Brideshead Revisited Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Celia has organized Charles’s exhibition on a Friday. She hopes that the critics will pay attention to his work, which she feels has been artistically overlooked. Charles calls Julia and tells her that he must go to the exhibition, but that he doesn’t want her to come. He will meet her afterward on the train.

Celia is a shrewd career woman, although it is not her own career she manages. Charles does not want to be false with Julia, so does not want her to see the fake persona he must adopt at the exhibition. He wishes to make his relationship with Julia a sacred space, in which he can escape from the rules and restrictions of modern society.

Active Themes

Charles meets Celia at the exhibition, and she tells him that she has met an acquaintance of his, a Mr. Samgrass, who says that he knows the “Brideshead set.” Charles says that he is going to Brideshead that night but that he didn’t invite Celia because he knew she would not be able to join him. Celia is irritated because the children expect Charles home that night, but she does not want to have a row in public.

Mr. Samgrass is clearly still active in fashionable and academic circles, and still namedrops the Marchmain family. Through his affair with Julia, Charles can return to Brideshead, a place he associates with youth, life, paradise, and a refuge from modern society.

Active Themes

People begin to arrive at the exhibition, and Celia talks to several journalists about Charles and his approach to art. Charles hangs back and is “civil.” The exhibit is well-attended, and Charles hears his own work praised as “passionate” and “new.” He remembers that, at a previous exhibition, the same people had criticized his work. It was at this previous exhibition that Charles learned that Celia had cheated on him. This news gave him an amazing sense of freedom.

Charles’s perspective on art is not necessarily reflected in the publicity which Celia arranges for him. He is not in control of how people receive his work or what the critics write about him, and must surrender to this. Surrender to and acceptance of suffering are related to concepts of Catholicism because humans must passively surrender to God’s authority and accept suffering on Earth in order to emulate Christ’s suffering. Although Charles finds modern art vulgar and shallow, he realizes that his own work is insipid and irrelevant, and that he does not have anything new to say. Charles felt tied to Celia when he believed she loved him. He feels that he can do what he likes now that he knows she has cheated on him. This represents another break with perceived authority.

Active Themes

Celia bids Charles farewell at the exhibit’s end, and Charles can tell that she knows about his affair with Julia. He is about to leave when he hears a voice he recognizes. It is Anthony Blanche: the doorman has tried to turn him away. Charles lets Anthony in, and Anthony glides around the room to examine the work. He does not pass comment, and when he has finished, says that at least Charles is in love. Charles asks if the pictures are that bad, and Anthony says that they must talk about it elsewhere.

Celia would rather put on a brave face than cause a scene, suggesting that he cares about others’ perceptions of him despite feeling alienated from them. Anthony obviously does not fit into respectable British society. Anthony suggests that Charles’s art is bad, and that at least he loves his wife, so his life is not a complete failure. Unbeknownst to Anthony, Charles is not in love with Celia, so this comment merely drives home Charles’s feeling that his life is empty and meaningless.

Active Themes

Anthony takes Charles to a gay bar nearby, which is garishly decorated but quite dingy inside. A few young men approach them, but Anthony says they are “gold diggers” and sends them away. Charles is reminded of his time at Oxford. Anthony tells Charles that he saw his first exhibition (the paintings of Brideshead) and that, although the work is not to his taste, he felt that it showed promise. However, after the next exhibition, Anthony despaired and felt that Charles had succumbed to English charm: something Anthony has always despised.

Anthony is openly homosexual, and therefore exists on the fringes of conventional society, since homosexuality was illegal in Britain during this period. Anthony has an eye for art and can tell that Charles once painted because he was inspired to do so. Anthony thinks that Charles has now adapted his painting to please English audiences, rather than because he is inspired, and his work has suffered because of this.

Active Themes

Anthony was excited to hear that Charles had painted abroad and had heard that his new work was like “Gaugin.” His is disappointed again, however, and feels that Charles’s new work is just like his old. He says that it reminds him of the time at Oxford when Sebastian wore a fake beard: “English charm, playing tigers.” Charles agrees, and Anthony explains that he tried to warn him at Oxford. He fears that charm has contaminated and “killed” Charles. A young man approaches them again, and Charles leaves to catch his train.

Gaugin was a modern painter who travelled to Polynesia and painted the local people. His paintings were famous for their bold, bright colors and unusual shapes, and his work was considered shocking by English audiences. Anthony feels that Charles has painted foreign locations in a way that makes them palatable to English audiences. He has removed all the wildness from them and has dressed them up like foreign places, when really, they look like pale, civilized imitations of them. Although Charles despises modernity and its love of comfort, convenience, and order, he has pandered to it by painting a nostalgic version of the past, rather than painting what is new, modern, and real.

Active Themes

Julia meets Charles in the train carriage. Charles tells her about the exhibition, and his meeting with Anthony, while the two have dinner. Rex is at Brideshead with a party of friends when they arrive, and they talk about the possibility of war in Europe. Later that night, Julia complains to Charles that love “makes her hate the world.” Charles says it is them against the world for as many nights as they have.

Julia is prepared to have an affair right in front of Rex because Rex does not care about her and will not be jealous. Rex’s friends are all very modern and interested in current affairs. Julia feels that she hates the rest of the world because she compares it to Charles. This is reminiscent of Charles and Sebastian’s solitary attitude to love and their rejection of everything outside their relationship.

Active Themes

Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited: Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis