Mrs. Margaret Dimble Character Analysis

She liked her clothes to be rather severe and in colours that were really good on serious aesthetic grounds––clothes which would make it plain to everyone that she was an intelligent adult and not a woman of the chocolate-box variety––and because of this preference she did not know that she was interested in clothes at all. She was therefore a little annoyed when Mrs. Dimble met her coming out of Sparrow’s and said: “Hullo, dear! Been buying a hat? Come home to lunch and let’s see it. Cecil has the car just round the corner.”

“How lovely it’s looking!” said Jane quite sincerely as she got out of the car. The Dimbles’ garden was famous.

“You’d better take a good look at it then,” said Dr. Dimble.

[…] “[P]oor dear, her husband is one of the villains of the piece. Anyway, I expect she knows.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jane.

“Your own college is being so tiresome, dear. They’re turning us out. They won’t renew the lease.”

“Oh, Mrs. Dimble!” exclaimed Jane. “And I didn’t even know this was Bracton property.”

“There you are!” said Mrs. Dimble. “One half of the world doesn’t know how the other half lives. Here have I been imagining that you were using all your influence with Mr. Studdock to try to save us, whereas in reality––”

“Mark never talks to me about College business.”

“Good husbands never do,” said Dr. Dimble.

“I think MacPhee is introducing into animal life a distinction that doesn’t exist there, and then trying to determine on which side of that distinction the feelings of Pinch and Bultitude fall. You’ve got to become human before the physical cravings are distinguishable from affections––just as you have to become spiritual before affections are distinguishable from charity. What is going on in the cat and the bear isn’t one or other of these two things: it is a single undifferentiated thing in which you can find the germ of what we call friendship and of what we call physical need. But it isn’t either at that level. It is one of Barfield’s ‘ancient unities.’”

“Merlin is the reverse of Belbury. […] He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our modern point of view, confused. For him every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one’s horse. After him came the modern man to whom Nature is something dead––a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won’t work the way he pleases. Finally, come the Belbury people, who take over that view from the modern man unaltered and simply want to increase their power by tacking on to it the aid of spirits […]. In a sense, Merlin represents what we’ve got to get back to in some different way.”

She liked her clothes to be rather severe and in colours that were really good on serious aesthetic grounds––clothes which would make it plain to everyone that she was an intelligent adult and not a woman of the chocolate-box variety––and because of this preference she did not know that she was interested in clothes at all. She was therefore a little annoyed when Mrs. Dimble met her coming out of Sparrow’s and said: “Hullo, dear! Been buying a hat? Come home to lunch and let’s see it. Cecil has the car just round the corner.”

“How lovely it’s looking!” said Jane quite sincerely as she got out of the car. The Dimbles’ garden was famous.

“You’d better take a good look at it then,” said Dr. Dimble.

[…] “[P]oor dear, her husband is one of the villains of the piece. Anyway, I expect she knows.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jane.

“Your own college is being so tiresome, dear. They’re turning us out. They won’t renew the lease.”

“Oh, Mrs. Dimble!” exclaimed Jane. “And I didn’t even know this was Bracton property.”

“There you are!” said Mrs. Dimble. “One half of the world doesn’t know how the other half lives. Here have I been imagining that you were using all your influence with Mr. Studdock to try to save us, whereas in reality––”

“Mark never talks to me about College business.”

“Good husbands never do,” said Dr. Dimble.

“I think MacPhee is introducing into animal life a distinction that doesn’t exist there, and then trying to determine on which side of that distinction the feelings of Pinch and Bultitude fall. You’ve got to become human before the physical cravings are distinguishable from affections––just as you have to become spiritual before affections are distinguishable from charity. What is going on in the cat and the bear isn’t one or other of these two things: it is a single undifferentiated thing in which you can find the germ of what we call friendship and of what we call physical need. But it isn’t either at that level. It is one of Barfield’s ‘ancient unities.’”

“Merlin is the reverse of Belbury. […] He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our modern point of view, confused. For him every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one’s horse. After him came the modern man to whom Nature is something dead––a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won’t work the way he pleases. Finally, come the Belbury people, who take over that view from the modern man unaltered and simply want to increase their power by tacking on to it the aid of spirits […]. In a sense, Merlin represents what we’ve got to get back to in some different way.”