to

go with him. Several months later, travelling on a train from London, Elisabeth

remembers Veneering and "she knew that she would leave Filth. She had to go to

Veneering. ... just as they were sliding to a halt, she saw Albert Ross. He was looking

57
directly at her" (MWH 240). At the moment she decides to finally leave her husband,

Ross appears yet again as a sign of warning. However, this time she is not scared by him

and resolves to really leave Edward. Only at the last minute she changes her mind,

because "it's too late". And it really is too late for she dies at once.

While for Edward his friend Ross symbolizes freedom, safety and loyalty, for his

wife Elisabeth he is the symbol of her sin and punishment.

58
6. Conclusion

Jane Gardam's Old Filth trilogy consists of the novels Old Filth, The Man in the

Wooden Hat, and Last Friends. The novels tell the same story, each time from a

different character's perspective.

Old Filth is told from the point of view of Edward Feathers and it focuses mainly

on the way he deals with his wife's death and how this pain uncovers memories of the

traumatic childhood he suffered after the separation from his family and friends in

Malaya, and of the abusive upbringing in the foster family in Wales. Because of the

trauma, Edward develops a stammer which, although cured by the headmaster of his

private school, returns when he feels agitated or disturbed. He also becomes extremely

unsecure, constantly afraid of being left, and he does not trust women. The only woman

that is able to soothe these unpleasant feelings and the only one that makes him feel safe

is Elisabeth Macintosh. Therefore he marries her, although the one he really loves is

Isobel Ingoldby.

The second novel in the trilogy, The Man in the Wooden Hat, focuses on

Elisabeth's decision to marry Edward Feathers and the way she is forces to deal with the

fact she cannot have children. The real family life is the reason she gets married, even

though she loves another man, Edward's enemy Terry Veneering. After she loses her

first baby and has to undergo a hysterectomy, she compensates for the loss by taking

care of her garden and especially of Veneering's son Harry. When Harry dies, she no

longer has any reason to live.

The last novel of the trilogy is called Last Friends and it partly concentrates on

Terry Veneering's childhood, and partly on Dulcie Williams's journey towards a late life

romance. Terry Veneering's childhood and early adulthood are marked by the constant

presence of good fortune and benefactors. Mr Parable, Sir, and the Judge Pastry Willy

59
assist him not only to survive the war but also to establish himself as a successful

lawyer. Dulcie Williams feels disillusioned about life after her husband dies, as she

starts to forget him. When an old and also the last friend, Fred Fiscal-Smith, returns to

her life, she struggles to keep her life in order, however, she soon realises that this might

be her last chance for happiness.

The first two novels, Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat give the sense of

finality, while the last novel, Last Friends ends in a possitive and hopefull note. Instead

of the image of death, there is the one of hope for the future and new beginnings even in

the old age when everything seems to have happened already.

60
7. Bibliography:

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Page, Nov. 2009. Web. 10 Sep. 2014. <http://bookpage.com/reviews/6236-jane-

gardam-man-wooden-hat#.U7VuJBx_X7g>

Clark, Alex. "Jane Gardam." The Guardian, 8 Jan. 2011. Web. 10 Sep. 2014.

<http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jan/10/jane-gardam-life-writing>

Cloutier, Marie. "Review: The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends, both by Jane

Gardam." The Boston Bibliophile, 4 Jun. 2013. Web. 10 Sep. 2014.

<http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2013/06/review-man-in-wooden-hat-last-

friends.html>

Cook, Courtney. "Go Read Jane Gardam: On "Last Friends"." The Los Angeles Review

of Books, 18 Apr. 2013. Web. 10 Sep. 2014.

<http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/go-read-jane-gardam-on-last-friends#>

Corrigan, Maureen. "The Inner Life Of An Imperfect Marriage." NPR Books, 22 Oct.

2009. Web. 7 Sep. 2014.

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Craig, Amanda. "Review: Last Friends, By Jane Gardam, A Story of Love, Death and

Loneliness." The Independent, 23 Jun. 2013. Web. 8 Sep. 2014.

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friends-by-jane-gardam-8669658.html>

Cunliffe, Tom. "Review: Last Friends – Jane Gardam." A Common Reader, 17 Feb.

2014. Web. 10 Sep. 2014. <http://acommonreader.org/last-friends-jane-gardam/>

Davies, Stevie. "Pearls Beyond Price." The Guardian, 20 Nov. 2004. Web. 1 Sep. 2014.

<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/nov/20/featuresreviews.guardianrevie

w13>

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Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Fulford, Robert. "The Empire Writes Back in Jane Gardam’s Conclusion to Her Old

Filth Trilogy, Last Friends." National Post, 8 Oct. 2013. Web. 5 Sep.

2014.<http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/10/08/fulford-the-empire-writes-back-

in-jane-gardams-conclusion-to-her-old-filth-trilogy-last-friends/>

Gardam, Jane. Last Friends. London: Abacus, 2013. Print.

---. Missing the Midnight. London: Abacus, 1999. Print.

---. Old Filth. London: Abacus, 2013. Print.

---. "Old Filth - Introduction." Little Brown Book Group. Web. 5 Sep. 2014.

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---. The Man in the Wooden Hat. London: Abacus, 2013. Print.

---. The People on Privilege Hill. London: Chato & Windus, 2007. Print.

Gordon, Edmund. "Reborn to Tears." The Times Literary Supplement, 18 Sep. 2009.

Web. 1 Sep. 2014. <http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article746375.ece>

Hadley, Tessa. "Last Friends by Jane Gardam – Review." The Guardian, 8 Jun 2013.

