Brideshead Revisited: Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

“Eight Weeks” is a summer vacation at Oxford in which a university boat race takes place. Charles and Sebastian are clearly separate from the camaraderie of team sports and prefer to spend time alone with each other. Charles’s early relationship with Sebastian is associated with the revitalization and liveliness of spring and summer because they are both young and new to university, which represents that start of a new life for them.

Women were not allowed to attend universities in 1920s England, including Oxford. Universities were male-dominated spaces and the presence of women is a breakdown of the usual order. As a result, Charles likely has little romantic experience with women at this point in his life. Lunt’s annoyance at the ball suggests that he, too, views the women’s permission onto campus discomforting and foreign—a presence that connotes change and modernity. He looks back on the period before World War I as a better time and is nostalgic for the past.

Sebastian’s teasing of Charles shows that they clearly have a close, flirtatious relationship. Although it is implied that they are romantically attracted to each other, it is not specified whether their relationship is sexual or not. Sebastian is an aristocrat and, therefore, considered socially important. His comment that his father is a social pariah therefore suggests there is a scandal in his family.

Charles’s joy in the company of Sebastian suggests that he is in love with him. Waugh’s choice of language here—“floating on air”—aligns the experience of youthful innocence with another world, closer to Heaven than Earth. Sebastian’s comment, by contrast, is ominous and foreshadows his own decline as the novel continues. Although Sebastian and Charles are happy now, the reader already knows that Charles becomes disillusioned and miserable later in life, and Sebastian may experience a similar fate given their close bond as young men.

When Charles meets Sebastian, he feels as though it is the start of a new life, an obvious exaggeration that makes it clear to the reader just how much he idealizes his relationship with Sebastian. In contrast with Charles and Sebastian’s carefree spirits, Jasper serves as an older and more rational counterpart. His advice suggests that Charles, despite his strong emotions, is still relatively young and naïve.

Charles’s father’s advice is clearly useless and does not tell Charles anything about what to expect at university—he is likely speaking from an antiquated perspective when wearing a top hat may have been legitimate advice. Jasper is a conventional person and believes in conformity, and thus represents the more conservative, traditional side of British culture that Charles and Sebastian resist. He likely views extra-curricular activities as important ways to network and build a career for oneself, highlighting the importance of personal effort and a self-made mindset in the “new money” class of Britain during this time.

Jasper thinks that Charles must know the right people to get on well at Oxford, and in English society, which generally places a strong emphasis on conformity and dislikes people who do not fit in. He feels that Anglo-Catholics (English Catholics) are the wrong type of people because they do not conform to the predominantly Protestant culture in Britain. Charles does not listen to Jasper’s advice because he wants to experience life (to literally stop and smell the flowers) rather limit himself to purely rational or sensible experiences.

At first, Charles meets people who are like himself. Charles is middle-class and, although he is financially comfortable, he will have to work hard to build a career for himself. He cannot rely entirely on inherited wealth. Sebastian, who is a Lord, faces none of these restrictions. Sebastian’s priorities, therefore, are very different from those of his middle-class peers. Charles thus admires Sebastian’s carefree eccentricities because Charles desperately wants to believe that there is more to life than work and social advancement.

Sebastian’s teddy is a symbol of his reluctance to let go of his youth, since teddy bears are usually carried by children. Sebastian wants to prolong his youth and is nostalgic for his childhood. He pretends that he believes the teddy is real, just as a child believes their stuffed toys are alive. His habit of bringing the teddy bear in public also suggests that he is an exhibitionist and likes to draw attention to himself.

Charles contrasts the boring conversation inside the room to the drunken hilarity outside, and clearly wishes he was out there and not inside. He symbolically opens the window to new experiences, beyond his own small circle, and this leads to his friendship with Sebastian. Given that Sebastian is drunk to the point of sickness when Charles first meets him, this foreshadows hedonism, and the potential for trouble and dissolution, in Charles and Sebastian’s future relationship. The fact that Lunt, Charles’s servant, must clean up the mess the next day implies that neither Sebastian nor Charles will have to face any real consequences for their future irresponsibility.

Sebastian’s extravagant gesture further emphasizes the eccentricity that Charles observed in him earlier. Flowers are associated with freshness, new life, and summer, which are also associated with the early honeymoon phase of Charles and Sebastian’s relationship. Charles is pleased that something out of the ordinary has happened and is keen to try new things.

