Brideshead Revisited II

Charles spends time with the Flytes over the next year, but he can see that Sebastian is drinking way too much and getting increasingly unhappy. He is alienated from his family and annoyed that his mother sets watchmen around him, such as Mr Samgrass a tutor at Oxford, who is detailed to keep an eye on him by the manipulative Lady Marchmain. He begins to resent Charles becoming friendly with his family and to accuse him of betraying their friendship by becoming close to his mother and siblings whom he sees as the enemy. Sebastian's drinking becomes more of a problem and he is sent down from Oxford. Charles tells his father he does not want to take his degree and that he would rather go to Paris and study painting. His father is pleased to have him away from England and agrees. He loses touch with Sebastian as Lady Marchmain tries to control her son, and charles does not come back to England til the General Strike makes him believe that the country is on the verge of revolution. He learns that Julia is going out with a Canadian, Rex Mottram, who is very wealthy but nouveau riche. She is keen to marry him, but her mother thinks he is too lower class and he's not a Catholic. Rex agrees to convert, but when the wedding is all organised, Brideshead, Julia's brother, finds out that he had been married already and his wife is still alive, though they are divorced. Rex did not take in what the priest had explained to him about divorce and the Catholic beliefs. Lady Marchmain is horrified but Julia then tells her she's going to marry Rex, even if he is divorced and they marry in a Protestant ceremony.

Brideshead Revisited I

This is one of Waugh's most serious novels, set in Oxford in the 1920's. Charles Ryder is a middle class young undergraduate, who has just gone to University and wants to be a painter. His widowed father is an odd difficult man who pays little attention to his only son. Charles mixes with other aristic minded students, but one night, one of the upper class set passes by his window on a drinking binge and is sick in through the window. Charles is annoyed, but the following day, the drinker comes to apologise and invite him to lunch.He is a very handsome charming young man, Lord Sebastian Flyte, from a very rich family... and Charles begins to like him. He has had a dull life himself and Sebastian's eccentricities and pleasure seeking ways seem fascinating to him... He becomes impatient with the serious minded students who work hard and have earnest discussions about Art. He starts to go about with Sebastian and they enjoy drinking and larking about. Gradually, the two young men begin to form a duo, and see less of their friends. Charles over spends and ends up running out of money at the end of the academic year. His father does not scold him but keeps him home for the holidays, and he realises that he is stuck in his own home for the summer and that his father is driving him mad. Its a subtle punishment. He never over spends again. During the summer he gets a message that Sebastian is ill and he goes to Brideshead, the Flyte family home and meets the other members of the family. Sebastian has only broken a toe, but he is bored and delighted to see Charles again. Charles finds the other Flytes difficult to understand, as two of them, Lord Brideshead and Cordelia, the youngest girl, are very devout Catholics and he cant really take their obsession with religion. Julia, the older daughter is not pious, but she is just out in society and seems cool and uninterested in her family... The 2 young men decide to go to Venice where Lord Marchmain, Sebastian's father lives and spend the rest of the summer with him. Lord Marchmain married a Catholic, Sebastian's mother, and converted, but then during the war, he got bored with her and walked out of the marriage. He now lives with a middle aged mistress, Cara, in Italy. Society seems to have mostly taken Lady Marchmain's side in the marriage ending, and he rarely comes back to England. Sebastian does not get on with his mother very well and loves his father. The 2 men return to England and Oxford and continue to enjoy pleasure seeking and drinking, and neglecting their work.

