Andrew's Wiki
Tothe North

Folks

• Emmeline Summers (young travel agent, icy and passionate, falls in love with predatory Markie, ends up killing them in a car crash)
• Cecelia Summers (Emmeline’s sister-in-law, had married E’s brother Henry; picks up strangers on tour; ends up getting married to Julian Tower)
• Markie (upcoming barrister, a bounder who gets too close to Emmeline and almost agrees to marry her)
• Julian Tower (responsible bachelor, crusty but trust-worthy; uncle of Pauline)
• Pauline (awkward orphaned niece of Julian, provides an impetus for Cecilia to grow up)
• Lady Waters (nosy aunt of Emmeline’s who tries to make everyone give up their secrets)
• Sir Roger (quiet and gentle admirer of Emmeline, husband of Lady W)
• Peter (partner of Emmeline’s at the office)
• Miss Trapp (secretary for travel office; ineffective and starved for attention)
• Miss Armitage (super-organized temp secretary filling in after Miss Trapp’s sentimental breakdown; shames Peter and Emmeline with her efficiency)

Themes

• Modernity
  • Emmeline: It’s too certain; what travel offers is artificial injection of uncertainty; but what she wants is “monotony”
  • the Vicar: It’s too complex; people want to escape; that’s why they want speed
  • Traveling: It’s a mixture of speed and stillness
  • Time is expanded, but space is contracted
  • Life is decentralized
• Going North
  • Emmeline is a great example of impersonality
    • She’s cold and icy to people
    • Routinely neglects people
    • Crash happens b/c she gets into one of her trans-self, transcendent moods
  • Coldness is punished by Bowen; it kills them, though it gave them adventure
  • Warmth, even if it’s not exactly love (like Cecelia’s), is more well-adapted
    • Cecelia: “I like being susceptible.”
• Office life
  • Miss Armitage embarrasses Peter and Emmeline with her efficiency
    • Business has to professionalize to accept these new people
  • Miss Trapp didn’t work because she was sentimental
    • She was offended at Emmeline’s lack of personal interest in her life
    • “The matter is, simply, that I am human,” Tripp absurdly announces.
    • Offices need to adopt impersonality to work well
• Sex
  • Her “personal honor had been imperilled” by Emmeline’s affair with Markie
    • She believes she’s past prejudice about purity, but she ends up a victim to it
    • Later realizes that she now cannot marry anyone
    • Gossip about her and Markie does spread
  • Still expressed as violence
• Space
  • The affair does happen in other places
    • Paris is used for the deflowering
    • A friend’s cottage in Devizes (in the downs) is used for a tryst
    • Markie’s flat has odd domestic arrangements
      • Sister’s house, but completely disconnected top floor
      • Cook whistles up the air shaft when dinner’s coming up the dumb-waiter
  • Flight: beautiful descriptions of landscape
    • France versus England (France is proper, perfect, while England is messier but lovable)

Quotes

• “Tragedy is disparity” (292, Julian’s comment about Emmeline and Markie)
• “What one agrees about cannot be spoken” (241, Emmeline to Julian, about her many disagreements with Markie, trying to argue for her impersonality)
• “I am still surprised about the speed at which things fly past. But nowadays the incentive to motoring seems an anxiety to be elsewhere” (78, the Vicar, about his believing that just transportation itself is fascinating)