Shortly before his death, Evelyn Waugh prophetically declared ‘‘To have been born into a world of beauty and to die amid ugliness is the fate of all us exiles.’ Despite this seemingly straightforward reflection, Waugh previously appeared conflicted as to what significance beauty and aesthetics should hold in his satires, and particularly to what extent characters allow a reliance on beauty to corrupt their judgement. In his early fiction, a simple progression from beauty to ugliness cannot be found, as the beautiful worlds he creates hold inherent ugliness and decay from the outset, foreshadowing an eventually deadly moral degradation in societies. Whilst Jeffrey Heath suggests Waugh had a ‘brief romance with Oxford aestheticism’, these …show more content…
It is in Vile Bodies where Waugh is at his most inventive and interesting in using senses of beauty to bring about a prevailing moral sense. The Bright Young People (hereby referred to as the BYP) take their vibrant existence for granted and instead harbour an ugly sense of bleak boredom, leading them to wildly pursue more intense and dangerous pleasures. By neglecting to detail the decadent parties in the full vibrant colour expected by readers, Waugh can immerse us in the numbed collective psyche upheld in the novel, whilst allowing the ugliness of character’s actions to shine. It is perhaps only when he creates a fictional account of the aesthetic education in Brideshead Revisited he is able articulate an eventual condemnation of aesthete morality, and ultimately bring about his own moralising triumph in replacing the philosophy of art with the philosophy of …show more content…
If Waugh is an Artist, this is also his responsibility. However in Vile Bodies, he seems to consciously deny himself opportunities for beautiful description, in order to display the warped perspective the BYP develops due to a constant presence of beauty. Born into a world of constant spectacle, they are numbed to its joys, resulting in a constantly bored mental state and leading to a dangerous pursuit of increasingly intense sensations, in order to feel at all. Frederick Beaty deems their parties a ‘dance of death’, but they are more on first impression a dance of disgust. Repulsion is in vogue; ‘Isn’t this a repulsive party’ is an acceptable greeting. They derive pleasure by declaring their boredom, believing they are someway deserving of better senses of beauty. Readers subconsciously expect parties in literature to be richly described, but instead are forced to be content with the richest description often being the fabricated by gossip columnists, creating a false world of beauty not founded in the morose reality. Thus whilst the BYP’s beautiful world is falsely made bright for the column readers made to feel exiled from their fun, it collapses to a mere construct for Waugh’s readership. So ironic is the gap between fiction and reality that in a
The cinema as a form of leisure was not new to British society, and indeed most western industrialised societies, during the interwar era. Prior to World War One it was not much more than a 'technical curiosity', but by the 1920s it was the 'new medium' and one that was a 'fully fledged form of art'. (Taylor 1970 p, 180) Throughout most of the 1920s, films shown in cinemas around the world were 'silent'. While silent films were not new to this era, the popularity of them experienced a 'new' and unique interest amongst the general public. Indeed, Vile Bodies highlights the popularity of the cinema and in particular, the 'silent' film as a regularly experienced leisure activity. Waugh's character, Colonel Blount, is the most obvious representation of the popular interest of films and film making at the time Vile Bodies was written. He tells Adam, after asking his interest in the cinema, that he and the Rector went 'a great deal' to the 'Electra Palace'. (Waugh 1930 p, 59)
When Victorian Era, England is brought up in most context’s it is used to exemplify a calm and more refined way of life; however, one may overlook how the children of this era were treated and how social class systems affected them. Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh is a novel written to take a closer look at the life of children growing up in the unfair social hierarchy of Victorian Era England. Butler’s main characters are Theobald and Ernest, who grow up during the time period; Overton, who is Ernest’s godfather, is the narrator of the novel and provides insight into Theobald and Ernest as they mature through the novel. Theobald is the son of a wealthy, strict, and abusive father who treats him with no mercy, but leaves him with a rather significant inheritance from his Christian publishing company, at his death. Ernest is the son of Theobald, who beats him with a stern fits over even the pettiest things in
The contemporary reviewers of Bleak House fall into two categories when discussing its structure. There are those who like it and there are those who do not. More specifically, those who dislike the novel’s construction complain of the absence of plot and lack of connection between characters and their actions. Opposing this view are the reviewers who find the characters in Bleak House remarkably intertwined in the story, especially since it was written as a series for a literary magazine.
Supernatural values and natural imagery are a major theme throughout Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre. This essay will examine the representation of natural and supernatural values that play an integral role in developing the story in Jane Eyre.
The transgression of moral codes and degeneration are central themes to all three texts. Dorian Gray, also referred to as the decadence manifesto, embodies creeds relative to art, that conflict with Victorian society’s conformities regarding art. Therefore, the book itself would have been deemed degenerate. Wilde adopts Walter’s notion of the art for art’s sake. He addresses the idea of valuing ‘Not the fruit of experience’, but’ the experience itself’ through denying that art should be didactic or morally instruct. (Pater, 1868:152)‘The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame’, thi...
