Brideshead Revisited

by

Evelyn Waugh

Julia is the oldest daughter of Lord Marchmain and Lady Marchmain, and the sister of The Earl of Brideshead, Sebastian, and Cordelia. Charles meets Julia when she is 19 years old, and the pair take little interest in each other: Charles is preoccupied with Sebastian and Julia is busy with her social life and the realization that she will be eligible to marry soon. Julia is a reserved, composed, and stylish young woman. She is extremely privileged and confident, and treats the world and everyone in it as though they somehow belong to her. Despite her wealthy background, however, Julia worries that her Catholic upbringing will count against her when it comes to finding a husband, which is her main concern in life as a young, rich woman in the early-20th century. Julia has renounced her Catholicism and is attracted to danger and to people who are considered socially taboo. She likes to shock people, and is irritated when Sebastian gets a notorious reputation for his alcoholism, as it takes attention away from her. Despite this, Julia is quite conventional and dislikes scandal and social impropriety. She wishes that Sebastian would go abroad so that he will not embarrass the family, which eventually ends up happening. Julia becomes engaged to, and eventually marries, Rex Mottram, an ambitious entrepreneur who marries her for her social and political connections. She does this against her mother’s wishes, as Rex is divorced, and therefore cannot become a Catholic. Julia is very unhappy with Rex and divorces him for Charles, with whom she has an affair several years later. However, despite her genuine love for Charles, Julia is haunted by guilt and believes that she is “living in sin” because of her transgressions. She eventually returns to Catholicism and ends her relationship with Charles after the death of her father.

Julia Flyte Quotes in Brideshead Revisited

The Brideshead Revisited quotes below are all either spoken by Julia Flyte or refer to Julia Flyte. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Innocence, Experience, and Redemption Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

“We’ll have a heavenly time alone,” said Sebastian, and when next morning, while I was shaving, I saw from my bathroom window Julia, with luggage at her back, drive from the forecourt and disappear at the hill’s crest, without a backward glance, I felt a sense of liberation and peace such as I was to know years later when, after a night of unrest, the sirens sounded the “All Clear.”

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Sebastian Flyte, Julia Flyte
Related Symbols: Brideshead
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

“Well. I’m fond of him too, in a way, I suppose, only I wish he’d behave like anybody else. I’ve grown up with one family skeleton, you know papa. Not to be talked of before the servants, not to be talked of before us when we were children. If mummy is going to start making a skeleton out of Sebastian, it’s too much. If he wants to be always tight, why doesn’t he go to Kenya or somewhere where it doesn’t matter?”

Related Characters: Julia Flyte (speaker), Charles Ryder, Sebastian Flyte, Lady Marchmain, Lord Marchmain
Related Symbols: Brideshead, Skull
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 2 Quotes

Foreigners returning on post from their own waste lands wrote home that here they seemed to catch a glimpse of the world they had believed lost forever among the mud and wire, and through those halcyon weeks Julia darted and shone, part of the sunshine between the trees, part of the candle-light in the mirror’s spectrum, so that elderly men and women, sitting aside with their memories, saw her as herself the blue-bird.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Julia Flyte
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:

This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me through the dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by the power of her own beauty, hesitating on the cool edge of life; one who had suddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy story turning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it with her fingertips and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open at her feet and belch forth her titanic servant, the fawning monster who would bring her whatever she asked, but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcome shape.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Julia Flyte
Related Symbols: Brideshead
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:

He had stepped straight from the underworld into the world of Brenda Champion who was herself the innermost of a number of concentric ivory spheres. Perhaps Julia recognized in Brenda Champion an intimation of what she and her friends might be in twelve years’ time; there was an antagonism between the girl and the woman that was hard to explain otherwise. Certainly the fact of his being Brenda Champion’s property sharpened Julia’s appetite for Rex.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Julia Flyte, Rex Mottram, Brenda Champion
Page Number: 211-212
Explanation and Analysis:

And Lady Marchmain saw this and added it to her new grief for Sebastian and her old grief for her husband and to the deadly sickness in her body, and took all these sorrows with her daily to church; it seemed her heart was transfixed with the swords of her dolors, a living heart to match the plaster and paint; what comfort she took home with her, God knows.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Sebastian Flyte, Julia Flyte, Lady Marchmain, Lord Marchmain, Rex Mottram
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:
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Julia Flyte Quotes in Brideshead Revisited

The Brideshead Revisited quotes below are all either spoken by Julia Flyte or refer to Julia Flyte. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Innocence, Experience, and Redemption Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

“We’ll have a heavenly time alone,” said Sebastian, and when next morning, while I was shaving, I saw from my bathroom window Julia, with luggage at her back, drive from the forecourt and disappear at the hill’s crest, without a backward glance, I felt a sense of liberation and peace such as I was to know years later when, after a night of unrest, the sirens sounded the “All Clear.”

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Sebastian Flyte, Julia Flyte
Related Symbols: Brideshead
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

“Well. I’m fond of him too, in a way, I suppose, only I wish he’d behave like anybody else. I’ve grown up with one family skeleton, you know papa. Not to be talked of before the servants, not to be talked of before us when we were children. If mummy is going to start making a skeleton out of Sebastian, it’s too much. If he wants to be always tight, why doesn’t he go to Kenya or somewhere where it doesn’t matter?”

Related Characters: Julia Flyte (speaker), Charles Ryder, Sebastian Flyte, Lady Marchmain, Lord Marchmain
Related Symbols: Brideshead, Skull
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 2 Quotes

Foreigners returning on post from their own waste lands wrote home that here they seemed to catch a glimpse of the world they had believed lost forever among the mud and wire, and through those halcyon weeks Julia darted and shone, part of the sunshine between the trees, part of the candle-light in the mirror’s spectrum, so that elderly men and women, sitting aside with their memories, saw her as herself the blue-bird.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Julia Flyte
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:

This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me through the dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by the power of her own beauty, hesitating on the cool edge of life; one who had suddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy story turning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it with her fingertips and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open at her feet and belch forth her titanic servant, the fawning monster who would bring her whatever she asked, but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcome shape.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Julia Flyte
Related Symbols: Brideshead
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:

He had stepped straight from the underworld into the world of Brenda Champion who was herself the innermost of a number of concentric ivory spheres. Perhaps Julia recognized in Brenda Champion an intimation of what she and her friends might be in twelve years’ time; there was an antagonism between the girl and the woman that was hard to explain otherwise. Certainly the fact of his being Brenda Champion’s property sharpened Julia’s appetite for Rex.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Julia Flyte, Rex Mottram, Brenda Champion
Page Number: 211-212
Explanation and Analysis:

And Lady Marchmain saw this and added it to her new grief for Sebastian and her old grief for her husband and to the deadly sickness in her body, and took all these sorrows with her daily to church; it seemed her heart was transfixed with the swords of her dolors, a living heart to match the plaster and paint; what comfort she took home with her, God knows.

Related Characters: Charles Ryder (speaker), Sebastian Flyte, Julia Flyte, Lady Marchmain, Lord Marchmain, Rex Mottram
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis: