Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Brideshead Revisited, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Innocence, Experience, and Redemption
Suffering, Persecution, and Martyrdom
Authority, Rebellion, and Love
War and Peace
Globalization, Culture, and Modernity
Summary
Analysis
Charles goes home for summer vacation. He has no money left in his allowance for the year and cannot afford to make other plans. Sebastian, too, must go stay with his family and seems to have no money. Charles is forlorn and gloomy at home. There is no one there but his father, who is middle aged but who acts like an old man and spends all day studying history.
Charles and Sebastian have lived extravagantly all term and now must face the consequences. This suggests a return to reality and to the limiting and authoritative forces which are at work in the world. It’s clear that Charles, like Sebastian, feels alienated at home. Charles’s father prefers the past to the present and would rather spend time alone with his history books than participate in modern life. The fact that Charles takes on the same distaste for the present and romanticized view of the past later in life suggests that he may be more like his father than he currently assumes.
Themes
Charles’s father, Mr. Ryder, seems surprised to have him home and insists that students must spend their summers doing activities. Charles tries to explain that he has no money, but his father evades this issue and tells him that he has never run out of money himself. Charles thinks his father is rather pleased and amused at his misfortune. His father takes a book to meals with him and ignores Charles while they eat.
Mr. Ryder’s passive-aggression toward Charles represents the broader worldly authority, suffering, and inconvenience which Charles and Sebastian are able to escape from while at Oxford. Mr. Ryder will not directly refuse Charles money, but instead pretends that he does not understand Charles’s hint that money is what he needs to leave home.
Themes
Charles sees little of his father during the days and is very bored at home. He only sees his father at dinner, and, at these times, the dining room is their “battlefield.” On the second night of his stay, Charles tries to read during dinner, but his father is offended by this and reprimands Charles for ignoring him. His father complains that it is not good for Charles to spend every night at home, to which Charles insists that he has no money. His father, again, evades the subject.
Mr. Ryder’s harsh treatment of Charles is likely a form of punishment for Charles spending all his money. He will not be honest with Charles about this, however, and is passive-aggressive instead. His overbearing authority is a stark contrast to Charles’s life at Oxford, which essentially acts as a safe space where Charles and Sebastian can be free of their familial expectations.
Themes
Mr. Ryder says that he only eats a large dinner because, after his wife’s death, his sister, Charles’s aunt, moved in with them for a time and insisted upon proper meals. Mr. Ryder says smugly that he “got her out in the end though.” Charles remembers his aunt and understands that his father means this as a challenge.
Charles and Mr. Ryder make up two sides in a metaphorical war. They fight over their right to be in the house, which represents the disputed territory, and Mr. Ryder implies that he is more experienced in this type of battle than Charles because he has done it before and won.
Themes
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The next evening, Charles invites an old school friend, named Jorkins, to dinner. Mr. Ryder confuses Jorkins throughout the meal by pretending that he thinks Jorkins is an American. Mr. Ryder explains everything to him as though he is foreign and does not understand. Later that night, as Charles shows Jorkins to the door, Jorkins asks Charles why his father thought he was American. Charles tries to explain that his father is a strange man, but Jorkins seems baffled by the whole evening.
Mr. Ryder wants to discourage Jorkins from another visit, and to discourage Charles from bringing any more friends around. He makes the evening unpleasant for Jorkins on purpose, which represents another way that Mr. Ryder symbolically makes war on Charles while he is at home.
Themes
A few nights later, Mr. Ryder launches his “counter-attack” on Charles and announces that he will give a dinner party. When Charles meets the guests, he knows his father has deliberately invited people he will dislike and who will not enjoy themselves. It is a “gruesome evening” and, when the guests have gone, Mr. Ryder talks about how dull they all are. Still, he says, so long as Charles stays with him, he must make the effort to invite people round.
Mr. Ryder takes revenge on Charles because he has invited someone there and thus disturbed his peace. He wants to persuade Charles to leave but, instead of saying this, he uses passive-aggressive methods to ensure that Charles is unhappy at home. He wishes to drive Charles out of the house the way one drives out an enemy in battle.
Themes
Over the next few weeks, things do not improve at home, and Charles wonders if his father really wants to drive him away, or if he just likes to irritate people. Charles only receives one letter from Sebastian. It is short, written on “late-Victorian mourning paper,” and only says that Sebastian is mourning for his lost innocence and that he will go to Venice to stay with his father in his “palace of sin.” Charles is frustrated by the note and tears it up. He remembers that Anthony called Sebastian insipid.
Although Sebastian intends this letter as a joke, it foreshadows Sebastian’s real decline and time abroad as the novel goes on. It also refers to the idea that, even though Charles and Sebastian are young and innocent, death, decay, and experience inevitably await them in their mortal state. Lord Marchmain lives with his mistress abroad—in Catholicism, it is considered sinful to have a sexual relationship with someone to whom one is not married. In going against the authority of the Church, Lord Marchmain has become a pariah, or an outsider, in this community. It makes sense, then, that Sebastian wants to go stay with his father, since he, too, feels alienated and ostracized by his family at Brideshead.
