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Michael Donelan The end of World War II brings about many changes to our favorite characters. Some of these changes are back to relative normalcy, but others are nothing short of wholesale transformations in the case of Jean (formerly Templer, formerly Duport) Flores. She emerges after the celebration of the termination of the war when Colonel Flores gives Nick a ride to Whitehall. Initially Nick does not even recognize her, rather he is shocked at how similar Colonel Flores' daughter looks like Jean. Upon realization Nick observes: "Jean had altered her whole style." (233 MP) Both she and her daughter Polly exhibit a look Nick has never seen before and he feels: "their elegance appalled one" (232 MP) These are just preliminary changes that he notices in their his encounter with Jean as he has the opportunity to attend a party at the Flores' apartment where he sees much more of her. For a period of Nick's life prior to the Second Great War, he would have found himself at a loss without the company of Jean. Life was unthinkable without her. However, the conclusion of The Military Philosophers confirms that: "Jean and I were no longer the persons we then had been." (236 MP) Nick is asked to drinks by Colonel and Madame Flores and it is here that Nick really gets an idea of how she has changed. Jean spent all those years running around three-timing Jimmy Brent, Bob Duport and Nick himself. She found herself unwilling to settle into one lifestyle as she was seeking riches and none of those men, individually or collectively could give her what she was looking for. Now she has settled down with Colonel Flores because he can provide her with this standard of living. Upon entering the drawing room in their apartment Nick sees a "profusion of flowers" (95 BDF) along with "the abundance and variety of drink on offer" (95 BDF). This gives Nick a complete sense of closure to his past relationship with Jean. He knows he could not have offered Jean the riches Colonel Flores could and therefore never would have been able to make her happy had they continued their relationship. Jean's newfound access to wealth has shifted her image from "a well-turned-out schoolgirl" to "an enchantress on the cover of a fashion magazine." (96 BDF) She has adopted this attitude as well. She is a more powerful and opinionated woman than she was before the war. When she and Nick engage in conversation about the goings on of Colonel Flores she is very inclusive referring to the government's placement of the Colonel as their placement: "`Carlos has been given a military area in the Northern Province... We are both pleased really. It shows the new Government is being sensible." (98 BDF) She also easily passes judgment on her previous lovers. Talking about Bob Duport she casually offers that "He's rather a weak man in some ways." (98 BDF) Her connection to power has turned her into a confident woman who has no problem sharing her view. The Jean we meet is neither the Jean Templer nor the Jean Duport we knew in earlier novels. She is Jean Flores and if she can so easily criticize Jimmy Brent for being "very fat" one wonders what she might say to Jimmy or Bob if she were talking about Nick. |
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Cassidy Carpenter In Books Do Furnish A Room Nick Jenkins runs into Colonel Flores and his wife, the former Jean Templer, at a party at their house. The Flores' home in London is overflowing with flowers, ironic because of the meaning of their last name, along with alcohol. Both of these superfluities were particularly hard to obtain in post-war England. The decadence at this party is an overt reference to the wealth in the hands of this South American couple. Nick's comments about the Flores's dress, especially that of Jean's, gives an accurate timeline at which to set the party in The Dance and reinforces their unbridled wealth. Hilary Spurling, the author of Invitation to the Dance, and Anthony Powell agreed that this party had taken place in the spring of 1946. This may be true due to other details in the book but based on the release of Dior's New Look, the party would have to have taken place in the spring of 1947 instead. Upon setting his eyes on Jean, Nick notices that she looked "rather superb in what was called `The New Look.'" This look that Nick has picked up on is from the 1947 spring/summer collection by Christian Dior. This is first collection released by Dior, which founded its haute couture fashion house the year previous (Met). "Featuring rounded shoulders, a cinched waist, and very full skirt, the New Look celebrated ultra-femininity and opulence in women's fashion. After years of military and civilian uniforms, sartorial restrictions and shortages, Dior offered not merely a new look but a new outlook" (Met). Jean's appearance embodied this swift transition into an era of luxury. A dress that Jean would have worn at such an event can be seen below: 
