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".
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hello =] I'm your blog reader. Just thought I'd let you know, aha. First off, I would like to say I find your topic to be very interesting. In this post, I love how you related to the allusion from the Great Gatsby connected to the characters in your novel. How does the author create the allusion in your story and how does the audience percieve it? How are we able to make the connections? Just some interesting questions to think about.
I think the way that Evelyn Waugh portrays the society of London reminds me of the Great Gatsby's society. The time period's similarities play a part in that too. And it's mostly due to how Brenda is SO MUCH like Daisy! If you had read the Great Gatsby and started to read this book, you'll start to think of it.
The dominance-relationship between Brenda and Beaver was interesting...she seems pretty manipulative. Do you think this relationship has anything to do with the satire of the book?
Also, I liked what you said about the upper-class people feeling like their important and have done a lot, though they haven't. If you wanted to make this a part of your ending essay... you might want to keep an eye out for it and find specific examples and analyze them....
Just some thoughts.
To answer your question Winnie: Her relationship with Beaver has a lot to do with the development of the story. The story is based around Brenda and Tony's marriage. In contrast between Brenda and Beaver, Brenda is a high class influential woman while Beaver is a man who is disliked. The contrast between these two is like yin and yang.
okay and i had no idea that we had to do an ending essay! when was this?!!!!
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