For Joe Weil, purity can rise from the filth. In Weil’s poem “Ode to Elizabeth,” he describes his hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey; he starts by quoting Time magazine with “Grimy Elizabeth.” (1) This
Telling tensions and dismal darknesses aside, the Gothic conventions in the art-pieces as a whole are powerfully alluring, drawing to reader and viewer alike, able to capture with the hooks of shadow all the while being more than just the roots. Even as the purest forms disappear into the modern meetings of the age, the murky waters of the themes still pour through new veins, though usually under new guise. Without the Gothic novel, there would be no modern horror, a gap within the words as well as the images alike - a void, vacuum, to which the subconscious would know not with which to fill. More than darkness, more than that strike of lightning, or the spark of a candle in the dark - the strands of a modern age, just woven into spans of new cloth.
Wilson, John Howard. ""Brideshead" Revisited In "Nineteen Eighty-Four": Evelyn Waugh's Influence On George Orwell." Papers On Language & Literature 47.1 (2011): 3-25. Web. 10 May 2014.
Ugliness is everywhere. It is on the sidewalks—the black tar phlegm of old flattened bubblegum—squashed beneath the scraped soles of suited foot soldiers on salary. It is in the straddled stares of stubborn strangers. It is in the cancer-coated clouds that gloss the sweet-tooth sky of the Los Angeles Basin with bathtub scum sunsets rosier than any Homer finger-painted dawn. Like the treble yell of helpless children, ugliness is piercing, unavoidable, everywhere. Yet, some powerful pieces of literature, with the assistance of paroxysmal words juxtaposed against brutal vistas and bitter emotions, have transformed the ugly into the beautiful. Here are some obvious examples: the monomania of Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick ; Rhoda’s descent towards suicide in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves ; Walt Whitman’s telling of the shipwreck of the San Francisco in “Song of Myself”—in these works, the lilting power of language, with its ability to moisten raw and tender flesh, exposes the friction between unsightly sores and the soaring majesty of the greatest art—the ability to transform the ugly into the beautiful.
Charlotte is always speaking ironically positively of her scenario at home with John. She uses words like “beautiful” and “delicious” (648) to describe aspects of her lifestyle proving that she is merely brainwashed into believing this kind of lifestyle is beneficial to her circumstance. It is anything but beautiful. She is denial of her sickness because “John says [her] case is not serious” (648) proving she has gone mad, as she knows the magnitude of her illness. Upon staring at the wretched yellow wallpaper that Charlotte clearly dislikes, she says cheerfully, “I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store” (650). The irony of her excitement reveals the point of madness she has reached from being forced to reside in this room that brings her
Elizabeth Bohls, in her study Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818, argues that aesthetic theories of the eighteenth century served to support the social and political hierarchy of the time. The observer, the viewing subject - the educated, wealthy male - is defined by what is constructed as opposite and antithetical to him - the labouring class, the female, and the non-European. The language of aesthetics thus also becomes the language of social exclusion. She notes "the structuring dualisms of eighteenth-century society: polite/vulgar, man/woman, civilized/savage" (67); she continues that the "second terms are subordinated as the foils against which the aesthetic subject defines himself" (67-68).
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The literal meaning is that the perception of beauty is subjective. English poet, playwright, and actor, one who is outstandingly regarded as possible the greatest writer to English language goes by the name of William Shakespeare, and his written about this very idea. Shakespeare was born in 1564 in England, and lived a life span of fifty two years, passing away in 1616. While Shakespeare was born near the end of the Renaissance era, and was the first to bring about the time’s core value’s to stage, he also composed a series of sonnets, even having his own sonnet known as the Shakespearean Sonnet. Love was a focal point, any poet who was a great poet wrote about love, and falsely compared it to perfection in the eye of the composer. Shakespeare himself wrote about perfection in the features of his lover; however in Sonnet 130, he explores a different, deeper truer side to love. Despite his mistress’s physical flaws, he loves her incomparably. ...
...e ability to achieve anything in life. Hopefully, readers would learn from this novel that beauty is not the most important aspect in life. Society today emphasizes the beauty of one's outer facade. The external appearance of a person is the first thing that is noticed. People should look for a person's inner beauty and love the person for the beauty inside. Beauty, a powerful aspect of life, can draw attention but at the same time it can hide things that one does not want disclosed. Beauty can be used in a variety of ways to affect one's status in culture, politics, and society. Beauty most certainly should not be used to excuse punishment for bad deeds. Beauty is associated with goodness, but that it is not always the case. This story describes how the external attractiveness of a person can influence people's behavior and can corrupt their inner beauty.
Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, is not a book that can easily be viewed through one critical theory. However, by knowing the historical background of when Bronte developed her novel, readers are able to understand Jane Eyre on a deeper level. The Victorian era was a time of change, and what authors like Charlotte Bronte did was help increase the change by shedding light into problems in Victorian society. Jane Eyre touches on many of the issues in Victorian society like feminist issues, class struggles, and the relationship between Britain and its colonies. Not only can readers see how much society has changed, but also the similarities. By understanding the novel at a historical level, readers can understand the novel through the lense
The role of pleasure in literature is a very debated subject in the literary works of William Wordsworth and Percy Blythe Shelley, in which they pick up where many writers before them left off and end where many writers after them will continue. Though neither of the men were the first to discuss the role of pleasure in literature, as it has been reviewed by many with vastly different established views about that role being from that pleasure is a distraction or a hindrance, that the received pleasure is a lie that only deceives the audience and corrupts them, and other opinions that vary greatly in praise or criticism for the sake of pleasure in literature. Wordsworth significantly valued pleasure and viewed pleasure as having a vital role