Web. 14 Sep. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/08/last-

friends-jane-gardam-review>

---. "Thank God for Betty." London Review of Books, 11 Mar. 2010. Web. 10 Sep. 2014.

<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n05/tessa-hadley/thank-god-for-betty>

Hore, Rachel. "The Man in the Wooden Hat, By Jane Gardam." The Independent, 11

Oct. 2009. Web. 1 Sep. 2014. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-

entertainment/books/reviews/the-man-in-the-wooden-hat-by-jane-gardam-

1799850.html>

Itani, Frances. "Book Review: Jane Gardam’s Witty ‘Last Friends’." The Washington

Post, 23 May. 2013. Web. 8 Sep. 2014.

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a479289a31f9_story.html>

"Jane Gardam". British Council – Literature. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

<http://literature.britishcouncil.org/jane-gardam>

Kipling, Rudyard. "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep". Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child

Should Know, Book II. Ed. Chapin, W. T. (Wallace T.). 2009. Project Gutenberg.

Web. 8 June 2014.

"Last Friends ~ Jane Gardam." Thinking in Fragments, Word Press, 28 Feb. 2014. Web.

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friends-jane-gardam/>

Levin, Martin. "How This Gardam Grows." The Globe and Mail, 18 Dec. 2009. Web.

12 Sep. 2014. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/review-

the-man-in-the-wooden-hat-by-jane-gardam/article4296361/>

Lindgren, Hugo. "The Back Story: ‘Last Friends,’ by Jane Gardam." The New York

Times, 11 Apr. 2013. Web. 8 Sep. 2014.

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gardam.html>

Lothar, Corinna. "The Man in the Wooden Hat - Review." The Washington Times, 13

Dec 2009. Web. 1 Sep. 2014.

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hat/?page=all>

Lowry, Elizabeth. "Jane Gardam’s Masterpiece: Last Friends." The Times Literary

Supplement, 22 May. 2013. Web. 1 Sep. 2014. <http://www.the-

tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1262715.ece>

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Marcus, James. "'The Man in the Wooden Hat' by Jane Gardam: The Courtship and

Marriage of 'Old Filth' and His Wife." Los Angeles Times, 21 Dec. 2009. Web.

10 Sep. 2014. <http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/21/entertainment/la-et-

book21-2009dec21>

McDowell, Lesley. "Old Filth by Jane Gardam: The Terrified Boy in the Cupboard."

The Independent, 21 Nov. 2004. Web. 1 Sep. 2014.

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jane-gardam-6157607.html>

Miller, Lucasta. "Novel Existence." The Guardian, 30 Jul. 2005. Web. 10 Sep. 2014.

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<http://www.portifex.com/ReadingMatter/Archive/OldFilth.htm>

Perrin, Nicole. "Home from the Raj." Open Letters Monthly, 1 Jun. 2013. Web. 6 Sep.

2014. <http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/home-from-the-raj/>

Powers, Katherine A. " The Old Filth Trilogy." Barnes and Noble Review, 16 Jul. 2013.

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Scurr, Ruth. "The Comforts of a Stiff Upper Lip." The Times Literary Supplement, 12

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tls.co.uk/tls/public/article741538.ece>

Shilling, Jane. "Jane Gardam Interview." The Telegraph, 22 Jun. 2013. Web. 5 Sep.

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 Press, 1996. Print.

Sulcas, Roslyn. "Days of Imperial Pleasures and Regrets: Jane Gardam on Her Books,

Which Capture a Greater Britain." The New York Times, 27 Jun. 2014. Web. 1

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Web. 10 Sep. 2014. <http://alonewitheachother.blogspot.cz/2010/02/man-in-

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8. Resume (English)

This thesis focuses on Old Filth trilogy by Jane Gardam, namely the novels Old

Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends. First it analyses the way the main

characters - Edward Feathers, his wife Elisabeth Feathers and her lover Terry

Veneering, are effected by their childhood experiences. Second it focuses on the way

the sexuality is portreyed in the trilogy, especially Edward Feathers’s attitude towards

women, Elisabeth’s affair with Edward’s enemy Veneering, Vanessa’s transformation

from a career woman to a mother, and homosexuality. Third it concentrates on the way

the characters – Edward Feathers, Elisabeth Feathers and Dulcie Williams, deal with

death and loss, and also on the importance of memory and desire in their lives. Last it

analyses the symbolic meanings of several animals and flowers that appear throughout

the trilogy, with a special focus on the character of Albert Ross, who, apart from being

one of the characters, also serves as a symbol in the trilogy.

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9. Resumé (Czech)

Tato práce se zabývá trilogií Old Filth od Jane Gardamové, sestávající z románů

Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat a Last Friends. Práce se v prvé řadě soustředí na

vliv utrpení v dětství na vývoj hlavních postav, konkrétně Edwarda Featherse, jeho

manželky Elisabeth Feathersové a jejího milence Terryho Veneeringa. Dále se práce

zaměřuje na zobrazení sexuality, především na Edwardův vztah k ženám obecně, na

Elisabethin vztah s Edwardovým nepřítelem Veneeringem, na Vanessinu přeměnu

z ženy orientované pouze na kariéru na matku a nakonec na způsob jakým je v trilogii

zobrazena homosexualita. Následně se práce zabývá tím, jak se Edward Feathers,

Elisabeth Feathersová a Dulcie Williamsová vyrovnávají se smrtí a ztrátou, a také

důležitostí paměti a touhy v jejich životech. Nakonec práce analyzuje symbolický

význam několika zvířat a rostlin, které se objevují v trilogii. Zvláštní pozornost je

věnována postavě Alberta Rosse, který je nejen jednou z postav, ale také je nositelem

symbolického významu.

67