No Sadness in your child's Death?!

So I'm almost done with my book! Tony and Brenda's child, John, dies in some sort of freak accident on his horse. John falls down and just...dies. So when Tony finds out, Brenda is in London in "school". The weirdest thing is that they don't even seem so sad. Like I had said before, Waugh does not include emotions often in the story. He leaves his readers to assume from the content. While I was reading it, I felt like they weren't really sad.

I feel as if by hearing the death of his child, Tony is just acting as if the news was just some ordinary mundane news of the weather. All he can really think of is telling Brenda and he complains that Brenda is a lot better at keeping everyone at bay. "I wish Brenda had been here. She's so good with everyone. I get in a muddle." [145]

I sense some irony in the time when Brenda will know. I feel like instead of being hurt as Tony says Brenda will be, Brenda will be so happy for some reason. I feel like the only reason why Brenda was even still with Tony was because of John and because of the social and class he gave her. But if John was dead, Brenda would have no real reason to stay right? Tony says: "It's going to be so much worse for Brenda. You see she's got nothing else, much, except John. I've got her, and I love the house... but with Brenda John always came first... naturally... And then you know she's seen so little of John lately. She's been in London such a lot. I'm afraid that's going to hurt her."
"You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people."
"But, you see, I know Brenda so well."[149]
All those ... makes it seem like it's all just an afterthought. The "John always came first...naturally" seems like he's saying this because it's the feminine thing to do as a mother right? It draws on the inference that if you were to have children, your children comes first. And his last statement of knowing Brenda so well is so ironic! Because I'm sure if he had known her so well, he would know that she's not doing what she says she's doig in London, at least that's what I think.

It Can't Be Wrong If....

I've seen some interesting things so far. Brenda is pushing a woman towards Tony, who is still devoted to her, hoping for an affair to start up. I think she probably wants this to happen so that in many ways, Brenda can feel better about herself. She'll feel that if they're both doing it, she's not really doing anything wrong.

And her characterization of being some sort of teacher figure applies to even the new friends Brenda makes at her "economics class". I don't even know if she's taking those classes or just spending more time with Beaver. I've also noticed that although she is in control of her affair with Beaver, as in what he gets to do to her and when they get to see each other or speak to each other, she is still a woman. She still hopes that Beaver will disobey her and send her gifts and letters and call her while she's at home with Tony. "She had forbidden Beaver to send her a present or to write to her; in self protection, for she knew that whatever he said would hurt her by its poverty, but in spite of this she awaited the posts nervously, hoping that he might have disobeyed her." [80]

I feel that Waugh is characterizing her in this way to show that although she is a manipulative person and portrayed as a villain, she still has these good characteristics about her that make her seem...less bad? She is portrayed in that light to make her more humane.

Research of A Handful of Dust

After some research about the book, it is said that the title "A Handful of Dust" is referred to T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land [reproduced below]
I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Waugh actually makes reference to this poem in the first page of the novel when he quotes: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust".

T.S Elliot's poem has shifts between satire and prophecy.

Also it has been later revelaed that Evelyn Waugh wrote an alternate short story called "The Man Who Liked Dickens". In the short story, it is referred to towards the ending of A Handful of Dust. Evelyn Waugh had actually written the story to be about: "I had just written a short story about a man trapped in the jungle, ending his days reading Dickens aloud. The idea came quite naturally from the experience of visiting a lonely settler of that kind and reflecting how easily he could hold me prisoner [...] eventually the thing grew into a study of other sorts of savages at home and the civilized man's helpless plight among them."

[all research was taken from Wikipedia!]

No Secrets?

As I continue to read on, I find it rather funny that Brenda has somehow admitted to her husband that she has been having an affair with a younger man and all he's upset about is how she wants to buy a flat in London.
"Me? Oh I've been behaving rather badly to tell you the truth."
"Buying things?"
"Worse. I've been carrying on madly with young men and I've spent heaps of moey and I've enjoyed it very much indeed. But there's one awful thing."
"What's that?"
...."Tony, I've found a flat."
"Well you better lose it again quick." [71]

It was an interesting moment for me that I found kind of funny. I noticed that Waugh doesn't put a lot of details about the emotions going on in the story and leaves it to the readers to imagine whatever emotions they see fit.

Another thing that goes back to a topic of my previous posts was how Brenda says she doesn't want Beaver but everyone including her actions say otherwise. Brenda says Beaver is "second rate and a snob an, I should think, as cold as a fish, but I happen to have a fancy for him, that's all...besides I'm not sure he's altogether awful...he's got that odious mother whom he adores... and he's always been very poor. I don't think he's had a fair deal. I heard all about it last night...he's got to be taught a whole lot of things. That's part of his attraction."[66] Then the entire scene plays out when Polly calls and they all start gossiping about the matter.

The quote I had just provided reminds me of the passage we read about Dorthea. How her idea of marriage was a fatherly figure who could teach her Hebrew if she wanted it. In this, Brenda thinks Beaver is attractive because he doesn't know as much as she does. It also draws on my idea in the previous post that Brenda wants to be shown as a dominant character that controls everything- and she has found that she can control Beaver.

English Gothic: Chapter 3

Just to let everyone know, in my book there are only seven chapters but in each chapter, there are several different sections.

So here we go:

I'm sticking to my allusion with the Great Gatsby. The way the society is portrayed in The Great Gatsby reminds me very much of how the society is portrayed here. In this section, we are going along with Beaver and Brenda on a date. Well to me it seems like a date but most likely it isn't...politically correct considering Brenda is married. It was actually Brenda who asks him out to dinner and to be her date to Polly's party.

Brenda is a year older than Beaver and during the course of their date, she treats him as if he's a child. Generally on a date, the man pays, in this story Brenda is the independent woman, or so she tries to be. "Yes it is. I'm a year older than you and an old married woman and quite rich, so, please, I'm going to pay." [59] I feel as if Brenda, who has been under the control of the society and the ideals of what a woman should be, her marriage, and etc, finally gets the chance to be an independent strong woman. She becomes manipulative by picking a weak prey, Beaver, and twists him around to make herself feel better.

However at the same time, she knows the tricks to be able to make him feel like the dominant man. Before the party, Brenda asks: "How much do I tip him?" and Beaver showed her. "Are you sure that's enough? I should have given twice as much." "It's exactly right," said Beaver, feeling older again, exactly as Brenda had meant him to." [61] Again going back to my idea that she is playing the dominant figure whilst letting Beaver THINK he is.

Another example is at Polly's party. They eat dinner at Polly's party when she sees he has entered a bad mood because he has felt unimportant. "She wanted to make him feel important again so she asked him about the other people in the room."[63]

Going along with the idea about Brenda, I must mention Polly. So far I've noticed that Brenda, Polly, and Mrs. Beaver have a lot of similarities. They want to be presented among one of the top notch woman in their class: independent, strong, and social. Polly feels quite proud of herself of gaining the respect that she believes she has gained. She feels as if she has accomplished everything she had wanted for the party: "She wanted a perfectly straight, smart party and she had got it." [61] She makes a contrast between the other parties she has thrown: "In other years people had taken her hospitality more casually and brought on with them anyone with who they happened to have been dining." [62] To this year: "This year, without any conscious effort on hr part, tehre had been more formality. Those who wanted to bring friends had rung up in teh morning and asked whether they might do so, and on the whole they had been cautious of even so much presumption. People, who only eighteen months before would have pretended to be ignorant of her existence, were not crowding up her stairs." [62]

I feel that so far in this entire chapter, Evelyn Waugh is poking fun at all the upper class people. He is saying something like: "You think that what you have accomplished is so much when it's nothing".