Themes
After this note, Charles feels that he despises Sebastian. However, when a telegram arrives from Charles’s friends with the news that Sebastian is badly injured, Charles immediately prepares to leave for Brideshead. His father is not disappointed to see him go, though he pretends to resent Charles for it.
Charles feels rejected because Sebastian does not seem to miss him over the holidays. He temporarily sees himself as Sebastian’s enemy, rather than his friend, as though they are on different sides in a conflict. Although Charles has been hurt by Sebastian’s coolness, he immediately forgives him when he hears that Sebastian has been hurt. This again demonstrates that love has the capacity to overcome pride and interpersonal conflict.
Themes
Charles catches the train out to Brideshead and, on the way, agonizes about all the possible accidents in which Sebastian could have been involved. He is afraid that Sebastian will be dead by the time he arrives. Julia waits for him at the train station in her car and, when he gets in beside her, she asks him if he has had dinner. Charles is confused and asks about Sebastian’s accident. Julia tells him that Sebastian tripped while playing croquet and broke a tiny bone in his foot.
Julia’s reaction seems strange to Charles because he believes there has been a terrible accident, whereas her question about dinner is mundane and suggests that everything is normal. Julia is very cool and conventional in comparison to Sebastian, who is eccentric. Like most of Charles and Sebastian’s peers at Oxford, it seems like Julia likes to fit in, rather than stand out. Sebastian has greatly exaggerated the severity of his wound in his usual dramatic fashion.
Themes
Julia tells Charles that Sebastian cannot walk and, therefore, cannot go away for the summer. He begged her not to leave him alone at Brideshead and, when she refused to stay, he asked for Charles to be sent for. As they drive along, Charles notices that Julia looks very much like Sebastian. She asks Charles to light a cigarette for her, and he feels attracted to her for a second as he does this.
This exchange and momentary attraction between Charles and Julia foreshadows the development of their relationship in future. It also suggests that Charles is attracted to Julia merely because she looks like Sebastian, suggesting that Charles’s intense love for Sebastian has clouded any other potential affection he feels for others.
Themes
Julia asks why, when Charles and Sebastian visited Brideshead, they didn’t stay to see her. Charles says that Sebastian insisted. Julia says that Charles obviously lets her brother push him around, and she leads Charles into the house. Sebastian appears in a wheelchair with his leg in a cast, and Charles is relieved to see him but slightly annoyed because he has been so worried. He is almost disappointed that there hasn’t been an accident because he has prepared himself for bad news.
Sebastian’s injury does not require a wheelchair, but this theatricality is part of his eccentric persona, which helps him stand out and is used by Waugh for comic effect. This suggests that Sebastian, unlike Julia, does not like to conform to conventional expectations. Charles has emotionally prepared himself for a tragedy and is disappointed when he finds everything is normal because it is an anticlimax. This harks back to the idea that conflict, and even war, often does not live up to its glorious and dramatic reputation.
Themes
Sebastian asks Julia if the servant, Wilcox, will let them have champagne. Julia tells him that she doesn’t like champagne and that Charles has eaten already. Sebastian replies indignantly that Charles will drink champagne at any time, and the three go together to have dinner. During the meal, Charles gets the impression that Julia doesn’t really like him. She gets up to leave after the meal and wishes the boys a brusque goodbye.
While Charles is enamored with Sebastian’s lifestyle, Julia thinks it is silly and childish. This strengthens the idea that Charles and Sebastian are innocent and naïve, like children.
Themes
Sebastian tells Charles that he loves Julia because she is very like him, but Charles does not see the similarity, except in the way they look. Sebastian jokes that he would never love anybody with a personality like his and Charles wheels his chair through the house and to the library, where they can look out at the lakes in the garden. Sebastian says they will have a “heavenly” summer together.
Charles does not think Sebastian and Julia are alike because Sebastian is warm and radiant, while Julia is cool and a little sharp. Sebastian’s self-deprecating joke conceals real self-hatred, which implies that he may turn out to be similar to his “Byronic” father as he grows older. The reference to a “heavenly” summer reflects the idea that this period in Charles’s life is a time of innocence and happiness, a stark contrast to his disillusioned present as a soldier.
Themes
The next morning, while Charles shaves in the bathroom, he sees Julia leave in her car and feels a sense of peace and relaxation. In the present day, as an older man, this reminds him of the feeling he had at the end of World War II.
Beards are associated with adulthood, and Waugh depicts Charles shaving to suggest that, during this summer, he and Sebastian return to a childlike state of innocence that is separate from the rest of the world. This period of respite for Charles and Sebastian also subtly parallels the period of peace in Europe between the two World Wars during this time.
Themes
