Term
| What Charles says when he arrives at B-Head in the prologue |
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Definition
| • “Here my last love died. There was nothing remarkable in the manner of its death” |
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Term
| Charles' feelings on love |
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Definition
| • “To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom” |
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Term
| Charles sees Sebastian in Julia |
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Definition
| • “She so much resembled Sebastian that…I knew her and she did not know me” |
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Term
| Sebastian and Charles have an immature, innocent, almost prelapsarian love |
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Definition
| • “It’s the kind of love that comes to Children before they know its meaning” |
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Term
| Julia has a set of criteria for her husband |
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Definition
| • “She had made a preposterous little picture of the kind of man who would do…I was not her man” |
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Term
| On the boat Julia and Charles Rekindle their relationship |
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Definition
| • “I’m glad about the roses…frankly they were a shock. They made me think we were starting the day on quite the wrong footing” … “I knew” |
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Term
| Neither Julia or Charles has really ever loved their spouses |
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Definition
• “You didn’t wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else”
“No. Have you?”
“You know I haven’t. Have you?”
“No. I’m not in love” |
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Term
| Charles believes in the idea of forerunners |
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Definition
| • “Perhaps […] all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; " |
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Term
| Charles feels like he still knows Sebastian through Julia |
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Definition
| • “I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or rather it was Julia I had known in him, in those distant, Arcadian days.” |
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Term
| The whole novel revolves around Sebastian - showing how key he is to Charles' life |
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Definition
| • “This was my third term…but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian” |
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Term
| The boys have a childishly flirtatious relationship at Oxford |
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Definition
| • “He took my arm as we walked under the walls of Merton” |
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Term
| Sebastian is recognisable |
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Definition
| • “I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him” |
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Term
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Definition
| o “His beauty, which was arresting” |
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Term
| Charles is not sexualised until later on in the novel, shown by the innocence of his meetings with Julia |
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Definition
| ”because her sex was the palpable difference between the familiar and the strange, it seemed to fill the space between us, so that I felt her to be especially female” |
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Term
| Charles is still slightly sexually immature when he starts to feel attracted to Julia |
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Definition
| “I caught a thin bat’s squeak of sexuality” |
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Term
| His relationship with his wife is sterile |
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Definition
| Shall I put my face to bed…she had neat, hygienic ways for that too” |
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Term
| Sebastian loves the mystery in Julia, and the Sebastian like sorrow |
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Definition
| this haunting magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence, it was the completion of her beauty |
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Term
| Charles and Julia's relationship seems to be natural |
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Definition
| With Julia there were no phrases, no start-line, no tactics at all |
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Term
| He finally gets his wish to sleep with her |
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Definition
| Julia led me below…it was no time for the sweets of luxury…there was a formality to be observed |
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Term
| It is shown how ending the marriages is a formality, nothing more, there is no real love in B head apart from love for God |
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Definition
| You know, I’ve seen a few divorces in my time, and I’ve never known one work out so happily for all concerned |
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Term
| The wisdom of children is revered in the novel |
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Definition
| She never loved him, you know, as we do." “Do. The word reproached me; there was no past tense in Cordelia’s verb ‘to love’ |
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Term
| The class system is dying out to the point that preserving it seems almost futile |
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Definition
| • “It is purely out of respect for your Aunt Philippa that I dine at this length…three course dinner was middle class” |
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Term
| Hooper is shown to be a tasteless character - echoing the New England idea |
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Definition
| Hooper – “Hitler would put them in a gas chamber, I reckon we can learn a thing or two from him” |
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Term
| Hooper is described as a symbol of... |
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Definition
| In the weeks that we were together Hooper became a symbol to me of Young England |
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Term
| Hooper is a coward, with, like Rex, stats and figures being the important things |
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Definition
| Oh, I don’t want much you know. Just enough to say I’ve been in it” |
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Term
| Blanche adds realism to the novel when he describes a story about some Oxford students |
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Definition
| They had been having one of their ridiculous club dinners, and they were all wearing coloured tail-coats – a sort of livery. “My dears”, I said to them, “you look like a lot of most disorderly footmen |
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Term
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Definition
| She far outshone by far all the girls of her age, but she know that, in that little world within a world which she inhabited, there were certain grave disabilities from which she suffered |
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Term
| The society is dying out, as Charles writes and is confirmed in the prologue, shown earlier by... |
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Definition
| for it was the last ball of its kind given there; the last of a splendid series |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain says on the subject of the rich that... |
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Definition
| Now I realise that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the priveleges of the poor |
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Term
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Definition
| There could be no eldest son…there were of course the Catholics themselves, but these seldom come into the little world Julia had made for herself |
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Term
| Charles on returning to England observes that... |
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Definition
| Here where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity |
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Term
| One of the many tasteless signs is the... |
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Definition
| life size effigy of a swan, moulded in ice and filled with caviar.” |
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Term
| Charles says he wants to escape and go to |
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Definition
