Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited is a story about an upper class family observed and narrated by a middle class outsider Charles Ryder. The author introduces various motifs and themes throughout the novel, specifically the exploration of sexuality. Sexuality is defined as the expression of sexual receptivity or interest especially when excessive. Waugh successfully portrays homosexuality in this novel through the use of characterization, symbolism, and the nature of the relationship between the protagonist Charles Ryder and his tragic friend Sebastian Flyte. In Brideshead Revisited, homosexuality is the hidden love story concealed through the term friendship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte.

Homosexuality is first introduced

He refers to Sebastian in idealistic terms such as “entrancing, with the epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love” (Waugh 33). After an eventful night of Sebastian vomiting in his room, he sends Charles a bouquet of daffodils and invites Charles to lunch. This is the start of their friendship and he reminisces about their walk in the Botanical Gardens where physical contact took place; “[Sebastian] took my arm as we walked under the walls of Merton” (Waugh 36) and continued to be a very dominant action between the two. They become affectionate by sunbathing naked on the roof and when Charles is in the bathroom with Sebastian as he takes a bath (Waugh 100). This all begins the summer that Charles and Sebastian remain at Brideshead and is the start to where their friendship grows stronger. As their companionship flourishes, they are mostly alone together – “each so much bound up in the other that we did not look elsewhere for friends” (Waugh 124). Charles also recounts that while he was at Oxford, he did not have any interest in women at that time and only focused on the relationship he had with Sebastian. The last time Charles sees Sebastian at Brideshead, Sebastian is drunk and states that he does not want Charles there, eluding to the fact that their relationship will not work because Charles is not homosexual. The final time the two are together, Charles finds out that Sebastian is happily living with a new friend in Morocco and no longer has need for him. As they grow apart in two separate worlds, Charles states later in the novel that “never did I come alive as I had been during the time of my friendship with Sebastian” (Waugh 269), not during his marriage with Celia Mulcaster or even during his affair with Lady Julia