Plover’s eggs are a delicacy and associated with the very wealthy, further highlighting Sebastian’s affluence compared to Charles and his other peers. Sebastian’s odd taste in décor matches his eccentric personality and his desire to stand out. This supports the ways in which architecture and aesthetics mirror the internal states of the characters throughout the novel—particularly the grandiose style of Brideshead, Sebastian’s family home. Eton is a prestigious private school, which was traditionally attended by the very rich. Like students at Oxford, those at Eton are likely relatively reserved an conservative due to their social consciousness. Anthony clearly does not fit in with this group, as he is eccentric and unconventional like Sebastian.

An “aesthete” is a person who is interested in art and visual beauty. Anthony does not try to fit in at Oxford and, instead, plays up his unconventionality. The verse Anthony reads is narrated by Tiresias, a Greek prophet who was both male and female, and makes a reference to the Trojan war. The young men who listen below will go on to fight in World War II, and this suggests that Anthony is somewhat of a symbolic prophet figure of the future’s misfortunes. Here, he represents modern culture, in which many of the boundaries around sexuality and gender will dissolve: Anthony’s parting comment is a playful reference to homosexuality (Anthony is heavily implied to be gay). It also refers to Saint Sebastian, a Catholic martyr who was killed with arrows, foreshadowing that Sebastian Flyte, who shares this saint’s namesake, will experience similar judgment and persecution.

Nature and gardens are associated with youth and spring throughout the novel because of their connection to growth and fertility. These concepts are not only associated with childhood and birth, but also with God and the idea that God made the world fertile and life-giving for humanity. It also suggests that Charles and Sebastian’s relationship is in its first spring-like bloom, but that their bond, like the seasons, is subject to change. As an artist, Charles is clearly drawn to aesthetic beauty and wants to capture it. Since he finds Sebastian beautiful, he wants to emulate him and is therefore unsatisfied with his own room compared to Sebastian’s. The Van Gough print looks “real” to Charles because it now seems to be the only truly aesthetically beautiful thing in the room—having met Sebastian, Charles seems to view his surroundings with a fresh perspective. With this, the novel suggests that youthful love is a source of beauty, as well as mental clarity, renewal, and rebirth.

Brideshead Castle symbolizes the Catholic Church. The dome is a reference to the dome of St Peter’s, the Catholic Church in the Vatican in Rome, where the Pope lives. Sebastian seems detached from his family home and does not view himself as part of the family because he does not conform with their religious views. Sebastian is not Catholic, although his family is, and he is therefore detached from his family as well as the grandeur presence of Brideshead itself.

It was common for children of wealthy parents to be raised by a servant or nanny. Sebastian is attached to his nanny, both because she is a mother figure to him, and because he wants to feel like a child again and return to his nursery. He is nostalgic for the childhood bond with Nanny and wishes to prolong it into adulthood. 

It was common among wealthy families to formally introduce their daughter’s into society when they were old enough to be married. Sebastian clearly resents his family and wants to have his own life separate from them. He does not wish to conform to their worldview and dislikes the idea that they have authority over him. He is therefore possessive over Charles, because Charles represents his relatively carefree, independent life at university separate from his family.

Sebastian makes the sign of the cross, which is a Catholic prayer. Charles does not take Sebastian’s religion seriously and thinks that Sebastian only does this out of habit—he copies him because he thinks it is polite. Sebastian is offended because, although he clearly does not align with all of his family’s views, he does feel that Catholicism is a serious belief system and not something trivial or fashionable. Charles, who has not grown up around religion, does not understand this.

Sebastian’s secrecy about his family makes Charles more interested to meet them. This suggests that forbidden things are tantalizing, and ties into the Christian idea that sin is more appealing to humans than goodness because it is forbidden. This relates to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who lost their innocence because they could not resist their curiosity to try the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. Charles’s curiosity reflects this biblical idea, and foreshadows his inability to resist a closer connection to Sebastian’s family despite Sebastian’s warnings. Despite Charles’s lack of religious upbringing, his mother died for a religious cause, and, in this sense, is like a martyr.

Sebastian is happiest when he is separate from his family because he is free from their authority, which he finds restrictive. This suggests that he needs independence and wants to build a life for himself beyond their influence. In the present day, Charles cries over these memories because this is one of the happiest times in his life and he likely has not been as happy since, suggesting that the carefree innocence of his youth cannot be resurrected even though he has come back to Brideshead in the midst of World War II.