| or just a primitive village somewhere on a river |
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Term
| Sebastian describes his father to Charles for the first time |
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Definition
| No-one knows papa. He’s a social leper. Hadn’t you heard |
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Term
| Rex gives another tasteless gift to Julia |
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Definition
| a small tortoise with Julia’s initials set in diamonds in the living shell |
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Term
| Rex is distasteful in and in your face |
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Definition
| In his kindest moments, Rex displayed a kind of hectoring zeal as if he were thrusting a vacuum cleaner on an unwilling housewife |
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Term
| For Rex it is all about figures and stats |
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Definition
| He wanted a woman, he wanted the best on the market, and he wanted her at his own price |
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Term
| Julia throws a bit of a fit about the priest not agreeing with her |
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Definition
| he was refusing her what she wanted…from that moment she shut her mind against religion |
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Term
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Definition
| He wasn’t a complete human being at all…a tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole |
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Term
| When Julia has a miscarriage Rex has little feeling about it |
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Definition
| She was a daughter, so Rex didn’t so much mind her being dead |
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Term
| Blance again adds some realism, describing some English traits |
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Definition
| English snobbery is even more macabre to me than English morals |
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Term
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Definition
| Charm is the great English blight…it spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you |
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Term
| Rex's views on Charles sleeping with Julia with him being allowed to keep her as a trophy |
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Definition
| A very happy arrangement, suits me down to the ground |
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Term
| Sebastians beauty is transient |
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Definition
| He was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind |
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Term
| Charles likes Sebastian for giving him something new |
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Definition
| Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood |
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Term
| Blanche is described as... |
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Definition
| He was competitive in the bet-you-cant-do-this style of the private school |
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Term
| Charles is nostalgic and makes a comment about childhood and youth |
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Definition
| • “How ungenerously in later life the disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth…Dresden figures of pastoral gaiety |
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Term
| Charles is nostalgic again and makes a comment about childhood and youth |
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Definition
| The languor of youth – how unique and quintessential it is…very near heaven during those languid days at Brideshead |
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Term
| Cara states that Sebastian is... |
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Definition
| Sebastian is in love with his own childhood |
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Term
| Again children show wisdom, this time JohnJohn. |
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Definition
| Uncle Boy shan’t marry horrid girl and leave JohnJohn |
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Term
| Rex acts like a child when it comes to divorce |
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Definition
| She couldn't have chosen a worse time. Tell her to hang on a bit Charles, there's a good fellow. |
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Term
| There is the idea in the novel of age/experience/wisdom not really having huge links, and thus |
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Definition
| Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to feel old |
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Term
| Charles drinking is controlled - he drowns his grief in it but in a manner that isn't dangerous |
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Definition
| I regularly drank three glasses of gin before dinner, never more or less |
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Term
| Sebastian is hugely childlike, as he is scared of moving on |
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Definition
| Sebastian’s teddy bear sat at the wheel…take care he is not sick |
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Term
| Sebastian's attitude to friendship is abrasive and childish |
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Definition
| They’d make you their friend not mine, and I won’t let them |
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Term
| Sebastian relies on certainties in life as he is surrounded by an absolute mess of a family |
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Definition
| Sebastians life was governed by a code of such imperatives. ‘I must have pillar-box-red pyjamas |
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Term
| Charles realises that more years doesn't mean more wisdom |
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Definition
| It seemed to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I required |
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Term
| Blanche is the pastoral realism - the person who isn't in the "bubble" |
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Definition
| At times we all seemed children beside him |
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Term
| Brideshead is described by Blanche as |
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Definition
| There’s Brideshead, who’s something archaic |
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Term
| Charles dad makes an effort to appear of a higher class than he is |
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Definition
| he wore a frogged velvet smoking suit…a deliberate archaism |
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Term
| Sebastian is over-dramatic, shown by his note to Charles |
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Definition
| Gravely injured, come at once, Sebastian |
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Term
| Sebastian and Charles when alone at Brideshead are immature |
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Definition
| Go away Cordelia, we’ve got no clothes on |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain needs credit for everything - she seeks control |
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Definition
| Oh, Mummy likes everything to be a present. She’s so sweet |
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Term
| Sebastian and Charles relish being alone |
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Definition
| We’ll have a heavenly time alone |
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Term
| Cara talks about Charles and Sebastians relationship |
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Definition
| I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long |
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Term
| Charles is eternally loyal to Sebastian even when he probably shouldn't be |
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Definition
| No, I’m with you. Contra mundum |
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Term
| Sebastian talks about his relationship with Kurt |
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Definition
| It is a rather pleasant change when all your life you’ve had people looking after you to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me |
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Term
| Sebastian finds religion challenging |
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Definition
| Oh dear, it’s very difficult being a Catholic |
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Term
| Charles questions Sebastian's approach to religion |
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Definition
But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.
But I do. That’s how I believe |
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Term
| Charles finds it hard to comfort Julia at first on the ship |
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Definition
| Between her tears she talked herself into silence. I could do nothing; I was adrift in a strange sea |
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Term
| The first day that Charles and Sebastian spend together is almost romantic - like young lovers |
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Definition
| That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian…lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches |
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Term
| Charles starts to realise as he gets older that Sebastian is not a simple being |
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Definition
| That night I realized how little I really knew of Sebastian |
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Term
| Charles compares his relationship with Sebastian to a ferry journey |
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Definition
| He was like a friend made on board a ship, on the high seas; now we had come into his home port |
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Term
| Sebastians Idyll can only last so long |
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Definition
| Since Sebastian counted among his intruders his own conscience and all claims of human affection, his days in Arcadia were numbered |
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Term
| Sebastian has pride - like Tess, which is a downfall |
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Definition
| He’s ashamed of being unhappy |
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Term
| Sebastian looks to Charles for protection when worries close in on him |
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Definition
| But we’ve got our happiness in spite of them; here and now, we’ve taken possession of it. They can’t hurt us, can they |
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Term
| Charles starts to find it hard to care for Sebastian |
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Definition
| I had no love for Sebastian that morning; he needed it but I had none to give |
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Term
| Sebastian can never lose his charm |
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Definition
| He’s still loved, you see, wherever he goes |
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Term
| Charles and Sebastian drink together |
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Definition
| Sebastian and I found ourselves drinking alone together as we always did |
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Term
| Sebastian drinks for different reasons to Charles |
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Definition
| Sebastian drank to escape |
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Term
| His family don't realise that they have a huge part to play in his alcoholism |
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Definition
| Sebastian got very drunk before dinner in his mother’s house…beginning of a new epoch in his melancholy record of deterioration, the first step in the fight from his family which first brought him to ruin |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain quickly shuns responsibility for Sebastians Drinking |
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Definition
| You can’t stop people if they want to get drunk. My mother couldn’t stop my father you know |
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Term
| Sebastian has no appreciation for the age of things - no appreciation for the past |
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Definition
| What does it matter when its built if its beautiful |
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Term
| Sebastian gets to so low a point that even Charles cannot get through to him |
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Definition
Tell me honestly, do you want me to stay on here?”
“No Charles, I don’t believe I do”
“I’m no help”
“No help” |
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Term
| Charles doesn't have much guidance from his father |
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Definition
| My father offered me none (advice). Then, as always, he eschewed serious conversation with me |
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Term
| Our first meeting with Sebastian is when he is drunk |
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Definition
| he looked at me for a moment with unfocused eyes, and then, leaning forward well into the room, he was sick |
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Term
| Blanche is described as... |
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Definition
| Part Gallic, part Yankee, part, perhaps, Jew; wholly exotic |
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Term
| Sebastian doesn't feel like he belongs at Brideshead |
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Definition
| It’s where my family live |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain is shown to be controlling and to have minions |
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Definition
| keeps a small gang of enslaved and emaciated prisoners for her exclusive enjoyment. She sucks their blood |
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Term
| Charles doesn't discover religion until the end of the novel but there are hints that it will be important to him littered through the text |
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Definition
| So through a world of piety I made my way to Sebastian |
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Term
| Charles and Sebastian drink together, at first, in a fairly unworrying, normal, manner |
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Definition
| during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian I first made a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that rich harvest which was to be my stay in many barren years |
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Term
| Charles has an innocence about women |
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Definition
| I was nineteen years old and completely ignorant of women |
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Term
| Venice is almost "too good" |
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Definition
| The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly – perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless |
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Term
| Cara talks about the difference between Charles and Sebastians drinking |
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Definition
| Sebastian drinks too much…with you it does not matter…with Sebastian it is different |
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Term
| Charles and Sebastian spend a lot of time alone drinking |
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Definition
| Sebastian and I found ourselves drinking alone together as we always did |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain wants to convert Charles |
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Definition
| We must make a Catholic of Charles |
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Term
| Cordelia gives another case of childhood wisdom - this time on the subject of art |
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Definition
| Charles, modern art is all bosh isn’t it |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain doesn't allow him to go to London with Charles - something that may have been his only saving grace |
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Definition
| No, London is impossible; if he can’t behave himself here, with us… |