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art) This sapphire blue dinner dress entitled "Chérie" from the 1947 spring-summer collection is made of a changeant silk taffeta. This dress exemplifies the New Look in its "sloped shoulder, raised bust line, narrowed waist, and a monumental volume of skirt falling away from a padded hipline to below the calf" (Christian Dior). Something as lavish as this, as it does now, would cost an obscene about of money. Nick believes that Jean becoming "so fashionable had to be attributed, one supposed, to her husband" (BDFR 95). A husband in such high society with equally high a pay roll would be needed to support fashions such as these. Nick marvels at Jean's stark transition, "in the old days much of her charm -- so it had seemed -- had been to look like a well-turned-out school girl, rather than an enchantress on the cover of a fashion magazine." Nick now noticed that she had a very slight foreign intonation in her speech which complemented her new "haute couture" look. The ease at which Jean has transitioned into her role as Madame Flores is not surprising in the least. Upon arrival at the party it becomes apparent to Nick that, "money was after all what Jean really liked. In fact Duport, even apart from his other failings, had not really been rich enough. It looked as if that problem were now resolved, Jean was married to a rich man" (BDFR 95). This wealthy new addition to Jean's life is Colonel Carlos Flores; to Nick, the epitome of romanticism and prosperity. "Flores did posses the distinct look of Rudolph Valentino" (BDFR 96). Valentino was a silent film star who was known as a sex and fashion idol (Rudolph Valentino). The portrait below shows the poised and distinguished actor that Nick associates Colonel Flores with. 
(World Almanac) "Handsome, spruce and genial, the Colonel's English was almost more fluent than his wife's, at least in the sense fainly old-world tinge" (BDFR 96). The same romanticized, larger-than life perception is brought out in his description of the Colonel as with Valentino. Their high society demeanor sets them distinctively on a higher plane than Nick. The fashion adorned by Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Flores boasts their high society profile and money that pays for it. Spurling identifies the Flores' party as happening in "early spring of 1946." The time at which Christian Dior released his New Look on to the fashion scene helps point out a possible mistake in the timeline of the The Dance -- one that Powell agreed to. Nick's seemingly passive descriptions gives us new insight into the lives of high society London. Sources: The Rudolph Valentino Homepage. http://www.rudolph-valentino.com/ The World Almanac. http://www.worldalmanac.com/newsletter/en00038.jpg The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/dior/ho_C.I.48.13a,b.htm Christian Dior. Martin, Richard and Harold Koda. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: New York, 1997. Invitation to the Dance, Hilary Spurling, Little Brown & Co, Boston, 1977, 326. |
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Kym Louie In Books Do Furnish a Room, Pam continues to use her attractive figure and abrasive personality to bring men down. After marrying Widmerpool, she proceeds to leave him for X. Trapnel, a writer very much unlike Widmerpool. Trapnel's interactions with her are disparate from his interactions with any other girl that Nick has seen him with and he is not the usual type of character that she troubles. He does not have any apparent weaknesses for Pam to take advantage of; he is emotionally stable, independent, and not overly concerned with his public reputation or money or the physical aspects of a relationship. He is cool and collected and would be hard pressed to lose his temper, yet Pam still finds a way to destroy him. Trapnel's life is mostly in the dark to Nick and his peers; he rarely tells anyone where he's living and sometimes sends representatives to the publishing firm to pick up books to review and to drop off his writings. Sometimes the most that people know of his whereabouts is that he may be in a bar somewhere, though which one is harder to determine. Trapnel's only lasting attachments are those to debt collectors, whom he avoids as much as possible. Trapnel is not entirely a loner; he does have girlfriends who are more than one-night stands such as Tessa, but he does not seem to get very close to them emotionally. He may even have a girlfriend because that's part of one of the many characters that he so determinedly adapted. "The essential point was that Trapnel always played a part; not necessarily the same part, but a part of some kind. […] Where he differed from the crowd was in so doggedly sticking to the role - or roles - he had chosen to assume (BDFR, 143)." If a girlfriend was a necessary accessory, he could have one. Trapnel's girls come and go without meaning too much