Joy Street IX

Emily is devastated by Roger's death, just when their marriage was so happy and they were having a baby. She doesn't want to go out, and avoids her friends. Brian gets leave and comes back to Boston, and he tells her that he feels guilty for being in the Navy where he felt he was doing no good, and leaving Roger to become a war casualty, dying from overwork. He encourages Emily to look foward to her baby.. Then when she's about 6 months pregnant, she is looking after Archie, Elizabeth's son and has a fall and goes into labour. The baby dies, and she is very ill. Brian writes to her to try and console her but she is very depressed. Pell plans to marry Simonetta once he gets back from the war, and Emily learns that Carmela is staying in Lynn with her family who have reclaimed her... She is concerned that her grandmother is getting very old and frail and may not live much longer. Then David returns on leave. She has been expecting him to come and tell her again that he loves her, but instead he tells her that he is sorry but he has fallen in love with Priscilla and wants him to release her so that he can marry her. Emily is shaken; he tells her that Priscilla was in love with him for a long time - and that when he met her in Germany at the end of the war, he began to return her love. He tells her that when 2 people have been in a war together, it creates a special bond. He has been asked to go to Germany as a lawyer, to take part in the Nuremberg trials, and he wants to take Priscilla with him. When Mrs Forbes hears the news, she tells Emily she should fight for David, that Priscilla is young and will get over it. But Emily refuses. She helps organise the wedding and the couple get married. Emily's grandmother dies soon after and she is depressed again but she finds that there are people who care for her and whom she can help.. and she begins to get on with her life. The war is over and Brian is leaving the Navy. He wants to run for office and give up being a full time lawyer. Emily's uncle Russell is in the Senate and Brian is running against him... so she tells Russell she wont support Brian because she feels she owes it to her grandmother to show support for her son, in public. Brian asks Emily to marry him but she at first refuses... saying that she has been in love with someone else... However she does love Brian as a good friend and they are comfortable together. He is surprised to hear of her love for David, but he accepts it, and she tells him that she would never have been happy if she had betrayed Roger's faith in her.. and that David realised that as well. Brian is busy with his senatorial campaign and Emily sees him occasionally. She is surprised when he tells her that he and Pell are thinking of leaving Cutter Mills and Swan law firm, and setting up on their own, so that there will be a new law firm which represents what Roger had hoped for, a uniting of different social groups in Boston. Pell will be head of the firm as Brian will be in Washington some of the time. On Election night, Brian turns up, having eluded his handlers. He tells Emily that he thinks he will win, but he wants to ask her to marry him before he knows for sure. He says that he knows she does not love him the way she loved Roger or David, but he feels that she does care and he wants her to marry him. Emily is startled but she eagerly accepts him. He has to go back to headquarters but a bit later, he turns up again and says that they are going to be going to Washington. He has won the election and he asks her to go with him. They drive off together...

Joy Street Part VIII

Emily takes Simonetta in, and Roger goes to visit Nazareno Pacetti, Pell's uncle, who inherited the family restaurant. He is an agnostic and dislikes Carmela. The trial comes up, to contest the will and Roger is conscious that this is a very important case in his legal career since it is to help a friend. He cross examines Carmela, and she breaks down, and says that she is not the daughter of the man who reared her, Antonio Pacetti. Roger has found out that Carmela was registered as Pacetti's daughter and brought up by him and his wife, but she is actually the child of Luisa, one of Pacetti's Italian cousins, who became pregnant by someone before the family left Italy, and her cousin took the baby and registered her as his own, but his own wife was pregnant then with Adelina, Pell's mother so she could not be the mother of Carmela. The case ends in triumph for Roger and Pell as Carmela is proved to be lying. However when Roger gets back to Boston he is exhausted and ill, and collapses. Emily calls in a doctor who says it is pneumonia and its serious. Emily is happy that Roger is safely home and that he's won his case, and she tells him she has some news for him as well. After several years, she is finally pregnant. Roger is delighted but he is very ill and he dies within a few days.