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Term
| Brideshead is socially awkward and in Charles eyes can make Catholicism look stupid |
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Definition
| D’you know, Bridey, if I ever felt for a moment like becoming a Catholic, I should only have to talk to you for five minutes to be cured. You manage to reduce what seem quite sensible propositions to stark nonsense |
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Term
| Kurt is described as doing this when Charles first sees him... |
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Definition
| He was lolling in a basket chair, with a bandaged foot stuck forward on a box…he held a glass of beer in his hand |
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Term
| Rex has no respect for Brideshead as a place |
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Definition
| Rex wanted to take what he called a “penthouse” at the top |
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Term
| Lady Marchmain is the pillar of an uncommon religion |
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Definition
| I sometimes think that when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy…she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint |
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Term
| Charles goes abroad to find inspiration - but finds it challenging and an anti-climax |
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Definition
I sought inspiration among gutted places and cloisters embowered in weed”
o “But despite this…I remained unchanged, still a small part of myself pretending to be whole |
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Term
| Charles and Julia talk about some deep subjects and Charles gives his thoughts on change and progression |
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Definition
“Do you want to change?”
“Its the only evidence of life” |
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Term
| Charles feels the "twitch upon the thread" |
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Definition
| Then I knelt too and prayed…’God forgive him his sins’…such as small thing to ask |
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Term
| There is a huge amount of nostalgia for the city of Oxford |
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Definition
| Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint |
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Term
| There is a huge amount of Bucolic imagery on arriving in Oxford |
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Definition
| the air heavy with all the scents of summer |
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Term
| The first description of B-head makes it seem like an Idyll, almost a prelapsarian state |
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Definition
| Beyond the dome lay receding steps of water, and round it, guarding and hiding it, stood the soft hills |
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Term
| Sebastian longs for time alone, away from family, but this isn't sustainable |
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Definition
| If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper |
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Term
| The fountain in the garden is an unnatural object |
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Definition
| Fountain…found, purchased, imported, and re-erected in an alien but welcoming climate |
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Term
| Charles finds inspiration in Brideshead eventually |
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Definition
| I had felt the brush take life in my hand that afternoon…I was a man of the Renaissance that evening – of Browning’s renaissance |
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Term
| Waugh has nostalgia for the past and comments on the recent appreciation of the old |
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Definition
| in the last decade of their grandeur, Englishmen seemed for the first time to be conscious of what before taken for granted |
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Term
| Jerusalem sits alone - much like Brideshead as a place of Catholicism |
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Definition
| Quomodo sedet sola civitas” – how does the city sit solitary |
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Term
| Religion is the one Idyll that isn't transient |
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Definition
| The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect |
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Term
| Charles appreciates that we romanticise the past |
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Definition
| It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence |
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Term
| Charles looks back on Sebastian and tries to remember the positives |
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Definition
| It is thus I like to remember Sebastian, as he was that summer, when we wandered together through that enchanted place |
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Term
| The whole novel is retrospective |
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Definition
| My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time |
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Term
| Charles gives his views on the importance of memory |
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Definition
| These memories, which are my life – for we possess nothing certainly except the past – were always with me |
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Term
| Charles and Julia end abruptly, but again we need to note this is all written as if in hindsight |
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Definition
| Thus I come to the last broken sentences which were the last words spoken between Julia and me, the last memories |
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Term
| Sebastian realises he will always pine for the past |
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Definition
| “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.” |
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Term
| Julia, like Sebastian, views the future with a lot of trepidation |
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Definition
| “Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.” |
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Term
| A very Catholic idea - that anything can be let off |
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Definition
| To understand all is to forgive all.” |
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Term
| Julia needs faith - it is saving her from hell in her eyes |
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Definition
| I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end |
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Term
| The reason why Lady Marchmain is hated |
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Definition
| No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that |
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Term
| Cordelia sees Sebastians drinking as necessary suffering |
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Definition
| No one is ever holy without suffering |
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Term
| Religion keeps Julia and Sebastian apart - there is only space to love God |
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Definition
| The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him |
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Term
| Charles finally feels the twitch upon the thread |
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Definition
| Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition |
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