to him. He's not pleased to see them go, but they're replaceable. Love would not be a fitting emotion for many of the personas that he adopts. Trapnel's first impression of Pam is an unusually negative one. He is not immediately entranced by her beauty and does not find her attractive until a second encounter: "Girls like that are not in my line. I don't care how smashing they look. I need a decent set of manners (BDFR, 137);" he next sees her yelling at some man over the telephone, which quickly changes to a siren persona, "utterly different from what she'd been at the party. [I felt] both randy and sentimentally in love with her (163)." At that point, he was attracted by her strong personality and thought himself to be entirely in love with her. His initial disappearance with her is not unexpected on either of their behalves, but after many days go by with no word from him or his representatives about writing for Quiggin & Craggs, it starts to seem a little strange. Trapnel gave up his usual existence for her; he is in hiding, but not from merely debt collectors. She has become his existence. He has become dependant on her like a drug. While with her, he only reviews one book before giving up on that work seemingly out of apathy, and seems to become nothing outside of this relationship with, or maybe addiction to, her. She abuses him and criticizes him; she does not care for him when he is sick until she thinks someone else's help is absolutely necessary; she doesn't give him any mental or physical pleasure: "She goes rigid like a corpse. Every grind's a nightmare. It's all the time, and always the same (BDFR, 225);" she does not support him in any way. Before his relationship with Pam, Trapnel drank socially and took pills on occasion, but she takes the place of a destructive and highly addictive drug. Even after she leaves, he can't support himself without a continual use of pills. With Pam, Trapnel loses control over himself enough to cease trying to play his many roles and allows himself to slip into a dependence that he cannot escape. His only reprieve is when she leaves him. Her finale before leaving only makes Trapnel's collapse more spectacular. Yet Trapnel maintains his calm stance and only shows how devastated he is by casting his swordstick into the river, a dramatic action within a mysterious and powerful persona that, though he is crushed, he still assumes. "He lifted the swordstick behind his head, and, putting all his force into the throw, cast it as far as this would carry, high into the air. The stick turned and descended, death's head first. A mystic arm should certainly have risen from the dark waters of the mere to receive it (BDFR, 223)." Even this persona seems a little destroyed when, instead of plummeting dramatically into the depths of the waters, "Trapnel's Excalibur struck the flood a long way from the bank, disappeared for a moment, surfaced, and began to float downstream (BDFR, 223)," like a dead stick or piece of trash. Trapnel is not the type of character to do things half-heartedly, so when he falls for Pam, he falls completely. He is also not the type of character to admit to and back down from a mistake, so his devotion to her becomes as entire as she demands it. Pam becomes a dangerous and destructive addiction, affecting his life to a greater extent than any addictive drug could have. |
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Erica Bakies Throughout Dance, Powell focuses on different aspects of art. He has mentioned everything from paintings to tapestries to photography. However, Nick has yet to analysis literature. It may be because Powell is an author and a writer himself, or it may be that he does not want to take a hard look at his own profession. However, in Books Do Furnish a Room, Nick, Oddo Stevens, and X. Trapnel are all writing books and Powell overcomes whatever burden seemed to have burdened him, to talk extensively about literature, writing, and books themselves. Several times throughout the novel Nick mentions certain historical books. Because literature is Nick's, and Powell's, profession, as well as the fact that Powell has focused the entire book on literature, these books must have very profound connections to not only the characters in the book, but Nick and Powell themselves as well. One of these novels stood out to me as a little bit more important than the others. During Erridge's funeral, Nick is reminded of a specific book, The Brother's Karamazov, and one character imperticular: Father Zossima. The story itself is of a murder. A man is murdered by his sons so that they could inherit his fortune. However, that story line takes more of an undercurrent as morals, faith, reason, and free will come into play. The character Nick mentions, Father Zossima, is an Elder in the town monastery. The second book in the series allows the reader to get to know Zossima, including his prophetic and healing abilities. However, the more relevant