Joy Street Part VII

Emily takes on war work, helping as a nurses aide at a hospital and organising knitting groups and giving blood. Her servants leave the house, to work in factories, except for their elderly cook housekeeper, Deirdre, who keeps things running with Emily doing more housework. Roger also takes on extra volunteer work for the war effort, and she worries that he's working too hard. Elizabeth Emily's aunt marries her admirer and they have a baby son Archie.. Pell de Lucca has also left the law firm to join the army... so now Roger is almost the only one left there. Priscilla joins the women's services and hopes to be posted overseas. Mrs Forbes who is a very shrewd old lady suspects that this is partly because David is likely to be posted overseas also...She loves Emily best of all her grandchildren, and she is aware of that she has feelings for David, although she is loyal to Roger. Then Pell de Lucca comes to ask Roger's advice as a lawyer... and he and Emily listen to the Italian man's story. They learn that Pell has been in love for years with his cousin Simonetta. He was an orphan and was brought up by his Aunt Carmela, who was widowed at the end of the war. She had a baby of her own, Simonetta, a very beautiful girl. Pell wants to marry her, but as they are first cousins, they are forbidden by the Catholic church. Carmela is against the marriage. She became very embittered after her husband's death, and became reclusive and fanatically religious. She didn't want Simonetta to marry and certainly not to make a marriage which is not approved by the Church. Pell's grandfather has died recently and in his will, he left some money to Pell. Pell did not like his grandfather, who had shown him little kindliness - but he wants Roger to arrange for some of the money to go to SImonetta to give her a better education than she has had. Emily says that she thinks there is something odd about the Grandfather's will, since he only left his daughter Carmela a small amount and Carmela has now decided to contest the Will. Pell has to go off back to the army, and as soon as he's gone, Simonetta turns up at the Joy St house, saying that her mother has turned against her and thrown her out, and she has nowhere to go.

Joy Street Pt VI

Roger realises as things get worse, that the other lawyers will probably join up and he will be landed with all extra work in the office. David prepares to go to Washington, and is dismayed when Priscilla makes a proposal to him. She says that she loves him and she believes he loves her too, and that in time he would get around to proposing. He tells her that he is not in love with her and he's in love with someone else. Angrily, she retorts that she knows he has feelings for someone else and she knows who it is too. She lets him go and David goes to Emily's house to say goodbye before he leaves. He reminds her of what had happened on New Year, how they both realised that they had to shut the door, and he was tempted to try to seduce her when he found her out of bed. However he realised that he could not do it, because Emily is an honourable married woman and not someone who has casual affairs... and that he would be very wrong to sleep with her, knowing that she would regret it and that it would damage her marriage. She says that she thinks she understands, and he says that he realised over the past months that he loved her and he couldnt do anything that would cause her pain, even if there was a brief period of pleasure. He tells her that Roger is a great guy and that Emily knows that and that she would not be happy if she did anything to hurt her husband or break up the marriage. Emily realises that he's right and when he leaves she commits herself to looking after Roger and trying hard to be a support to him. Brian is called up but then let back into civilian life, and he and Roger try to clear up a lot of work that is piling up. Then Pearl Harbor happens and Brian is recalled to the Navy.

Joy Street Pt V

David makes a pass at Emily, and she is angry and rebuffs him.. But she does feel an attraction to him that scares her. He tells her that he's not a man to make friends with a woman and he thinks in time she will come to want him as her lover. At New Year, Priscilla suggests that she Roger and Emily go to Elizabeth Forbes's farmhouse in New England, for a holiday, as she is bored with society events. David and Brian are also invited and Elizabeth who is still teaching at a posh girls school, invites a middle aged admirer who is a lecturer. Emily goes skating, and enjoys the break, but Roger is worried that he may have trouble getting back to Boston for a trial, in the early New Year, so he thinks he ought to go back home in case they are snowed in. Then Emily races on the ice with David, falls and hurts her ankle. Elizabeth bandages it up and she rests in bed, while Roger prepares to get a train back to Boston. Left to herself, she begins to muse about David and realises that she is thinking about him too much. She is sleeping in the next room to his, and a door begins to bang in the wind. Feeling afraid of her own desires, she gets up and decides to limp into Elizabeth's room to get away from her sinful thoughts, but David appears in the doorway, trying to shut it. The New Year starts well but the Americans are aware that war is coming. David, as a Jew is eager for America to enter the war, but Brian refers to it as Englands war. David decides that he should offer his services as a lawyer to the US army's legal department, and tells his bosses he will be going to Washington and that if he has to resign from his job at the law firm he will do so. His boss is furious at his decision to leave, but feels he can't back down so he tells David if he leaves, he wont be welcome back. Roger has been in the National Guard for sometime but he now finds that his health problems mean that he is not strong enough to join the regular army. He is upset and feels emasculated, and Emily does her best to support him through the stress of taking on more work at the office, and not beign able to serve his country.