minor:
host: c-71-58-49-72.hsd1.pa.comcast.net
username:
revision: 1
summary: =A bitter satire diagnosing the light, airy causes of tragedy= Folks – Mrs. Beaver, an interior designer and real estate agent, . . .

A bitter satire diagnosing the light, airy causes of tragedy

Folks

• Mrs. Beaver, an interior designer and real estate agent, affectionate and coddling to her noodle of a son (even rents out a flat so her son can have an affair!)
• John Beaver, a weak, lazy man-about-town pretending to be an ad man, but really just the quatorzieme who shows up to make dinner parties even; unliked until his affair; mostly cares about money, never about Brenda; monetary needs govern his every choice; a stupid, weak, worthless boy
• Tony Last, a local lord absorbed in taking care of his Gothic Revival monster of a mansion; allows Brenda to do anything until she tries to scam him into giving her enough money to support Beaver through alimony; escapes into a scientific expedition but dies in the hands of a crazy half-caste in South America who captures him to get him to read Dickens to him all day
• Brenda Last, one of the beautiful Rex sisters; bored but affectionate wife until she decides to drift into an affair, mostly from pride; divorces him after their son dies
• John Andrews Last, their son, smart and spunky, dies in a hunting accident ; when the news gets to Brenda, she confuses John Andrews dying with John Beaver dying: said “Thank God” when she realized it’s “only” her son who died
• Ben Hacket, the Lasts’ groom, John Andrews’ only real friend
• Jock Grant-Mentzies, friend of the Lasts and Beavers; eventually marries Brenda after Beaver escapes the now-poor Brenda with his mother
• Polly, Lady Cockpurse: hostess friend of Brenda’s who creates the atmosphere for the affair; she resells her clothes
• Jenny Abdul Akbar, married some guy in the East, loves to talk about her tragic past, straight out of a romance novel; meant to be Tony’s mistress but fails
• Mrs. Rattery, Jock’s “blonde friend” who is sporty and sensible; flies her own plane and keeps Tony company in the tragedy
• Lady St. Cloud, Brenda’s mother, an example in insincerity that Brenda follows
• Dr. Messinger, Tony’s adventurer companion; dies in waterfall trying to find help for the sick Tony
• Therese, love interest for Tony on the ship to South America, but he improvidently mentions Brenda (symbolizes his lost hope)
• Milly and the detectives, hired to stage Tony’s “adultery” so they can get a divorce

Themes

• English Continuity: the country house, Hetton, is a fake (it’s a revival of the Gothic that was a ruined Neoclassical to begin with), but it is treated with loyalty and obsession; there is hope for its safety because 1) Tony refuses to go through with alimony when he hears Hetton will be in danger; and 2) the relations who inherit the house decide to be thrifty and restore it
  • New real estate: Mrs. Beaver sells flats made basically for affairs and for assignations; it’s a contrast to the “continuous British country house”
• Dickens: Tony’s “death” is having to read Dickens all day
• Pitiful “modern” attempt for freedom ends up breaking up a family and death (Mrs. Rattery is the real modern woman with freedom; Brenda was weak and silly and didn’t need freedom)
• Objects: his marriage breaking up is like misplacing a “an inconspicuous, inconsiderable object mislaid somewhere on the dressing table” (189), like one of those we hear a LOT about early in the book on John Beaver’s table (4) which he inherited from his father (“suggestive of expensive Edwardian masculinity”)
• Literariness: uses Waste Land epigraph and uses Du Cote de Chez Beaver as first chapter title (from Proust, Swann’s Way) to ridicule Beaver
• Poverty of modern English culture

Quotes