part of the story is Zossima's death, because Nick associates the quote from The Brothers' Karamazov at Erridge's funeral. Before Father Zossima dies, he weaves a story of an insubordinate youth. From his experiences, he comes up with this philosophy: people must forgive others by acknowledging their own sins and guilt before others, and no sin is isolated, everyone is responsible for their neighbor's sins. Erridge's death was accompanied with shock and awe. Nick says, "The trembling of prayers raised a faint echo throughout the dank air of the church, on which the congregation's breath floated out like steam. Such moments never lost their intensity," (BDFR, 53). While Erridge lived an eccentric lifestyle, he was not without his problems (leaving the Spanish war because he wasn't wanted). And he was not without his entire "village" showing up: the whole Tolland family, Widmerpool , Pamela, Gypsy Jones, Craggs, Alfred Tolland, and Quiggan. These people are full of sins and malice towards one another. Maybe Powell's association with Father Zossima's philosophy was a hint to showing that Nick knows what his acquaintances are capable of, and the fact that they are at the funeral for the money, rather than the memory of Erridge. Nick's own preference of keeping his life personal would also explain this quote and relate to the philosophy, as Nick doesn't want to share his sins with his neighbors, in and of the same way that he would not hurt his friends. Moreover, once Zossima dies, his body begins to decay. For centuries, the people of the village in which he lived believed that spiritual bodies did not decompose. The entire town was astounded when Zossima's body began to decay almost immediately. They were shocked and devastated. This called into question the actual sanctity of Zossima's life and soul. Nick remarks, "One thought of Father Zossima in The Brother's Karamazov. Reference to bodily corruption was a natural reaction from `Whom none should advise, thou has persuaded," (BDFR, 53). The quote that Nick states is from Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World. He begins the phrase, "O eloquent, just, and mighty death!" Death is clearly something that is not avoidable or can be negotiated out of, and Nick makes this sad point using Raleigh's words. Erridge's death was untimely and unforeseen, and Nick acknowledges this through references in literature. Despite Nick's vast and emotional statements, Powell seems to want to leave the description of Erridge's death to others. He does this by using references from novels familiar with the times, also profound in their own way. While we may have gone through thousands of pages with Nick's strong, silent personality, he really bares it all in Erridge's funeral scene, however subtly it may be. The reader gets a chance to see Nick's true feelings and personality in a scene that is so very prominent to the Tolland family. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brothers_Karamazov http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/235/1030/frameset.html http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/raleghfarewell.htm http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/ |
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Nick Anschuetz The beginning of Anthony Powell's Books Do Furnish a Room marks the first time in three books in which we see Nick out of war time. Hitler has been defeated and Japan had been obliterated. However, a time of rejoicing for England is a time of depression for Nick. His melancholy is apparent from the first sentence: "Reverting to the university at forty, one immediately recaptured all the crushing melancholy of the undergraduate condition." (1) As Nick writes his biography of Robert Burton, his depression at the beginning of the novel can be attributed to the combined effect of his irresolution, his presence at Oxford, and his loss during wartime. According to Nick, "War left, on the one hand, a passionate desire to tackle a lot of work: on the other, never to do any work again... Irresolution appealed to [Robert Burton] as one of the myriad forms of Melancholy." (2) After the war, Nick had nothing to do. His military job abruptly ended and he was forced to adjust to civilian life after six years as a soldier. Even for a non-combatant soldier, it is a difficult transition. "Only a week before, the peak of a French general's khaki képi ... had by conditioned reflex jerked my right hand from its overcoat pocket in preparation for a no longer consonant salute...." (1) We can see how it could be especially hard for Nick to revert to his old lifestyle because he did not really have a specific job to which to return. After six years of uninterrupted work, it is easy to understand why Nick would want either to do nothing at all, or to work only at what he loves to do. Nick obviously wants to get back into writing, but writing is the sort of job that is easy to neglect if one procrastinates. Nick's irresolution to work or not is part of the cause of his depression at the beginning of Books Do Furnish a Room. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Nick is revisiting Oxford University to do research for his biography of Robert Burton, and his presence at the University is another major cause for his depression. Powell promotes the image of Nick almost suffocating in the scholarly air, and Nick reminds himself what it was like to be an undergraduate student, not having any fun. "As the train drew up at the platform, before the local climate had time to impair health, academic contacts disturb the spirit, a more imminent gloom was re-established, its sinewy grip in a flash making one young again. Depressive symptoms, menacing in all haunts of youth, were in any case easily aroused at this period...." (1) As students, we are familiar with the academic pressure about which Nick is talking. Nick's depression can lastly be attributed to the loss of his friends during World War II. Although Nick says, "The odd thing was how distant the recent past had also become..." (1), he still acknowledges that "shades from those days still walked abroad." (1) During the war, he lost his uncle, his two oldest friends, his sister-in-law, his brother-in-law, and many, many more. The three World War II novels were the darkest of any of the books in the A Dance to the Music of Time series so far, and Nick, with nothing else to occupy his mind, is feeling this sorrow now. With the loss of so many people who were so close to him, the only people left are people neither Nick nor we particularly care for, such as Widmerpool, Pamela, Sillery, and Odo Stevens. Losing his friends has left a void in his life that will be very difficult to fill. Nick's depression at the beginning of Books Do Furnish a Room affects us because it is so human and understandable. While we haven't all lost friends in war, we do know what it is like to have too much work to do, or worse, to have none at all. We understand how total and abrupt change can create a longing for our previous life. Nick's depression forces us to look more deeply into Nick's character, and pray he finds solace somewhere. |
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Jimmy Yang We are drawing near to the close of Dance, and still, characters new and old enter and return to catch our attention. J.G. Quiggin has been absent for several books. Howard Craggs and Gypsy Jones haven't had a major role in any book since their introduction in the second, and Sillery and Le Bas similarly haven't been involved since the beginning. All of these characters return Books do Furnish a Room to create an interesting dynamic, but ultimately, the new characters, most notably X. Trapnel, through his escapades with Pamela Widmerpool, define the book. One of the new characters we meet however, seems to largely take a background role in the story: Ada Leintwardine. We only truly see her three times: providing information to Sillery, working for Fission, and married to J.G. Quiggin. Yet even in the few times we see her, she shows us that she is a very different character from the previous women that Nick Jenkins has met in his life. Several other women who make themselves seen and heard in Books do Furnish a Room offer us interesting comparisons with Ada. The first obvious comparison is with her "friend", Pamela Widmerpool. We met Pamela in the last book and we saw her engagement to Widmerpool. Whatever expectations we had of her changing after becoming married have not been met. She is as she was before, still ensnaring men, like the hapless X. Trapnel, and bringing them down. Ada, in contrast with Pamela's promiscuousness, is relatively uninvolved in romantic or sexual affairs. Though she catches the attention of men like Quiggin, and, in Bagshaw's words, "provides an oasis of much needed good looks in the office," (BR, 115) we do not hear much about Ada's interactions with men outside the workplace. She even seems a little naïve, when, for example, she is completely surprised by the relationship between Trapnel and Pamela, despite being the one who introduced the the two to each other. "It can't really be Trapnel." (BR, 185) Another woman who we can compare Ada to is Quiggin's past wife, Mona. We have not seen her in several books, and she appears only briefly in Books do Furnish a Room, though seemingly as a foil for the other women, Ada and Pamela. In the previous books when we knew her, she was flighty and very prone to mood changes. She left Peter Templer for J.G. Quiggin on a whim, and then, just as quickly, left him for Erridge. Though she used to have a job as a model, she seems to have left that long in the past. Now when we see her, she seems to have her head completely up in the clouds, as she drones on and on about meaningless things. "I thought I must say hello, Nick, though it's been years since we met…I just thought it was my duty to come, even