Boy Mulcaster Character Analysis

Boy Mulcaster is a friend of the Marchmain family and a student at Oxford in the same year as Sebastian and Charles. Boy Mulcaster is also the brother of Celia, whom Charles eventually marries and then divorces. Boy represents conventional, upper-class society and is a figure of ridicule throughout the novel. He is depicted as a buffoon and a show-off at university, and he and his friends oafishly pick on Anthony Blanche because he does not fit in. However, after Anthony leaves Oxford, Boy and his friends are rather bored, and this suggests that they have very little substance and can only enjoy themselves when they have someone to ostracize and bully. Boy is extremely privileged and arrogant. Anthony gets Charles and Sebastian arrested when Sebastian drives Hardcastle’s car drunk and crashes, because Anthony tries to bribe the policeman. He likes to brag about his success with women but is usually embarrassed when it turns out that they do not know or like him. On the night of the car crash, Boy takes Charles and Sebastian to a gentleman’s club to meet his “girlfriend,” Effie, and the boys are highly amused when she does not seem to know who Boy is. Although Boy grows into a successful and well-known member of society, his name suggests that he is, literally, like a boy. His interests, humor, and emotional range are infantile, and his need to always meet conventions and fit in no matter what are equally childish. This joke is expanded upon when Boy becomes good friends with Charles and Celia’s infant son, “Johnjohn,” and Celia says that, “to hear them talk,” they “might be the same age.”