in this daunting weather." (BR, 55-56) Ada is a much more serious, down-to-earth character than Mona. She spends a great deal of energy driving the Fission magazine. When she becomes emotional about anything, it seems on every occasion to be related to the magazine, like Trapnel's parody of Widmerpool's writing. A third important female character we meet in Books do Furnish a Room is Gypsy, Howard Craggs' wife. We met her in the second book in the series, and as Nick very well knows, she is quite promiscuous, though in a different way from Pamela. Like Ada, she is also involved in the production of the Fission magazine. However, her similarity to Ada effectively stops there. While Ada is capable, and spearheads the production of the magazine, as well as the other efforts at Quiggin & Craggs, Gypsy is ineffective, even losing the original copy of Odo Stevens' Sad Majors. We have yet to see if Ada Leintwardine will become a recurring character in the last two books of A Dance to the Music of Time. Certainly, as Quiggin's wife, if he returns, she probably will as well. Whether or not she does, however, she has served a distinct role as a woman quite unlike the others in the story. Neither promiscuous like Pamela nor shallow like Mona, Ada Leintwardine represents, historically, the new role of women in post-World War II Britain and the United States. She is independent, headstrong, educated, has a commanding position in the workplace, and makes effective use of it: she is the driving force behind the Fission magazine, and a driving force in Books do Furnish a Room. |
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Nicole Lee As we have learned, many of the characters in A Dance to the Music of Time have been modeled after acquaintances in Anthony Powell's own life. In the tenth novel, Books Do Furnish a Room, the character of X Trapnel clearly resembles a writer of Powell`s time, Julian Maclaren-Ross. The Anthony Powell website supports this comparison, stating that this character model was "based on the impecunious and thirsty bohemian writer, even down to the dark-glasses and walking stick." In the early 1940s, Maclaren-Ross was involved in the war and stationed at a series of English coastal garrisons. At this time, he produced various short stories about his experiences in the army. Many of these were published in Horizon (which was actually a model for Fission in the Dance) and other literary magazines of that time. Similarly, Trapnel was a writer for the same kind of magazines and was "incredibly keen to write well," as Bagshaw quoted.(105) Even more specifically, Trapnel was a writer of short stories, as he brought one for Nick to read at their first meeting. As they were talking he said, "the next thing's the volume of short stories… then the novel I'm already working on. That's really where my hopes are based.(114)" A parallel can be made to the short story collection of Maclaren-Ross called Better than a Kick in the Pants which was published a few years before his first full-length novel, Of Love and Hunger. Another similarity between Trapnel and Maclaren-Ross is their lack of stability and tendency to be somewhat nomadic. In Dance, when Nick asks for Trapnel's telephone number, he responds by saying, "people can't very well reach me. I'm always moving about. I hate staying in the same place for long. It has a damaging effect on work. I'll ring you up or send a note. I rather enjoy the old-fashioned method of missive by hand of bearer.(113)" In Maclaren-Ross's life, he moved many times both as a child and as an adult, from London to France to Oxford, even finding himself homeless at one point. He stayed in boarding houses when he had cash and Euston Station at Russell Square when he didn't. The personal lives of Trapnel and Maclaren-Ross also share many striking resemblances. Nick noted that he "did not know much about Trapnel's girls, beyond his own talk about them, which indicated a fair amount of experience. Some `big' love affair of his had gone wrong not long before our first meeting.(137)" Not long after this, Trapnel is introduced to Pamela Widmerpool and was "struck by her appearance.(184)" He later stated, "I'm mad about her. I'd do anything to see her again. (163)" Similarly, in August 1954, Maclaren-Ross had a "traumatic split from his girlfriend and moved to Oxford from London. On a visit to London, he met George Orwell's widow, Sonia, and became obsessed. Then, just as Trapnel is involved in an affair with Pamela, Maclaren-Ross began an affair with Diana Bromley. Overall, many small details in X Trapnel's and Julian Maclaren-Ross's lives emphasize the similarities between the two. The biographer of Maclaren-Ross, Paul Willets, describes him as "the mediocre caretaker of his own immense talents." In Books Do Furnish a Room, Trapnel is described as wanting to be "a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a prisoner; to be very rich, to be very poor, to possess a thousand mistresses, to win the heart of one love to whom he was ever faithful, to be on the best of terms with all men, to avenge savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognized the following day as the most neglected genius of the age.(144)" These two descriptions seem to be similar, both portraying Maclaren-Ross and Trapnel and talented writers, but not exactly sure of what they want to do with their talent, as neither of them lived an ideal lifestyle. From their "financial embarrassments" to relationship problems, to having the same walking stick, it becomes very clear that Powell modeled Trapnel after Julian Maclaraen-Ross. Bibliography: 1 Allason, Julian and Keith Marshall. "Models for Characters in Anthony Powell's `A Dance to the Music of Time'". http://www.anthonypowell.org/dance/dancewho.htm 2 "The Julian Maclaren-Ross Website." http://www.julianmaclaren-ross.co.uk/chronology.html 3 Power, Chris. "A brief survey of the short story: part six." http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/12/a_brief_survey_of_the_short_st_5.html |
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Becca Zinsmeister In Books Do Furnish a Room we often find Widmerpool at the center of the actions or gossip. His name weasels its way into Nick's conversation with Sillery, as they discuss his "political fortunes" and marriage to Pamela. (p.13) He then appears at Erridge's funeral and at the publishing company. Later it is Widmerpool's tumultuous marriage to Pamela that places him directly into the spotlight. However, with each situation we see a different part of Widmerpool's personality. When Nick visits with Sillery and Short, Widmerpool's illustrious career is the subject of discussion. In past sections of A Dance to the Music of Time, Powell has displayed Widmerpool's lust for power. This scene provides us with insight into how others view Widmerpool's rise to the top. Short mentions a humorous incident when Widmerpool refuses to part with his briefcase when at a social function, insinuating that Widmerpool takes his work a little too seriously. (p.13) This point gets further emphasized as the book continues and nearly every conversation we have with Widmerpool is somehow related to business. X. Trapnel even writes a parody on Widmerpool's writings on politics and the economy. Yet, neither Sillery nor Short can say anything bad about Widmerpool's career and his dedication to it, which prompts the conversation to shift to his wife Pamela, who is always a controversial subject. Pamela is Widmerpool's buffer. The characters in A Dance to the Music of Time love to gossip about her and her appalling behavior only adds to the discussion. With attention focused on Pamela and her relationship to Widmerpool, no one directly scrutinizes Widmerpool himself. In fact this may be partly why Widmerpool handles Pamela's affair with X. Trapnel so well. While it obviously upsets him to some degree he never as Nick states, "makes a scene." (p.195) Even during the confrontation with Pamela and Trapnel Widmerpool manages to keep his cool, despite Pamela's lack of reaction and Trapnel's rude demand that Widmerpool remove his hat from atop Tranpel's manuscript, which given the situation is completely out of line. (p.199) Widmerpool is the character that as a reader you love to hate. However, the manner in which he handled Pamela's affair says a lot about his character. He did not get violent or begin shouting, and he had the courage to confront Trapnel about the situation in an extremely civil and rational way. Nick brushes on this when he describes Widmerpool's reaction to finding him in Trapel's home. Nick observes, "The fact that Trapnel had run away with Widmerpool's wife had nothing to do with the business relationship between trapnel and myself. To disregard it was almost something to approve." (p.199) Widmerpool acted dignified in a situation where many have failed to do so, providing evidence about how he has come so far in the world of politics, when many people do not like him. Granted Widmerpool still has no problem throwing his weight around, as is evident at Erridge's funeral, when he literally and figuratively leads his party into the church and seats them. Nick describes Widmerpool's actions as those of a "policeman directing traffic" and that the only one to question his authority was naturally Pamela. (p.47) Despite the fact that Widmerpool's purpose for attending the funeral is not to mourn, as he never knew Erridge, but business, his companions, including one of Tolland's relatives, followed his lead. I have only been able to observe Widmerpool for two segments of the Dance series, and have had difficulty matching the animosity toward his character that those who have known him since his days at Eden. To me Widmerpool is a power hungry and business-obsessed individual, lacking some basic social skills. I feel his dealings with Pamela show that he may have some redeeming qualities. |